In essence, and at the beginning of the crisis in the Far East, the US administration, during Japan’s intervention in China, advocated in principle for maintaining peace in the Asia-Pacific region so that Washington’s political and military attention could be focused on the situation in Europe, which at that time was a much more important geopolitical region for America than Asia.
That is why the US administration limited itself to protests during the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and later the main parts of China. However, when Japan entered into an alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy on September 27, 1940, the connections between political and military events in Europe and those in the Far East in Asia suddenly became clear to Washington.
Japan, now a direct German ally, with contractual obligations to Berlin and Rome and vice versa, was more harshly attacked by the administration in Washington and thus was subjected to extremely heavy economic sanctions that were actually deadly for Japan.
A year (December 1940) before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 1941), Washington was very disturbed by the growing Japanese belligerent tone which was the product of the growing American imperialism in the Asia-Pacific area since 1898 and which Japan considered since the end of the 19th century as its imperial area in imitation of the Western great powers that had their own imperial spheres of influence and colonialism.
Therefore, the American government introduced an embargo on the sale of scrap iron and war materials to Japan, although until then Washington had not set up any barriers in its trade with Japan, so that in the Sino-Japanese War that Japan started in 1937 (and lasted until 1945), China could rightly object that the military-political activities of Tokyo during the first three years of the war were economically inspired by this anti-Japanese policy of Washington, whose ultimate goal was basically to force Japan to end military activities in China.
However, this specifically meant that Japan had to give up the idea of creating its Asia-Pacific empire in favor of France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and America, which at that time already had their colonies in this part of the world.
In any case, the USA applied a new way of conducting diplomacy in the case of Japan, which was the method of economic pressure in order to achieve political goals. It must be noted here that the policy of introducing economic sanctions against a country has been controversial ever since the founding of the League of Nations after the First World War.
In particular, the introduction of sanctions by the “international community” against Italy in 1935 was unsuccessful and had many deliberate shortcomings, especially on the part of Great Britain, so that the so-called Abyssinian crisis (1935‒1936) did not bring any positive results. However, unlike Italy, US economic sanctions against Japan, at least in the way they were imposed against Japan, had (according to the belief in Washington) to achieve their goal.
However, the anti-Japanese economic sanctions proved to have backfired in Tokyo. On April 9, 1941, on its own initiative, Japan submitted a diplomatic proposal to Washington in order to resolve the political tensions between the two countries. Namely, Tokyo demanded that the USA help Japan get the necessary raw materials from the Dutch Indies (now Indonesia), and in that case, Japan would be ready to sign a peace treaty with China.
Since this diplomatic proposal was rejected in July 1941, Japan expanded its political and military control from the north to the south of Indochina in the context of the easing of American economic sanctions. In other words, Japan’s goal was to occupy those places which, according to Japanese military experts, were of vital importance for the military operations to liberate Southeast Asia from the Western colonizers.
Japan, of course, took advantage of the situation that presented itself due to the desperate position in which France found itself in Indochina after the capitulation to Germany in May 1940, because Paris could not provide any help to the local French colonial authorities anywhere in the world, including in the Asia-Pacific area. Thus, Japan occupied, or as it presented itself, liberated, French Indochina without any resistance in July 1941. It was greeted with friendliness by the local population, who believed in liberation from Western European colonial slavery.
At the time, the F. D. Roosevelt (FDR) administration asked Japan to meet five conditions in terms of easing tensions in the Far East:
1) Japan must withdraw its military troops from China and promise not to attack any other country in Asia;
2) The government in Tokyo must not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries;
3) Every country, not just Japan, could trade freely in China;
4) No country may forcefully change the status quo in the Far East; and
5) Japan must leave the Triple Pact with Germany and Italy.
However, these conditions did not apply at the same time to the four Western colonial powers in the Far East: the USA, France, the Netherlands and Great Britain, but only to Japan, which, based on such demands, justifiably understood that the Western imperial powers did not allow it access to the countries of the Far East – a rich region that they appropriated exclusively for their colonial needs.
The Japanese administration, specifically the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Matsuoka, formulated a diplomatic counter-proposal after much thought. He kept quiet about Japan’s attitude towards Germany, which meant specifically that Japan had no intention of leaving the Triple Pact. He demanded that the Americans force the Chinese into Japanese peace terms. In the end, he rejected the request that Japan not touch the region of Southeast Asia that was already under the colonial rule and exploitation of the Western imperial states. Just then, Japan concluded a neutrality treaty with the USSR, so that at least Japan did not have to fear negative influences from that side. In other words, China could not expect help from Stalin.
