THE RISE AND FALL OF AN EMPIRE

JAPAN THE RISE AND FALL OF AN EMPIRE JEAN SÉNAT FLEURY Copyright © 2023 by JEAN SÉNAT FLEURY All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. JAPAN THE RISE OF AN EMPIRE JEAN SÉNAT FLEURY Table of Contents 1. From Samurais to Soldiers Meiji Restoration Becomes Meiji Warfare More Expeditionary Warfare Fomenting Korea Political Turmoil 2. Bad-Neighbor Syndrome First War with China War with Russia The Annexation of Korea 3. Training a Tyrant A Prince Was Born The Crown Prince Education Dynasty The Prince Regent 4. Make-Believe Government Taking the Throne Facing Economic Crisis Fighting Communism 5. Emperor’s Clothes A Political Monarch Emerges The Rise of Nationalist Ideology Driving Through Disasters The Supreme Commander 6. Into Manchuria Attacking Manchuria Rejecting International Sanctions A Diabolic War Machine 7. Into China Again Prelude to the Pacific War The Marco Polo Bridge Attack Joining the Axis Powers Report on Nanking Massacre Invading More Territories 8. Sneak Attack Prelude to Pearl Harbor About Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor: Attack, Casualties, and Facts More Attacks after Pearl Harbor 9. Land and Sea Invasions Attacking the Philippines Invading Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, and Burma Controlling the Pacific Introduction After a historical book published in 2019 on Hirohito’s responsibilities during the first period of the Shōwa erea (1927– 1945) essentially an “episodic biography,” I am publishing now a nonfiction book entitled Japan: The Rise of an Empire. The book covers many decades of Japanese Empire history. It identifies the beliefs, the policies, and the practices of the Japanese from 1853 to the Pacific War. It describes Japan’s opening to modernization with the 1853 arrival of commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry in the country, and details the wars launched by Emperor Meiji and Emperor Hirohito during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. The book exposes the expansionist policy practiced by Japan at the end of the 19th century and during the first period of the 20th century. Indeed, since the adoption of the Meiji Constitution in 1889 and the first period of the Shōwa era (1927–1945), the military has controlled Japan’s constitutional government. The result has been years of political instability, with more internal strife, violence, killings, assassinations, foreign aggression, and war crimes. The book demonstrates how in Japan during the Pacific War, the real war’s engine was the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy. Hirohito, as supreme commander, gave his full support to this war. Japan: The Rise of an Empire must be read as an educational tool on the history of the modernization of Japan that started with the 1853 arrival of commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry in the country. It details the expansionist wars launched by Emperor Meiji and Emperor Hirohito between 1905 and 1942 to build their empire. Finally, the book studies the various stages for Japan to become an Empire. It began with Japan’s First War against China (1894–1895), Japan’s War against Russia (1904–1905), the attack by the Japanese troops on the Asian American fleet at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, to end with the entry of Japan into World War II. Chapter One From Samurais to Soldiers Determined to challenge Japan’s centuries-old trade isolation, Matthew Calbraith Perry, fifty-nine years old, commodore of the United States Navy, left Norfolk, Virginia, on November 24, 1852, in command of the East India Squadron.1 Brother of Olivier Hazard Perry, the hero of Lake Erie, Matthew made his name in the Mexican War. For all his achievements, he was the right man for the mission of opening Japan to trade. Traversing the length of the Atlantic Ocean, he rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the far southern tip of Africa, and then crossed the wide expanse of Indian Ocean to the Orient. Perry’s first ports of entry were Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Before continuing northward to Japan, he took his modest fleet of four vessels, two of them coal-burning “black ships,” into the port of Naha in the Ryukyus Islands. There, he threatened that he would occupy Shuri Castle if the Okinawan government refused his demand to open their ports to American ships for trade. Without any resistance, the Ryukyu government accepted. In the late afternoon of July 8, 1853, Perry’s four “black ships” —the steamers Susquehanna and Mississippi, and the sloops Saratoga and Plymouth— anchored off the town of Uraga, in the bay of Shimoda. Perry’s mission was to force Japan to accede to diplomatic and trade relations with the United States.2 When representatives of Japan’s hereditary military rulers, the Tokugawa Shogunate, told him to leave, he refused and threatened to bombard the city if the Japanese didn’t allow him to deliver a letter from President Millard Fillmore. For effect, he fired blanks from his fleet’s ninety-three cannons. Then he ordered his men to begin surveying the coastline and surrounding waters over the objections of local officials.3 To the Japanese, the encounter was unprecedented. They were paralyzed by indecision, made worse by the illness of Tokugawa leyasu.4 On July 11, 1853, Abe Masahiro, the chief councilor (rōjū), after talking with the Uraga Magistrate, decided that simply accepting a letter from the Americans would not violate Japanese sovereignty. He invited Perry to come ashore. On July 14, at Kurihama, Perry handed President Fillmore’s letter to the Shogunate and told them he would return for a reply. Seven months later, in February 1854, Perry returned to Japan with a larger war fleet, four sailing ships and three steamers, carrying sixteen thousand men-at-arms. The Japanese had prepared a draft treaty, and, after a brief diplomatic standoff, negotiations began. On March 31, 1854, Perry co-signed what became known as the “Convention of Kanagawa,” or “Kanagawa Treaty,” that promised a permanent “Japanese-American friendship.” The Treaty allowed U.S. ships (including warships) to obtain fuel and other supplies at two minor Japanese ports, enabled a consulate to be established at Shinoda, and paved the way for trading rights. 