The Currents of War: A New History of American-Japanese Relations, 1899-1941

5: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Department

Chapter 5 Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Department The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider , or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you. —Jonathan Edwards (1741) No promises of the Japs based on words would be worth anything. —Cordell Hull (1941) For three decades, diplomatic engagement remained an integral part of America ’s containment of Japan. With the exception of Calvin Coolidge, every president from Theodore Roosevelt to Herbert Hoover achieved at least one major agreement with Tokyo designed to protect the Open Door and limit Japanese expansion. These agreements did not safeguard the Open Door, but they did help shelter it, and, in the process, diplomatic engagement kept in check the suspicion, fear, and rivalry that competition in China, American immigration restrictions, and a sustained Japanese-American naval arms race had created. Neither Taft-Katsura nor Lansing-Ishii nor even the Washington and London naval agreements solved the fundamental problems that divided America and Japan. These agreements did, however, signal that compromise , negotiation, and diplomacy took precedence over deterrence and coercion. Although Theodore Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet on its cruise, in part, to deter Japan, he did not hesitate to conclude Root-Takahira. The Wilson administration pursued economic deterrence, yet the president backed Lansing-Ishii, and, in the last major Japanese-American political agreement before the war, US negotiators rebuffed Japan’s bid for parity at the 1930 London naval talks even as they worked behind the scenes to achieve a compromise . Just three years later, however, the days of compromise were over. In the four years between the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the freezing of Japanese assets, both Secretary of State Hull and Stanley Hornbeck went through the motions of engaging Japan without ever seeking a dip- 144 The Currents of War lomatic compromise to either limit Japanese expansion or ease JapaneseAmerican tensions. Neither man saw any need to conclude a bargain with what both believed was an inherently untrustworthy Japan, and they were not alone. Both men also understood that, in order to build a broad antiJapanese coalition, tensions had to remain elevated if the American public and foreign powers were to continue to see Japan as a threat to Western interests . The two diplomats also believed that the United States must oppose an early Sino-Japanese peace because Tokyo’s terms required Chiang’s recognition of Manchukuo. Consequently, the United States continued, as it had since 1933, to eschew Japan’s entreaties and repeatedly failed to use diplomacy to either support containment or improve Japanese-American relations. The Roads Not Taken: Peace in China and the Axis Alliance By mid-1939, continued Chinese resistance had shaken the confidence of the Japanese government and army. From the beginning of the conflict, many in the army’s control faction in particular opposed the war, and, as Europe inched forward to catastrophe, moderates within the Army General Staff and the War Ministry called for a negotiated end to the fighting in China.1 In Washington, meanwhile, hope had long ago replaced despair as Chinese armies remained intact, retreated into the interior, and continued to take the field. Hornbeck’s prediction that Japan’s invasion would reach flood stage and then recede seemed at last possible. The influential American Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations concluded the previous December that China would continue “resistance over a long period” and “keep large bodies of Japanese troops in the field, thereby increasing Japan’s war costs.” From Chungking, Ambassador Nelson Johnson informed the president that China could continue to resist indefinitely with adequate financial help and a parallel American effort to reduce the flow of foreign financial assistance to Japan.2 Others close to the president, however, believed that the time had come to use American power to end, rather than prolong, the war. William Bullitt, Roosevelt’s close confidant and the former ambassador to the Soviet Union, informed Hull that Washington should approach Chiang and sound him out regarding his government’s peace terms. In the final hours of Europe’s fragile peace, Bullitt boldly suggested bringing Japan into the Anglo-French orbit. On August 26, he notified the secretary that the Polish ambassador to France had assured him that Japan sought American help in ending the war and that, given the warm relations between Warsaw and Tokyo, Japan was in Sinners in...