In practice, if Japanese military troops hermetically sealed the southern border for aid to China from the area of British colonies, China would soon be forced to capitulate. But for that to happen, Japan first had to capture French Indochina. In this context, Washington informed Tokyo that cooperation with Japan cannot be done while Matsuoka is the Minister of Foreign Affairs, so Japan decided to replace him with a new minister, Toyoda, who, in principle, was more ready for dialogue with the USA.
However, Japan, which judged that diplomacy would not be of much use, occupied French Indochina on July 25, 1941, with the intention of completely isolating China from the rest of the world. In Japanese hands, French Indochina was an excellent geopolitical base for Japanese military operations against the Netherlands Indies, British Malaya, and British Singapore.
Basically, the US wanted to prevent Japan from gaining control of Southeast Asia, which was very rich in raw materials such as oil, rubber, and tin. If Japan were to capture these areas, as it did in 1942, it would not be dependent on the US for oil. Oil was the main weapon in the hands of the USA against Japan, with which the Americans could keep Japan in submission unless Japan started a war against the USA. In addition, the USA also needed rubber from the Dutch Indies, so Washington cut off trade relations with Japan.
In such circumstances, the USA broke off trade relations with Japan, joined by the Netherlands and Great Britain. This development of events completely threatened the Japanese economy and the further functioning of the state. At that time, it was completely clear to Japan that if these three Western colonial powers did not lift the embargo on Japan, Japan would have only one option left in that case, and that was war to break through to the oil fields and other necessary raw materials (rubber) in Southeast Asia by force. This development of the situation, however, would surely cause a war with the USA.
At the time, the American press expressed unwavering wishes not to enter the war against Japan and maintain neutrality. At the time, many Americans feared that the USA could get involved in a war against Germany through a side war with Japan. In other words, many feared that the ultimate goal of the American administration of F. D. Roosevelt (FDR) was to enter the war against Germany through the war with Japan, and for the sake of saving the Jews in Europe. The logic was simple: if the US declared war on Japan, Germany would automatically declare war on the US.
It was only necessary to directly provoke Japan as a direct aggressor against the USA, and the USA would indirectly find itself at war against Nazi and anti-Semitic Germany. Exactly what the administration of F. D. Roosevelt (the 32nd president of the USA from 1933 to 1945) wanted. Accordingly, an attack on the American Pacific Fleet in Hawaii was the ideal solution, i.e., the reason for Washington to enter, through the war with Japan, in fact, into the war with Nazi Germany.
It should be remembered that F. D. Roosevelt (whose father was a businessman from Jewish circles) began his career when Woodrow Wilson (a Jew) appointed him as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1915. And at that time (1941), there was a holocaust in Europe in which Jews were being killed en masse. Americans were certainly not willing to die in Europe because of the Holocaust. That is why America had to be dragged into the war against anti-Semitic Germany in a roundabout way. That detour was called Japan, which, since 1940, had a trilateral agreement with Germany and Italy on automatic entry into war if one of these three countries was at war with another country.
The Japanese government hoped that in the case of direct talks with FDR, a mutually acceptable solution could be reached. FDR himself was in favor of organizing a bilateral conference at the highest level, but American foreign affairs advisers wanted to have evidence in advance that Japan would be willing to accept American pledges. In fact, the American administration saw in this diplomatic initiative of Japan its signs of weakness because it seemed to it that at that moment Japan was shying away from war against the USA. Washington then considered that the time was ripe for the issue of China and the problems in the Far East to be definitively regulated in America’s favor, hoping that Japan would meet all American demands due to the difficult economic situation it was in due to the economic embargo of the Western colonial powers.
However, despite the dire economic situation, the Japanese military refused to withdraw from China. It turned out in the end that neither of the two sides was ready to reach an agreement in the form of a compromise – neither Japan nor the USA. As for Japan, the civil administration was ready to accept American demands, but the Japanese army uncompromisingly refused to accept them.
The US President FDR took a hard line on the emerging crisis in French Indochina and greatly intensified the economic war against Japan. In particular, he froze Japanese assets in the US and began a policy that would eventually lead to an embargo on oil and steel sales to Japan, which dealt a death blow to the Japanese economy and thus social life. This was a key point in the development of the Japan-US crisis because the US government in Washington crucially tightened its policy towards Japan so that, in the end, Japan had little choice but to get out of the grip of US policy. The US made this political-economic move to the surprise of many interested parties in the politics of Pacific Asia, including Japan itself.
The Washington administration took these economic-political steps before the change of mood in the US towards the war with Japan, but knowing full well that it would cause enormous economic and social damage to Japan, so that for this reason Japan would have to react adequately.
