So considering how well my topic on Hitler went over I thought I'd make one about Japan. This time I thought I'd make the case even more compelling that war was unnecessary by combining countless sources, dates and quotes into a mosaic timeline.
1937
Washington had been demanding since the mid-1930’s that Japan cease its occupation of strategic Manchuria, an autonomous state on China’s northeastern border. America’s warnings to Tokyo intensified after Japan invaded China in 1937.
1939
From 1939, the Imperial Japanese Navy had been at samurai sword’s drawn with the Imperial Army. They in effect ran two separate wars: the Navy wanted the East Indies’s oil and to dominate the Pacific Ocean. The Army demanded resources be poured into its wars in China and Southeast Asia. In 1939, the United States terminated the 1911 commercial treaty with Japan.
1940
July
July 2
Roosevelt signed the Export Control Act, authorizing the President to license or prohibit the export of essential defense materials.
July 31
Under this authority, "[o]n July 31, exports of aviation motor fuels and lubricants and No. 1 heavy melting iron and steel scrap were restricted." Next, in a move aimed at Japan, Roosevelt slapped an embargo, effective October 16, "on all exports of scrap iron and steel to destinations other than Britain and the nations of the Western Hemisphere."
September
Sept. 27
Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan signed a Tripartite Treaty, declaring that if one country was a victim of aggression the others would be called to arms on the side of that victimized country.
October.
Oct. 7
The McCollum Memo is authored by Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum detailing ways in which to provoke Japan into an act of war.
1941
By 1941, Japanese armies were deep in China, a nation that the US considered its sphere of commercial and political interest. Roosevelt issued an ultimatum to Tokyo to get out of China – or else.
March
FDR said to Winston Churchill: "I may never declare war; I may make war. If I were to ask Congress to declare war they might argue about it for three months."
Japanese minister of foreign affairs, Iosuke Matsuoka, arrives in Berlin for talks with Hitler. He does not commit to a deadline for action against the Soviets, leading to a clash with Hitler.
Summer of 1941
Bogged down in a four year war in China she could neither win nor end, having moved into French Indochina, Japan saw herself as near the end of her tether. Inside the government was a powerful faction led by Prime Minister Prince Fumimaro Konoye that desperately did not want a war with the United States. The “pro-Anglo-Saxon” camp included the navy, whose officers had fought alongside the U.S. and Royal navies in World War I, while the war party was centered on the army, Gen. Hideki Tojo and Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka, a bitter anti-American.
July
July 18
Konoye ousted Matsuoka, replacing him with the “pro-Anglo-Saxon” Adm. Teijiro Toyoda.
July 25/26
FDR responds by freezing all Japanese assets in the United States and ending all exports and imports - meaning no crude oil, aviation gas, scrap iron and other strategic commodities on which Japanese industry depended. At the time, the US produced over 50% of the world’s oil supply. Japan produced no oil and imported all of its strategic materials and much of its food.
Stunned, Konoye still pursued his peace policy by winning secret support from the navy and army to meet FDR on the U.S. side of the Pacific to hear and respond to U.S. demands. U.S. Ambassador Joseph Grew implored Washington not to ignore Konoye’s offer, that the prince had convinced him an agreement could be reached on Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and South and Central China. Out of fear of Mao’s armies and Stalin’s Russia, Tokyo wanted to hold a buffer in North China.
One week later Roosevelt embargoed the export of such grades of oil as still were in commercial flow to Japan. The British and the Dutch followed suit, embargoing exports to Japan from their colonies in Southeast Asia.
July 31
Having broken the Japanese diplomatic code, the American leaders knew, among many other things, what Foreign Minister Teijiro Toyoda had communicated to Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura: "Commercial and economic relations between Japan and third countries, led by England and the United States, are gradually becoming so horribly strained that we cannot endure it much longer. Consequently, our Empire, to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials of the South Seas."
August
Aug. 28
Japan’s ambassador in Washington presented FDR a personal letter from Konoye imploring him to meet. Tokyo begged us to keep Konoye’s offer secret, as the revelation of a Japanese prime minister’s offering to cross the Pacific to talk to an American president could imperil his government.
