FDR - Jean Edward Smith [326]
If Hull, the State Department, and the hawks in the cabinet feared a Roosevelt-Konoye meeting, ultranationalists in Tokyo were enraged at the possibility. Konoye narrowly averted assassination on September 18, 1941, when four young men armed with ceremonial daggers charged the vehicle in which he was riding from his home to his office. They were repulsed by plainclothes policemen, but the climate of assassination in Tokyo surely gave increased urgency to the negotiations.62
Yet nothing happened. Traditional historiography argues that Japan’s refusal to withdraw from China was the sticking point, and to some extent that is true. But the reverse is also true. Stimson, Morgenthau, and Hull feared that if Japan did withdraw from China it would free the Japanese Army to attack Russia in Siberia, which no one in Washington wanted. Accordingly, the best strategy was to keep the talks with Tokyo going but agree to nothing. On October 16, unable to lift the embargo or secure a summit with FDR, Konoye resigned. The Emperor, who still hoped for a peaceful resolution, turned to his war minister, General Hideki Tojo, to form a new government. Intervening directly in the process and wholly without precedent, Hirohito explicitly requested Tojo not to feel bound by the decision of September 6 to prepare for war but to review all issues anew: to start with a clean slate. Shaken by his new responsibility, Tojo accepted the Emperor’s request without question.63 In some respects, Hirohito’s action in picking Tojo was similar to Hindenburg’s selection of Hitler as chancellor of the Weimar Republic in January 1933: both hoped to resolve the crisis facing their nation by turning to the strongest player on the board.
On the day Konoye resigned, Roosevelt penned longhand notes to Churchill and King George VI. “I am a bit worried over the Japanese situation,” he told the King. “The Emperor is for peace, I think, but the Jingoes are trying to force his hand.” To Churchill he said, “The Jap situation is definitely worse and I think they are headed north—however in spite of this you and I have two months of respite in the Far East” (FDR’s supposition was that Japan would not move south until Russia was defeated).64
The following day, Roosevelt met with Hull and his military advisers. At the president’s direction Admiral Stark flashed a warning to commanders in the Pacific that hostilities between Japan and Russia were a strong possibility. An attack on U.S. and British forces could not be ruled out. “In view of these possibilities you will take due precautions.”65 Neither Stark nor General Marshall considered the Japanese threat imminent. The next day, October 17, 1941, Stark assured Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the Pacific Fleet commander, that he did “not believe the Japs are going to sail into us. In fact, I tempered the [alert] message I was given considerably. Perhaps I am wrong, but I hope not. In any case after long pow-wows in the White House it was felt we should be on guard.”66 General Marshall, for his part, informed General Walter C. Short in Hawaii and MacArthur in the Philippines: “No abrupt change in Japanese foreign policy appears imminent.”67
In Tokyo the “clean slate” debate within the Tojo government continued through the first week in November. Grew advised Washington that the hopes for a settlement were fading fast. The economic pressure Washington had applied, particularly the oil embargo, had been a mistake, said Grew. In a lengthy cable on November 3, 1941, and a shorter follow-up the next day, Grew warned that if negotiations failed “Japan