5 An instrumental in the signing of the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854, Abe Masahiro did not sign the treaty or participate in the negotiations; this was done by his plenipotentiary Hayashi Akira.6 Edwin P. Hoyt wrote: The American success was followed by frantic European action. The British sent Sir James Sterling to secure a treaty, and he did. The Russians sent Admiral Yevfimiy Vasilyevich Putyatin back to Japan, and he got a treaty in 1855. Then came the Netherlands, then France, all jumping on the bandwagon. The result was a powerful reaction among the barons to throw all the rascally foreigners back out, and thus began a new struggle for power in Japan, with the foreigners at the center of it, and the barons lining up either with the Tokugawa shogunate or the Imperial Restoration party.7 To the Shogun officials, the meeting with Perry was significant in more ways than trade. They obviously took special note of American technology exemplified by the expedition’s sea power, weaponry, and global reach. It gave them ideas how to challenge China for control of the Orient.8 One year after signing the Kanagawa Treaty the Japanese established their imperial navy. The same year, in 1855, they opened schools in Edo, where young Japanese studied foreign languages and attended lectures by foreign engineers, physicists, chemists, and other technologists and scientists. On August 4, 1855, Townsend Harris accepted an appointment as Consul to Shimoda, and then the United States established Consular relations with Japan. Full diplomatic relations were established on July 29, 1858, with the signing of an official accord by the U.S. Consul General Townsend Harris and the Japanese representatives at the Japan capital of Edo (Tokyo). Two years later, in 1860, Japan sent an official mission to the United States to celebrate the Kanagawa Treaty’s ratification. This first delegation included some prominent figures such as Fukuzawa Yukichi, an education and publishing magnate, who was already very active at encouraging the Westernization of Japan. The visitors were amazed by scenes of American prosperity and development. They saw railroads connecting thousands of miles of territory, tall buildings made of iron, and steel foundries pounding out rails, girders, and sheet metal.9 When the mission returned to Japan, all the details were reported to the Shogun.10 Persecuting Foreigners Between 1860 and 1863, terror against foreigners was common in Japan. Even Japanese were assassinated when seen as too prowestern. In 1862, the British merchant Charles L. Richardson was killed by a satsuma samurai after failing to respect the tradition of giving way to a Clan procession.11 That incident led to major diplomatic problems between Britain and Japan. On March 11, 1863, Emperor Kōmei issued an edict named: “The Order to Expel Barbarians” (jōi shukumei or jōi jikkō no shukumei). It was an ordinance against the Westernization of Japan following the opening of the country by Perry in 1854. The ordinance was based on widespread anti-foreign and legitimist sentiment called the “Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians’ movement.” Emperor Kōmei personally agreed with such sentiments, and —breaking with centuries of imperial tradition— began to take an active role in matters of state. He publicly protested against the signing of the Convention and attempted to interfere in the shogunate succession. Because of his opposition to the treaty, attacks began against the Shogunate who refused to enforce the edict, as well as against foreigners in Japan. The most common incidents were the firing on foreign shipping by Chōshū forces in the Shimonoseki Strait off Chōshū Province. The Western powers, such as Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the United States responded by bombarding Shimonoseki in 1864.12 The British requested the Tokugawa Shogunate government to pay an indemnity of one hundred thousand pounds for Richardson’s death.13 A squadron of British Royal Navy warships went to the Satsuma port of Kagoshima to pressure the daimyo shogun. Instead, the Japanese opened fire on the English ships and the squadron retaliated. These events had direct consequences on the shogunate, which had been seen too powerless and compromising in their relations with Western powers. In 1865, the Chōshū clan rebelled against the Tokugawas and overthrew the shogunate in the Boshin War and the subsequent Meiji Restoration.14 Trained in Western ways and equipped with Western weapons, the Chōshū destroyed the Shogun’s now obsolete samurai army.15 With the Chōshū now in power conditions began to favor an imperial restoration. The Tokugawas continued to lose prestige and the support of the barons. Little by little, the imperial court regained the powers it had granted the shoguns six hundred years earlier: the right to allocate territory in particular. 