Japan very quickly felt the results of such American sanctions, especially regarding the prohibition of oil imports. Let’s remember that Japan had, as now, almost no natural resources, especially oil as a key energy source. The lifting of sanctions on Japan’s oil imports was then a matter of life and death for Tokyo’s national economy.
Therefore, Japan had to do something concrete: either solve this problem diplomatically or by war. The problem for Japan was that the solution to this issue lay not in Japan’s hands but in Washington’s hands. At that time (in the summer of 1941), Japan had oil reserves for two years of economic operation, including wartime conditions. In this situation, Japan was unable to import oil from the USA or from any other country. In other words, due to American sanctions, Japan was cut off from the rest of the world in terms of importing raw materials, not only oil. To make the problem for Japan even bigger, the American economic embargo against Japan was adhered to by the British Empire as well as the Netherlands in Indonesia. Indonesia, by the way, was rich in rubber, from which tires were produced.
Tokyo finally realized that it was incapable of driving a wedge between these Western colonial powers. Japan was also aware that it had energy reserves for a limited time, and after that, its colonial policy in China, as well as economic life in Japan itself, would be over. Therefore, Japan had to do something concrete as soon as possible, and its main enemy was the USA, and additionally Great Britain and Holland (the Netherlands) with their colonies in the Asia-Pacific region that controlled the production and export of vital energy and other economic raw materials. In other words, it was clear to Tokyo that a direct military collision with the US was inevitable if Japan wanted to secure its economic independence for the future.
On the American side, FDR directed US policy towards Japan directly in only one direction – war. Of course, the American President did not publicly announce his decision to go to war, so the American public, although upset about the development of the situation with Japan, still wanted peace and believed that FDR himself wanted it too. For its part, the American administration, in order to avoid war, demanded firm guarantees from Japan through secret diplomatic channels that Tokyo would drastically change its policy towards China and Southeast Asia in general, so that only Western powers would be colonial masters in this part of the world.
Washington, however, misjudged that American economic sanctions against Japan would lead to Japan’s war against Great Britain and the Netherlands, but not the USA itself, given that the economic resources that Japan desperately sought were in the colonial hands of London and Amsterdam in Southeast Asia, which was basically correct. Washington was actually playing a dirty game with its Western allies in the region, ie. in British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies because he knew that in the event of a war between Japan against Great Britain and the Netherlands, he would not be able to help them due to the American Neutrality Act and therefore America would have to stand aside while Japan overran the British and Dutch colonies in the Asia-Pacific region, which specifically happened in 1942.
Japan proposed that a final agreement be reached with the US to eliminate the need for war, which the administration in Washington accepted and entered into negotiations. The new government of Japan, under the leadership of General Tojo, demanded that Japanese troops remain in northern China for at least the next 25 years. From the remaining part of China, Japanese troops would withdraw within two years after the signing of the agreement with the US. However, the Americans estimated that Japan did not want to completely evacuate its troops from China. Also, Japan refused to withdraw from the Tripartite Pact. Japanese diplomats tried to convince the US administration that the alliance with Germany and Italy did not commit Japan to anything, so the US had no reason to worry.
The Americans, however, did not accept the Japanese proposal, and this attitude of Washington stemmed from the fact that the American intelligence service had broken the Japanese codes so that Washington knew in advance the complete correspondence between the Japanese embassy in the USA and Tokyo and vice versa. Thus, the American administration could constantly challenge Japan to go to war. On the American side, President FDR, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and General Marshall were informed of these intelligence-coded messages. All of them, to preserve the secret, destroyed every message on the spot after reading it. In any case, Washington asked Japan for a complete evacuation of China so that China would become completely independent (at least from Japan) and withdraw from the Tripartite Pact, which was basically unacceptable for Japan at the time.
The US administration correctly estimated that in order to avoid war, Great Britain and the Netherlands would be included in these vital negotiations with Japan, which were extremely interested in the fate of the Far East, i.e., of their colonies in this area. Washington kept London informed, in particular about the progress of the negotiations. British PM Winston Churchill was personally against resistance, but he had much less clear ideas about Japan and the entire geopolitical situation in the Far East. Therefore, until the very end of the negotiations, he was convinced that Japan would finally give in. He was wrong, and the war in the Far East simply took him by surprise. Great Britain, as well as the Netherlands, was not ready for that war, so Japan overran their colonial empires very quickly after Pearl Harbor.
These negotiations with Japan began in July 1941, and in November, they reached their peak and final collapse. Japan placed very little hope in these negotiations and entered them practically out of diplomatic desperation, even though economic sanctions were weighing heavily on it. Regardless of the strong anti-war trend in Japan, Japanese foreign policy at that time was mainly led by generals and admirals, most of whom came to the conclusion that for Japan, war is the only policy that offers hope for the survival of the Japanese state. This circle of Japanese diplomats and other influential figures was encouraged by their talks with Hitler’s Germany, which in these months insisted that Japan must attack the British colonies in the Far East, especially in Singapore. At the same time, Berlin informed Tokyo that the operation would be easy to implement, which was confirmed in 1942. Germany and Japan together then concluded that a war against the Western colonialists in the Far East was inevitable and that it was therefore better for Japan to go to war as soon as possible.
