Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [85]
With the Hitlerian domination of Europe, the United States moved more and more into the forefront as the protector of imperial interests in the western Pacific and east Asia. American protests went back right to the start of the China incident, and had become so routine that they were completely discounted in Tokyo. The Americans had condemned the initial Japanese aggression against China, with no result. The sinking of the gunboat Panay in 1937 was explained away by Japan. In late 1938, Secretary of State Cordell Hull told Japan that the United States continued to regard the nine-power treaty of 1922, byproduct of the Washington Naval Conference, as the basis for all action with regard to China. The Japanese politely pigeonholed the American note.
Early in 1940, the 1911 trade treaty between the United States and Japan ran out. The American government refused to renew it and said it would trade with Japan only on a day-to-day basis; that bothered the Japanese; they were heavily dependent on American industrial imports. But the collapse of western Europe encouraged them to press on; the opportunities were too good to miss, and the Americans seemed disposed only to talk.
The American attitude was indeed equivocal; the man in an argument who wants to talk but not fight is at a disadvantage against the man who is willing to talk, but even more willing to fight. The Americans favored China, rightly but usually for the wrong reasons; because of missionary involvement of long standing, and because Madame Chiang Kai-shek was American-educated. The Americans saw Chiang as the defender of democracy in China, which he may have been, but not as the most successful of the warlords, which he also may have been. The American public, correctly if a bit simplistically, saw China as the good guys and Japan as the bad guys. The Japanese understood neither that nor why American politicians had to take any account of it anyway. They met American moral protestations with suggestions that the two powers cut up the east Asian pie between them. Figuratively as well as literally, the two sides spoke different languages.
In February of 1941, the Japanese sent Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura to the United States to negotiate on existing disagreements, but Nomura made little progress. Every time he and the American State Department seemed about to reach a meeting of minds, the Japanese forces in Asia took another leap forward, and the negotiations had to start all over again.
They began to near the flash point in July. When the Japanese completed the occupation of French Indochina, the British and American governments responded by freezing Japanese assets; Roosevelt had to do it by presidential decree, but it was done nevertheless. The Americans also began to look seriously to their Far Eastern defenses, such as they were. General Douglas MacArthur, at the time head of the United States military mission to the Philippines, which were being groomed for independence, was named Commander-in-Chief Far East, and assumed command of both the Philippine armed forces and the weak American garrisons there. In August, President Roosevelt warned Nomura that Japanese aggression must cease. Japan was still sufficiently dependent upon imports that this was in effect presenting her with an either-or proposition. Either she could give up her ambitions completely, including getting out of China, or she could go to war with the United States in order to obtain the materials that would enable her to fulfill those ambitions. The Americans somewhat naively hoped the Japanese would choose the former; instead they chose the latter.
In October, General Tojo replaced Prince Konoye as premier; this was an indication that Japan was firmly committed to her forward policy. The next month both sides took what were effectively final positions, with little common ground between them. The Japanese proposed that the United States unfreeze their assets,