16 By 1866, Emperor Kōmei began to listen to advisors who had traveled in Europe and America and who warned that Japan, in order to become a world power, had to learn technology and sciences from the Westerners. The new goal became to modernize Japan.17 Meiji Restoration Becomes Meiji Warfare Emperor Kōmei (Kōmei-tennō) died on January 30, 1867. His son, Meiji, fifteen years old, became emperor. On October 23, 1868, the Meiji Restoration officially started. The events restored practical abilities and consolidated the political system under the Emperor of Japan.18 The Restoration led to enormous changes in Japan’s political and social structure and combined the ideas from the late Edo period often called the Bakumatsu and the beginning of the Meiji era.19 Emperor Meiji began to address his father’s ambition. Railroads were constructed across the countryside; the new administration developed industries and built port facilities. A shipyard was built at Yokosuka. With the modernizing trend, several rich trading families including Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumotomo, Yasuda, Kawasaki, Tanaka, and Asano began to industrialize, and thus gain enormous economic, political, social and war-making power. Some of these families are still prominent.20 Beginning in 1869, under the slogan fukoku kyōhei: “enrich the country, strengthen the military,” Japan aggressively industrialized, particularly for military purposes, to compete with the West and attain physical control of the people and resources in Asia. The growth in Japan’s per capita GDP in 1869 reflects this industrialization, which continued through the years before World War II.21 Statistically, Japan’s per capita GDP was 23 percent of Britain’s and 30 percent of the United States. On January 3, 1869, with the approval of the emperor, the leaders of the Satsuma and Chōshū clans presented a united front against the Shogun. The Imperial Palace announced that all power was restored to the emperor. In 1870, Emperor Meiji signed the first Conscription Law that required all Japanese serve three years’ active military service followed by two years’ reserve. Soon, ten thousand Japanese were being conscripted. By five years later, Japan was building its own ships and the country was manufacturing its own guns and ammunition. As the country approached self-sufficiency, the politicians and the business elite became divided as to the purpose. Some wanted to consolidate and build up the country’s resources and others wanted to imitate the West in conquering and acquiring territories, i.e., empire-building.22 After several years of internal conflict, the expansionist faction prevailed and, with the support of the emperor, moved quickly on this agenda. Among the leading expansionists was Saigō Takamori, who had done his best to return the imperial party to power. Saigō was born on January 23, 1828, at Kagoshima. A giant among his contemporaries, he possessed all the samurai virtues: bravery, generosity, and excellent swordsmanship. Living during the late Edo and early Meiji periods, he was one of the most influential samurai in Japanese history, and one of the two great nobles —the other being Kido Takayoshi— who led the Meiji Restoration. Saigō was not in favor of empowering men he regarded as bureaucrats while he assisted in the degradation of the samurai class.23 He became a leader in the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Later, he rebelled against the weaknesses of the imperial government. Having arranged the surrender of the fief of Chōshū to the authority of the Shogunate in 1864–65, he was a member of the small group who negotiated the secret alliance of Satsuma and Chōshū in 1866. He also worked secretly to force the shogun’s resignation, which occurred on November 8, 1867.24 In 1871, after refusing several times, Saigō joined the army and was given command of the newly created imperial guard consisting of tens of thousands of troops. During the Boshin War, he led the Japanese forces at the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, and then led the Japanese army toward Edo, pushing the surrender of Edo Castle from Katsu Kaishū. Leaving his general’s position, he was appointed to the Council of State (Dajōkan) and assumed joint responsibility (with Kido Takayoshi) for carrying out the new program. By the end of 1871, the national government had eliminated all potential military positions, and, in the summer of 1872, Saigō was promoted to the new rank of full general. He became the leading military in the nation who believed that Japan has a divine mission to dominate the world.25 In 1874, to begin what he called his “Revolution,” Meiji authorized Saigō to embark on a punitive expedition to Taiwan in retaliation for the murder of fifty-four Ryukyuan sailors in December 1871 by indigenous Paiwan near the southwestern tip of Taiwan. The expedition with a total of thirteen ships and thirty-six hundred soldiers embarked for Taiwan. The Chinese authorities protested vehemently. Saigō and his friends were not worried about Peking’s claim. They moved forward with their mission that led to the annexation of the Ryukyus in 1879 and many years later of Taiwan in 1895.26 The success of the expedition, which marked the first deployment overseas of the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy, revealed China’s Qing Dynasty’s weak hold on Taiwan and encouraged more Japanese adventurism. 