In November 1941, the Washington administration finally realized that diplomatic talks with Japan had not brought any fruit. Formally, the diplomatic negotiations with Japan were interrupted due to the government crisis in Tokyo because the Japanese moderate Prime Minister, Prince Konoye, resigned and was replaced by General Tojo Hideki, who showed open contempt for the US. The Japanese government negotiated, but in principle decided on war. Tokyo was willing to see what the US offered to avoid war. Washington was ready for war with Japan, but he still formally tried to preserve the peace with his diplomatic maneuvers.
Thus, at the end of November 1941, the USA presented its last offer for peace to Japan – the lifting of the embargo on the import of oil and steel. In return, Japan was supposed to give territorial guarantees, but it was not clear exactly what kind. The first proposal was to deal gently with Japan. In that case, the withdrawal of the Japanese army from Indochina would be sufficient. There was an objective hope that such a solution would finally lead to the complete withdrawal of the Japanese army from the Asian mainland, but this possibility should neither have been rushed nor directly insisted upon within the immediate terms of the agreement.
However, the Chinese lobby got involved. The leader of the Chinese national forces, Chiang Kai-Shek, was informed of the offer. He was furious and felt that it was unlikely that China would be able to fight Japan. He telegraphed to London and managed to win British Prime Minister Winston Churchill over to his side. Chiang Kai-Shek’s address to the British government finally caused London to tighten conditions on Japan so that Tokyo was now required to evacuate not only Indochina but also the entire territories that Japan had occupied in China. And Japan occupied those territories (Manchuria) for purely economic reasons. If Japan abandoned them, it would mean a great economic defeat for Japan. In return, the US would lift the embargo on Japan’s oil purchases and imports.
Japanese Prince Konoye, then Prime Minister of Japan, proposed to the British government that these two countries should conclude a temporary political pact based on which Japan would agree not to enter the war against the USA, even on the condition that American activities lead to war with Germany in the area of the Atlantic Ocean. This would specifically mean that Japan would not assume the signed obligations from the Triple Pact of 1940 with Germany and Italy. Let’s remember that the geopolitical essence of this Triple Pact was to deter the US from military intervention in the German war in Europe (Germany did not fight outside of Europe and later North Africa, i.e., the French and English colonies in North Africa) under the threat of a military conflict with Japan. This Japanese diplomatic initiative was not accepted.
On November 1, 1941, the Japanese government decided that an agreement with the US must be reached by November 30. Japan proposed a new compromise as a temporary solution: Japan would withdraw from the southern part of Indochina if Great Britain, the United States, and the Netherlands (Holland) suspended the economic embargo. After the peace treaty with China, Japan would also withdraw its troops from the territory of northern Indochina.
However, the US maintained its position that Japan immediately withdraw all its troops from China. Finally, FDR sent a letter to the Emperor of Japan late in the evening of December 6, 1941, but the letter reached the Emperor when the war had already begun the next morning. However, in this letter, FDR did not mention the Japanese occupation of China or Japan’s participation in the Triple Pact.
On December 7, 1941, Japan sent a note announcing that diplomatic negotiations had failed. The consequence of this development of diplomacy was the Japanese bombing of (part of) the American Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor on the same day, or rather the bombing of that part of the fleet that the Americans had left in Hawaii to be bombed as a pretext for declaring war on Japan. The bombing was a consequence, at least from the Japanese side, of the fact that diplomatic negotiations had failed.
It should be noted that the American administration was confused regarding the bombing of Pearl Harbor, believing that it was a mistake because, according to Washington’s estimates, Japan should have bombed the British colony of Singapore and not the American protectorate – Hawaii (Hawaii did not belong to the USA at the time. It became part of the USA together with Alaska in 1950). It can be assumed that the Japanese finally decided to bomb the US Pacific Fleet (i.e., the parts of it left at Pearl Harbor) most likely because they failed to get a diplomatic benefit from the US for themselves.
In any case, the general impression remains that the USA, with its diplomacy, did everything to bring about this development of the situation in the Asia-Pacific region, not so much because of Japan, but primarily because Germany entered the war against the USA. Thus, Japan served the American administration as a springboard for the war against the anti-Semitic Nazi Germany, in which the Holocaust against the Jews was already raging, as well as in the occupied German territories in Europe.