September
Sept. 3
The Konoye letter was purposely leaked to the Herald-Tribune.
Sept. 6
Konoye met again at a three-hour dinner with Grew to tell him Japan now agreed with the four principles the Americans were demanding as the basis for peace. No response.
Sept. 29
Grew sent what Herbert Hoover describes as a “prayer” to the president not to let this chance for peace pass by.
Sept. 30
Grew wrote Washington, “Konoye’s warship is ready waiting to take him to Honolulu, Alaska or anyplace designated by the president.”
October
Oct. 16
No response. Konoye’s cabinet fell.
November
In November, the U.S. intercepted two new offers from Tokyo: a Plan A for an end to the China war and occupation of Indochina and, if that were rejected, a Plan B, a modus vivendi where neither side would make any new move. When presented, these, too, were rejected out of hand.
Nov. 5
Marshall and Stark signed a joint memorandum for Roosevelt in which they concluded that "The basic military policies and strategy agreed to in the United States-British Staff conversations remain sound.... Military action against Japan should be undertaken only in one or more of" several contingencies. These included a Japanese movement "against the territory or mandated territory of the United States, the British Commonwealth, or the Netherlands East Indies." It also included the movement of Japanese forces across a specified line previously described. Because of their desire for more time to build up forces in the Far East, their final recommendation was: "That no ultimatum be delivered to Japan."
That same day a MAGIC message told them that: "Because of various circumstances, it is absolutely necessary that arrangements for the signing of this agreement be completed by the 25th of this month" if Japanese-U.S. relations are to be saved "from falling into a chaotic condition."
Nov. 11
Tokyo to Washington: "Judging from the progress of the conversations, there seem to be indications that the United States is still not fully aware of the exceedingly criticalness of the situation here. The fact remains that the date set forth in my message #736** is absolutely immovable under present conditions. It is a definite dead-line and therefore it is essential that a settlement be reached by about that time. ... The situation is nearing a climax ... time is indeed becoming short."
Nov. 15
Tokyo again: "The date set forth ... is an absolutely immovable one. Please, therefore, make the United States see the light, so as to make possible the signing of the agreement by that date."
Nov. 16
Tokyo yet again: "The fate of our Empire hangs by the slender thread of a few days, so please fight harder than you ever did before.... I set the deadline ... and there will be no change. Please try to understand that. You see how short the time is; therefore, do not allow the United States to sidetrack us and delay the negotiations any further. Press them for a solution on the basis of our proposals, and do your best to bring about an immediate solution.
Nov. 22
Ambassadors' plea to Tokyo for more time was answered: "It is awfully hard for us to consider changing the date we set.... There are reasons beyond your ability to guess why we wanted to settle Japanese-American relations by the 25th, but if within the next three or four days you can finish your conversations with the Americans; if the signing can be completed by the 29th, (let me write it out for you-twenty-ninth); if the pertinent notes can be exchanged; if we can get an understanding with Great Britain and the Netherlands; and in short if everything can be finished, we have decided to wait until that date. This time we mean it, that the deadline absolutely cannot be changed. After that things are automatically going to happen."
Nov. 24
Washington officials read a Japanese intercept stating that: "The time limit set ... is in Tokyo time."
Nov. 25
President Franklin Roosevelt surprised his advisors by saying that war with Japan was about to begin. Meeting of FDR’s war council, Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s notes speak of the prevailing consensus:
“He brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked perhaps (as soon as) next Monday [December 1], for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition.... The others brought out the fact that any such expedition to the South as the Japanese were likely to take would be an encirclement of our interests in the Philippines and cutting into our vital supplies of rubber from Malaysia. I pointed out to the President that he had already taken the first steps toward an ultimatum in notifying Japan way back last summer that if she crossed the border into Thailand she was violating our safety and that therefore he had only to point out (to Japan) that to follow any such expedition was a violation of a warning we had already given.”