27 In June 1876, Japan began to harry Korea as well. Emperor Meiji dispatched a naval squadron along the Korean coast with a warning that unless Korea opened its country to trade with Japan, the next force to appear would be a fleet of warships. The Koreans were forced to sign the Treaty of Kanghwa the same year, which opened three Korean ports to Japan: Busan, Incheon, and Wonsan. The treaty also granted Japanese nationals the same rights in Korea that Westerners enjoyed in Japan, such as extraterritoriality.28 Article 2 of the treaty stipulated that Japan and Korea would exchange envoys within fifteen months and permanently maintain diplomatic missions in each other’s country. Article 9 guaranteed [both countries] the freedom to conduct business without interference from either government and to trade without restrictions or prohibitions. From that time on, China and Japan struggled for control of Korea. Both countries strove to increase their influence in the peninsula. China helped open Korea to the United States and supported the efforts of Koreans for modernization, while, Japan’s commercial relations with Korea emerged much stronger.29 Meanwhile, within Japan, there were several violent samurai revolts against the Meiji government. As background, in December 1876, the government sent a police officer named Nakahara Hisao and fifty-seven armed men to Kagoshima on the pretense of investigating reports of subversive activities at a private academic school and an artillery school belonging to Saigō. The men were captured and confessed that their mission was to assassinate Saigō himself. The disaffected samurai in Satsuma believed that a rebellion was necessary in order to protect their leader. On January 30, 1877, unable to prevent the revolt, the Meiji government sent a warship to remove the weapons hoarded at the Kagoshima arsenal. Scandalized by the government’s move, fifty students from Saigō’s academy attacked the Somuta Arsenal and carried off the weapons. The students’ success motivated more than one thousand other students around Kagoshima to join the revolt. The following month, the government sent a mission led by Hayashi Tomoyuki, an official from the Home Ministry and Adm. Kawamura Sumiyoshi, to negotiate with the rebels. Failing in their attempt to stop the rebellion, Hayashi and Kawamura returned to Kobe. On February 12, 1877, in Tokyo, they reported their failure to Gen. Yamagata Aritomo and Itō Hirobumi. Both officials decided to send more troops to quell the movement. Meanwhile, on the same day, after a closed private meeting with his lieutenants Kirino Toshiaki and Shinohara Kunimoto, Saigō decided to march on Tokyo with a force of several thousand men. On February 14, his men crossed into Kumamoto Prefecture. The commandant of Kumamoto Castle, Maj. Gen. Tani Tateki, decided to stand on the defensive rather than ordering his forces of thirty-eight hundred soldiers and six hundred policemen to attack Saigō’s troops. On February 22, the Saigō’s army attacked Kumamoto Castle. Despite initial successes, Saigō failed to take the castle after several weeks of fighting. On April 12, the imperial Japanese forces under Gen. Kuroda Kiyotaka, assisted by Gen. Yamakawa Hiroshi, arrived in Kumamoto Prefecture. After an eight-day-long battle with heavy casualties on both sides, the imperial army troops were victorious over Saigō’s rebel men. Each side had suffered more than four thousand killed or wounded. After a series of victories at Miyakinojō, Nobeoka, Oita, Saiki, and Shiroyama, the majority of Saigō’s remaining five hundred men died fighting rather than surrendering. Only forty rebels were kept alive. Several of them with Saigō had committed seppuku.30 Saigō’s revolt against the Meiji government represented the resistance of the old warrior class against the Westernization of Japan. This incident could be viewed as the starting point for “Japan’s empire disaster.” More Expeditionary Warfare Starting in 1879, Japan conquered several groups of small islands not far from its homelands without having to fight for them. The Ryukyu Islands, nominally vassal states of China, ceased paying tribute to the Chinese Qing Dynasty in 1874, and the islands were annexed by Japan in 1879. Okinawa was officially established as a prefecture bringing an end to the 450 years of the Ryukyu Kingdom. Like the Ainu in Hokkaido, the Ryukyuan people had their own culture and traditions, many of them suppressed by the Meiji government. In 1880, King Gojong of Korea sent a mission in Japan led by Kim Hong-jip in order to observe the reforms taking place there. While in Tokyo, Kim met with Chinese diplomat Huang Zunxian who presented him a study called “Chaoxian Celue” (A Strategy for Korea).31 Huang warned his interlocutor of the threat posed to Korea by the Russians, and recommended that Korea must work closely with China. He advised the Koreans to seek an alliance with the United States as a counterweight to Russia.32 In 1880, following Huang’s advice, Gojong decided to establish diplomatic ties with the United States.33 During the talks with the Americans, Chinese officials insisted that the Treaty of Peace, Amity, Commerce and Navigation, also known as the Shufeldt Treaty signed in 1882 between the United States and Joseon Korea, should contain an article declaring that Korea was a dependency of China, and argued that the country had long been a tributary state of China. The Americans opposed this, arguing that a treaty with Korea should be based on the Treaty of Kanghwa, which stipulated that Korea was an independent state. After negotiations through Chinese mediation in Tianjin, a compromise was finally reached, agreeing that the king of Korea would notify the U.S. president in a letter that Korea had special status as a tributary state of China.34 On May 22, 1882, in Incheon, Korea, the Treaty of Peace, Amity, Commerce