FDR - Jean Edward Smith [330]
On November 20, 1941, Nomura and Kurusu presented Japan’s final offer—a proposal for a six-month cooling-off period that would allow both sides time to reassess the situation. Essentially it was a return to the status quo before the American embargo. Japan would agree to no further territorial expansion and would withdraw its troops from southern Indochina in return for a relaxation of U.S. trade sanctions.76 Thanks to MAGIC intercepts, the administration knew this was Tokyo’s last stand. “This time we are making our last possible bargain,” Foreign Minister Togo informed his Washington representatives. “I hope we can settle all our troubles with the United States peacefully.”77
The Japanese proposal said nothing about China. As a result Hull found it “clearly unacceptable.”78 But Roosevelt saw a glimmer of hope. Fully mindful of Marshall and Stark’s admonition to avoid war with Japan, he seized on the idea of a temporary modus vivendi. After learning the details of the Japanese offer, he scribbled a note to Hull as a basis for a conciliatory reply:
6 Months
U.S. to resume economic relations—some oil and rice now—more later.
Japan to send no more troops to Indochina or Manchurian border or any place South (Dutch. Brit. or Siam).
Japan to agree not to invoke tripartite pact even if U.S. gets into European war.
U.S. to introduce Japs to Chinese to talk things over but U.S. to take no part in their conversations.
Later on Pacific agreements.79
Roosevelt said the United States did not intend to interfere or mediate between Japan and China. “I don’t know whether there is such a word in the parlance of diplomats, but the United States’ only intention is to become an ‘introducer.’ ”80 The president dropped earlier American demands that Japan withdraw from China. Later he told Ickes “he was not sure whether or not Japan had a gun up its sleeve.” Ickes was convinced war was inevitable, but Roosevelt was not. “It seemed to me,” wrote Ickes, “that the President had not yet reached the state of mind where he is willing to be aggressive as to Japan.”81
Roosevelt’s conciliatory stance won quick military support. On November 21 Major General Leonard T. Gerow, chief of the Army’s War Plans Division, representing General Marshall, who was spending Thanksgiving in Florida, wrote Hull that the Army considered it a matter of “grave importance to the success of our effort in Europe that we reach a modus vivendi with Japan.… [A] temporary peace in the Pacific would permit us to complete defensive preparations in the Philippines and at the same time insure continuance of material assistance to the British—both of which are highly important.”82
Time was running out. Nomura and Kurusu asked Tokyo for an extension of the November 25 deadline, and Togo gave them until the twenty-ninth. “This time we mean it. The deadline absolutely cannot be changed. After that things are automatically going to happen.”83 MAGIC intercepts delivered the message to FDR and Hull almost as quickly as Nomura received it.
For whatever reasons, Roosevelt’s suggestion of a modus vivendi was never presented to the Japanese. Revisionist historians and some conspiracy theorists argue that the Roosevelt administration had given up hope for peace in the Pacific and wanted to lure the Japanese into attacking first.84 Traditional historians have downplayed the significance of modus vivendi and assert that Japan was bent on war in any event.85 Hull’s rendition of events is meretricious; Stimson’s is flawed; and Roosevelt left no record.86 Professors William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, in their magisterial account of prewar diplomacy, call the failure to present the modus vivendi a mystery: “Until and unless additional evidence comes to light, the role of the President as well as of Secretary Hull will remain a subject of speculation.”87
The sparse record available indicates that FDR’s plan encountered heavy going, both from America’s allies and in the cabinet. China was outraged, the Australians and the Dutch thought it was a bad idea,