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By Root 873 0

from any threat of United States naval action in the Southwest Pacific. Admiral Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Navy and architect of the Pearl Harbor strike, knew that Japan had no hope of ultimate victory over the United States. As he told Premier Konoye, “I have utterly no confidence for the second or third year.” Since he believed that operations against the Netherlands Indies “will lead to an early commencement of war with America,” his plan was to force the issue and knock the United States out by a “fatal blow.” Then, by conquering Southeast Asia, Japan could acquire the resources necessary for a protracted war to establish her hegemony over the Co-Prosperity Sphere. And so he proposed that Japan should “fiercely attack and destroy the United States main fleet at the outset of the war so that the morale of the United States Navy and her people [would] sink to an extent that it could not be recovered.” This curious estimate came from a man who was not unacquainted with America, having attended Harvard and served as naval attaché in Washington.

Planning for the supremely audacious blow to smash the United States Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor began in January 1941 while the ultimate decision continued to be the subject of intense maneuvering between the government and armed services throughout the year. Advocates of the preemptive strike promised, none too confidently, that it would remove the United States from all possibility of interference and, it was hoped, from further hostilities altogether. And if it did not, asked the doubtful, what then? They argued that Japan could not win a prolonged war against the United States, that the life of their nation was being staked on a gamble. At no time during the discussions were warning voices silent. The Prime Minister, Prince Konoye, resigned, commanders were at odds, advisers hesitant and reluctant, the Emperor glum. When he asked if the surprise attack would win as great a victory as the surprise attack on Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War, Admiral Nagano, Chief of Naval General Staff, replied that it was doubtful that Japan would win at all. (It is possible that in speaking to the Emperor, this could have been a ritual bow of oriental self-disparagement, but at so serious a moment that would seem uncalled for.)

In this atmosphere of doubt why was the extreme risk approved? Partly because exasperation at the failure of all her efforts at intimidation had led to an all-or-nothing state of mind and a helpless yielding like Bethmann’s by the civilians to the military. Further, the grandiose mood of the fascist powers in which no conquest seemed impossible, must be taken into account. Japan had mobilized a military will of terrible force which was in fact to accomplish extraordinary triumphs, among them the capture of Singapore and the blow on Pearl Harbor itself, which brought the United States close to panic. Fundamentally the reason Japan took the risk was that she had either to go forward or content herself with the status quo, which no one was willing or could politically afford to suggest. Over a generation, pressure from the aggressive army in China and from its partisans at home had fused Japan to the goal of an impossible empire from which she could not now retreat. She had become a prisoner of her oversize ambitions.

An alternative strategy would have been to proceed against the Netherlands Indies while leaving the United States untouched. While this would have left an unknown quantity in Japan’s rear, an unknown quantity would have been preferable to a certain enemy, especially one of potential vastly superior to her own.

Here was a strange miscalculation. At a time when at least half the United States was strongly isolationist, the Japanese did the one thing that could have united the American people and motivated the whole nation for war. So deep was the division in America in the months before Pearl Harbor that renewal of the one-year draft law was enacted in Congress by a majority of only one vote—a single vote. The fact is that Japan could