and Navigation was formally signed. Korea subsequently signed similar trade and commerce treaties with Great Britain and Germany in 1883, Italy and Russia in 1884, and France in 1886. On January 4, 1882, Emperor Meiji issued what is known as the Imperial Rescript for the Military (Gunjin Chokuyu). The rescript marked the beginning of a period of rapid change where Japan became less of an isolated feudal state and more of an industrialized and military-aggressive nation. The Meiji Renovation imposed practical emperor rules on the Japanese. The imposition of their rules led to the modernization and Westernization of Japan. Meiji used his imperial authority to abolish feudalism and the samurai, create a constitutional monarchy, and open technology schools and universities. Meanwhile, Japanese leaders such as Itagaki Taisuke, leader of the Jijutō Party; Shigeyuki Masuda, leader of the Taiseikai Party; Ōkuma Shigenobu, leader of the Rikken Kaishintō Party; and other names such as Itō Hirobumi, Iwakura Tomomi, Kido Takayoshi, Okubo Toshimo, and Yamagata Aritomo, were all concerned that Korea was a threat to the national security of Japan. The 1880s’ discussions in Japan about national security were focused on the issue of Korean reform. As the German military adviser Maj. Jacob Meckel stated, Korea was “a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan.”35 According to Meckel, the proximity of Korea to Japan and the latter’s inability to defend itself against outsiders made the country a real threat for Japanese security. The political consensus was that Korea required a program of self-strengthening like the post-restoration reforms that were enacted in Japan. 36 In regard to Meiji leaders the issue was not whether Korea should be reformed but how these reforms might be implemented. Fomenting Korea In 1882, the Korean peninsula experienced a severe drought that led to food shortages. Korea was on the verge of bankruptcy. Falling months behind on military pay had caused deep resentment among the soldiers. Thousands of them had been discharged in the process of overhauling the army. A military mutiny and riot broke out in Seoul.37 The Imo Incident began on July 23, 1882. This violent riot was carried out by soldiers of the Korean army who were later joined by disaffected civilians. The riot occurred in part because King Gojong’s supports for reform and modernization. 38 Many Korean soldiers were worried by the prospect of incorporating Japanese officers in a new army structure. The rioters destroyed homes of high government ministers and occupied Changdeokgung. After the rioters attacked many government buildings in Seoul and released from jail several political prisoners, they turned their attention to the Japanese officials. 39 During the day of rioting, several of them were killed. They went to Lt. Horimoto Reijo’s quarters and killed him.40 The rioters also attacked the home of Min Gyeom-ho who held joint appointments of Minister of Military Affairs and the high-level official of the Agency to Bestow Blessings. They also lynched Lord Heungin, Yi Choe-eung, and attempted to murder Empress Myeongseong, after reaching the Royal Palace. The rioters entered the Japanese Ambassador’s residence, where Hanabusa Yoshitada, the minister to Korea, and twenty-seven staff resided.41 The rioters threatened to kill all the Japanese inside.42 Hanabusa gave orders to burn the residence. All important documents were set on fire. The members of the legation escaped through a rear gate, fled to the harbor, and boarded a boat that took them down the Han River to Chemulpo. There, they were again forced to flee after hearing the news coming from Seoul. They escaped to the harbor and were pursued by Korean soldiers. Six Japanese were killed, while another five were seriously wounded.43 The remainder boarded a small boat and headed for the open sea, where, three days later, they were rescued by a British survey ship, HMS Flying Fish, which took them to Nagasaki.44 The following day, the rioters entered the Imperial Palace and killed Min Gyeom-ho, as well as twelve other high-ranking officers.45 A few weeks later, on the evening of August 30, 1882, Korea and Japan signed the Treaty of Chemulpo. The treaty specified that Korean conspirators would be punished, and each Japanese family victimized during the attack would receive ¥50,000 yen. The Japanese government would also receive ¥500,000 and permission to station troops at their diplomatic legation in Seoul. Heungseon Daewongun, accused of fomenting the rebellion and its violence, was arrested by Chinese troops and taken to China where he spent three years in custody and only returned to Korea in 1885. 46 The Chinese used the riot to reinforce their influence over Korea. They began to directly interfere in Korean internal affairs. 