“We can wipe the Japanese off the map in three months,” wrote Navy Secretary Frank Knox. As Grew had predicted, Japan, a “hara-kiri nation,” proved more likely to fling herself into national suicide for honor than to allow herself to be humiliated.
Nov. 26
A number of Japan's intercepts were translated and circulated. Perhaps the most informative was one sent on November 14, from Tokyo to Hong Kong and eleven other Chinese cities. It read in part: "Though the Imperial Government hopes for great things from the Japan-American negotiations, they do not permit optimism for the future. Should the negotiations collapse, the international situation in which the Empire will find herself will be one of tremendous crisis. Accompanying this, the Empire's foreign policy as it has been decided by the cabinet ... is:
a. We will completely destroy British and American power in China.
b. We will take over all enemy concessions and enemy important rights and interests (customs and minerals, etc.) in China....
We will cope with a world war on a long-time scale. Should our reserves for total war and our future military strength wane, we have decided to reinforce them from the whole Far Eastern area. This has become the whole fundamental policy of the Empire....
Please keep absolutely quiet the existence of these decisions and the fact that they have been transmitted to you."
Officials read another highly interesting intercept sent the day before, probably the 24th U.S. time, from Japanese forces poised at Hanoi to Tokyo: "We are advised by the military that we are to have a reply from the United States on the 25th. If this is true, no doubt the Cabinet will make a decision between peace and war within the next day or two .... Should ... the negotiations not end in a success, since practically all preparations for the campaign have been completed, our forces shall be able to move within the day...."
Also, Roosevelt summoned Hull to the White House and, without consulting his military and naval advisors, authorized Hull to hand the Japanese Ambassadors an ultimatum to Japan that it was known Japan could not accept. Secretary of State Hull presented "peace terms" to the Japanese. The terms presented by Hull were such that in order for Japan to agree to them they would have had to withdraw from China and Southeast Asia, and essentially end all hostilities, something that the administration knew was not going to happen. Of Hull's presentation to Japan, the American Ambassador to Japan stated that it was: "The document that touched the button that started the war."
Nov.27
Hull told Stimson: "I have washed my hands of it and it is now in the hands of you and Knox-the Army and the Navy."
Nov. 28
Alarming indications that Japan was getting ready for action. A telephone conversation the day before between the Tokyo Foreign Office and one of the Japanese Ambassadors was taped, translated and decoded. It told us that "a crisis does appear imminent." That same day, FDR and his War Cabinet also read a Tokyo cable to Japan's Washington Ambassadors. This cable revealed Japan's highly negative reaction to our ultimatum of the 26th:
"Well, you two Ambassadors have exerted superhuman efforts but, in spite of this, the United States has gone ahead and presented this humiliating proposal. This was quite unexpected and extremely regrettable. The Imperial Government can by no means use it as a basis for negotiations. Therefore, with a report of the views of the Imperial Government on this American proposal which I will send you in two or three days, the negotiations will be de facto ruptured. This is inevitable. However, I do not wish you to give the impression that the negotiations are broken off. Merely say to them that you are awaiting instructions.... From now on do the best you can." The reports from the Philippines about the Japanese expeditionary force moving south were so alarming to Stimson on November 28th that he personally took them to FDR in the White House. 25,000 Japanese troops were going to land somewhere. Later that day, there was a meeting of the War Cabinet at the White House. Stimson's diary reports:
"It was now the opinion of everyone that if this expedition was allowed to get around the southern point of Indochina and go off and land in the Gulf of Siam, either at Bangkok or further west, it would be a terrific blow at all of the three Powers, Britain at Singapore, the Netherlands, and ourselves in the Philippines. It was the consensus of everybody that this must not be allowed. Then we discussed how to prevent it. It was agreed that if the Japanese got into the Isthmus of Kra, the British would fight. It was also agreed that if the British fought, we would have to fight.... It further became a consensus ... that the only thing for us to do was to address it a warning that if it reached a certain place, or a certain line, or a certain point, we should have to fight."