47 They sent two special foreign affairs advisers to press Chinese interests in Korea. These were Paul Georg von Möllendorff, a German, and close confidant of Li Hongzhang, and the Chinese diplomat Ma Jianzhong.48 A group of Chinese officers took over the training of the Korean army, providing it with one thousand rifles, two canons, and ten thousand rounds of ammunition.49 The Chingunyeong (Capital Guards Command), a new Korean military formation, was created and trained along Chinese lines by Yuan Shikai. In October 1882, China and Korea signed a treaty stipulating that Korea was a dependency of China.50 Over this treaty, the Koreans gave the Chinese substantial advantages over Japanese and Westerners and granted them unilateral extraterritoriality privileges in civil and criminal cases. Under the treaty, Chinese merchants were granted the right to conduct overland and maritime business freely within its borders; Koreans were allowed reciprocally to trade in Beijing.51 Korea became a semi-colonial state of China with many thousands of Chinese troops stationed in the country to protect Chinese interests.52 In January 1885, the Japanese dispatched two battalions and seven warships to Korea. This threat resulted in the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1885, also known as the Treaty of Hanseong, signed on January 9, 1885.53 The treaty not only restored diplomatic relations between Japan and Korea broken since the Bunroku-Keicho War at the end of the sixteenth century, but Korea also agreed to pay the Japanese ¥10,000 for damages to their legation three years earlier, and to provide a site for the building of a new legation. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi, in order to seek peace with China, visited the country and met Li Hongzhang. The two parties signed the Convention of Tianjin, an agreement signed between the Qing dynasty of China and the empire of Japan in Tianjin, China, on April 18, 1885. Under the agreement, both countries, —China and Japan— agreed to withdraw their troops from Korea. They also pledged to notify each other if in the future they would send any troops to Korea.54 One year later, this agreement failed. Tensions between Japan and China rose starting with the Nagasaki Incident on August 13, 1886.55 Of their side, the Russians were watching and waiting for an opportunity to enter Korea. One came when Korea sought to modernize its army. The Russians offered military trainers in exchange for them to use the port of Wonsan, which they called Port of Lazarev. The Koreans were opened to the idea. However, China and Japan opposed it, and, together, they succeeded in stopping it. They did not, however, eliminate Russia’s desire for an entry to and foothold in Korea, something that continues up to this day.56 Political Turmoil By 1886, various popular movements emerged in Japan. The Liberal and Progressive parties competed to impose their views. The Liberals wanted popular democracy, while the Progressives also wanted democracy, but to a lesser degree. Both parties were supported by the oligarchs, particularly the Mitsui and the Mitsubishi, who quarreled for personal political position in order to achieve their political and moral goals. These two families, first rice merchants, then bankers and industrialists, had become the most important corporations in Japan.57 Mitsui took over the Liberals and Mitsubishi supported the Progressives. And, thus, the “zaibatsu,” was born, the political-economic cartel in Japan grouping industrial and financial business conglomerates, whose influence and size exercised control over big parts of Japan’s economy from the Meiji period until the end of World War II. During the same interval other political alignments arose. These included groups of belligerent samurai seeking variously to overthrow the government, return to the days of feudalism, or to invade Korea. On the one hand, the pacifist Seikanron faction was not in favor of invading Korea. On the other hand, the Bakufu clan, dating back to Japan’s feudal military government days, approximately 1600 to 1868, favored Japanese expansion into the Pacific and East Asia. Japan, in 1889, had trade relations with the United States and Korea, and essentially lorded over Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands. Nevertheless, Emperor Meiji and his government faced enormous social and political tensions, particularly from the Nationalists, a faction led by Gen. Prince Yamagata Aritomo, also known as Kyōsuke Yamagata. Yamagata was among the Meiji oligarchy and the main architect of militarism in early Japan. It was he who brought the major issue of extraterritoriality of the Europeans in Japan. Anti-foreigner sentiment was so strong in Japan at that time, that when centrist Foreign Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu was attempting to renegotiate the “unequal treaties” with the Western powers in 1889, a member of the Gen’yōsha faction attacked him with a bomb and blew off his right leg. The treaty negotiated by Ōkuma was perceived by these extremists as too conciliatory to the West.58 Ōkuma’s attack was so shocking that the whole cabinet resigned. It was replaced by a government under hawkish Gen. Yamagata Aritomo, the result of an agreement among the Chōshū and Satsuma clans.59 The constitution of the empire of Japan, known informally as the Meiji constitution, was proclaimed by Emperor Meiji on February 11, 1889. It was a form of mixed constitutional Charter and absolute monarchy.60 By that time, the Imperial Japanese Army had increased to 73,000 men with a reserve that would bring it to 274,000 troops in a time of war. The Imperial Japanese Navy was building twenty-three ships. The army and navy together accounted for a third of the Japanese government’s budget. The ambition to build a big army was rationalized not because another nation was threatening Japan, but by the fact that Japan wanted to expand its territory as the Western nations: United Kingdom, United States, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, and Russia that had established colonies all around Japan. In regard of the Japanese officials, Japan must gain colonies of its own. 61 In accordance with provisions of the Meiji constitution, Japan’s first general election for the lower house of the national assembly was held on July 1, 1890. Although the regular election of the 245 members of the House of Councilors (dai-nijūgo-kai Sangiin giin tsūjō senkyo) resulted in victory for the Liberal and Progressive parties; however, the real power was held by the oligarchs represented by the prime minister. The new Japanese constitutional government with Prime Minister Yamagata Aritomo was controlled by the military. Yamagata was one of seven political leaders, later called the genrō that came to dominate the government of Japan. Yamagata held a large and devoted power base in the officers of the army and the militarists. He became the towering leader of Japanese conservatives. He profoundly distrusted all democratic institutions and devoted the action of his government to build and defend the political power of the army. He has been considered by the historians as the “father” of Japanese militarism. 62 The year 1891 was a troubled one. When the first government of Yamagata fell, the oligarchs chose a member of the Satsuma clan, Matsukata Masayoshi, to become prime minister. As background, in 1868, Matsukata was appointed governor of Hita Prefecture by Ōkubo Toshimichi, who was the powerful minister of the Interior for the new Meiji government. As governor, Matsukata instituted several reforms including road building, starting the port of Beppu, and many other infrastructural projects. He moved to Tokyo in 1871, and began drafting laws for the Land Tax Reform of 1873– 1881. He became lord home minister in 1880. In the following year, when the Japanese economy was in crisis due to huge inflation, he became lord finance minister. He introduced a policy of fiscal restraint that resulted in what has come to be called the “Matsukata Deflation.” The economy was eventually stabilized, and he established the Bank of Japan in 1882. But when he sought to protect Japanese industry from foreign competition, he was restricted by the unequal treaties.63 Appointed prime minister, Prince Itō Hirobumi named Matsukata finance minister. Matsukata kept this position during the three years Hirobumi was head of the cabinet and during the term of the next government. During this period, he instituted numerous fiscal reforms, cut spending, and most importantly, returned Japan to a silver-backed currency. He favored privatization and, thus, sold several unproductive government holdings. In just eighteen months, he deflated the national money supply by 14 percent. This decision caused agricultural land prices to plummet by fifty per cent.64 On May 6, 1891, Yamagata resigned, and Matsukata was appointed prime minister during which time he concurrently was finance minister. One major political faction that Matsukata was forced to deal with during his time in office was the Black Ocean Society. This influential and secret Pan-Asianist organization active in Japan was founded as the Koyōsha by Kotarō Hiraoka, a wealthy ex-samurai and mine-owner with interests in Manchuria. The Black Ocean Society was an ultranationalist group. It operated with the support of certain powerful figures in the Japanese government such as Tōyama Mitsuru and other former samurai of the Fukuoka Domain. The group was powerful enough to demand concessions from the government. On February 15, 1892, Japan held its second general election for members of the house of representatives of the Diet. Historically, the 1892 election was the most violent in Japanese history, with numerous riots, in which twenty-five people were killed and three hundred eighty-eight wounded. Violence was particularly severe in areas of the country in which support for the opposition Liberal Party (Jiyutō) was strong. Encouraged by the government led by Matsukata, police chiefs arrested candidates alleged by the officials as “disloyal,” and used gangs to harass voters and burn opposition politicians’ property. Prefectural governors were secretly ordered to disrupt campaigns of the opposition’s leaders and aid progovernment supporters.65 Ballot boxes were stolen in Kōchi Prefecture and voting was made impossible in parts of Saga, Ishikawa, and Fukuoka Prefectures. Despite the violence, the so-called mintō/the Rikken Kaishintō (Liberal parties) and their affiliates maintained their majority in the house of representatives, winning 132 seats as opposed to 124 for pro-government candidates, with 44 independents.66 Facing an angry lower house (even members of the House of Peers were outraged with the manner in which the election was held on May 11), Matsukata was forced to resign. He was replaced by Itō Hirobumi who became on December 22, 1885, the new prime minister of Japan. Hirobumi’s political career started when Ōkubo Toshimichi was assassinated on May 14, 1878, in Tokyo, by Shimada Ichirō and six other samurai of the Kaga domain. He succeeded Toshimichi as minister of home affairs.67 His advancement brought him into conflict with Ōkuma Shigenobu, the leader of the Rikken Kaishintō (Progressive Party), credited as being one of the major forces behind the introduction of modern democratic government to Japan. Hirobumi forced Shigenobu and supporters out of the government in 1881, and, soon after that, he persuaded Emperor Meiji to adopt Japan’s first constitution. The new constitution came into force in February 1889, and in 1890, the National Diet was established. Hirobumi played a crucial role in building modern Japan. He helped draft the Meiji constitution. On the model of several countries in Europe and the United States, he came up with the idea for a bicameral National Diet. In the draft of the new constitution, he called for a bicameral parliament (the Diet) with an elected lower house, a prime minister, and a cabinet appointed by the emperor. A privy council composed of the Meiji genrō advised the emperor, who played the role of the commander in chief of the army and navy. Hirobumi’s preeminence in Japanese political life continued in the 1890s. As prime minister, he is remembered for two reasons. The first was his work on an agreement in 1894 with Great Britain called the “Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation” (Nichi-Ei Tsūshō Kōkai Jōyaku). Regarded by the British government as a breakthrough agreement in international relations, it superseded the “Unequal Treaties” and ended the concept and practice of extraterritoriality in Japan. The treaty was signed in London on July 16, 1894, by John Wodehouse, First Earl of Kimberly for Britain, and Viscount Aoki Shūzō for Japan. The agreement came into force five years later on July 17, 1899. 68 From that date, British citizens residing in or visiting Japan were subject to Japanese laws rather than British. The second was Hirobumi’s role in Japan’s war against China in 1895. A result of China’s defeat was its cession of Formosa (later known as Taiwan) to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, April 17, 1895. In 1894, in order to get taxes and fines from rich citizens, the magistrate of Gobu, Jo Byeonggap, created various oppressive laws and forced the peasants to build reservoirs and settle in unowned lands. This decision caused the Gobu Revolt on January 11, 1894. Angered peasants allied under Jeon Bongjun and Kim Gaemam began the movement. The Gobu revolt was suppressed by Yi Yongtae, and Jeon Bongjun fled to Taein. In April 1894, Jeon gathered an army in Mount Baek and recaptured Gobu. The rebels then proceeded to defeat the government forces in Hwangto Pass and the Hwangryong River. Jeon then captured Jeonju Fortress and fought in a siege with Hong Gyehun’s Joseon forces. In May 1894, the rebels signed a peace treaty with the government forces, and built agencies called Jibgangso that handled affairs in rebel-controlled areas. King Gojong, on the recommendation of the Min clan and at the insistence of Yuan Shikai, requested aid from the Chinese government in order to suppress the rebels and take control of the situation. Qing sent 2,700 soldiers to Korea.69 The first garrison of 2,500 troops, under the command of Gen. Ye Zhichao, sailed on board three British ships chartered by the Chinese government. The Chinese troops arrived at Asan on June 9, 1894. Two weeks later, on June 25, a further 400 Chinese troops arrived. The Japanese cabinet decided to reciprocally send troops to the peninsula as China did. Japan sent four warships and a battalion of troops to Seoul to protect Japanese interests. This decision sparked the First Sino-Japanese War. Chapter Two Bad-Neighbor Syndrome Japan’s road to war began many decades before the attack at Pearl Harbor. At the end of 1800, the Japanese decided to expand Japan’s territory in Asia. According to the Japanese officials, this decision would help the country to get resources that it would need, particularly oil. Japan’s desire to build a modern industrial civilization drove it through politics of extension. Near the turn of the twentieth centur y, the Japanese embarked on a period of aggressive expansion to change the trajectory of their nation isolated from the rest of the world for much of its history. Nationalist Japanese leaders believed that Western powers such as United States, Britain, France, and Russia had enacted tariffs that prevented Japan from accessing natural resources that it needed to develop its industrial capacity. At the end of July 1894, Japanese troops attacked Chinese forces that out posted the peninsula of Korea. Four days later, on August 1, 1894, Japan declared war on China.1 War against China Japan decision-making to go to war with China was motivated by the nation’s interest to become a great power. The First SinoJapanese War occurred for diverse reasons. First, Japan and China competed for influence in Korea. Second, the Japanese wanted to add the island of Formosa in their territory. China’s military became a threat and Japan did not tolerate that China closed its ports to Japanese vessels. The dispute between Japan and China over control of Korea reached its apogee between 1890 and 1894. By the early 1890s, Chinese influence in Korea had increased. Japan was looking for an excuse to deploy more troops in the peninsula in order to take control of Korea. An excuse came in 1894 when a band of anti-Japanese Koreans called the Tonghak rebelled against the Korean government. Korea called for the military assistance of China. The Chinese sent several thousands of troops to quell the rebellion. The Japanese on alert also quickly rushed troops into Korea. With the rebellion crushed, neither side withdrew. On July 23, 1894, the Japanese invaded the King of Korea’s Palace in Seoul and forced him to sign an agreement that would push the Chinese out of the peninsula. Two days later, in July 25, during the Battle of Pungdo, off Asan Chungcheongnam-do, the Japanese Cruiser “Naniwa Kan” commanded by Tōgō Heihachirō sank a Britishowned steamship, the Kowshing, as it transported Chinese troops and officers to Korea.2 After that tragedy, war was officially declared between China and Japan. This was the starting point of the First Sino-Japanese War.3 When the war began on August 1, 1894, China held a clear advantage over Japan. China’s military far outnumbered Japan’s forces: nearly 900,000 Chinese soldiers to Japan’s 120,000, and twice as many warships.4 China’s officer training school, the Tientsin Military Academy, was established in 1885, nine years before the war. As early as 1875, Emory Upton, an American general, had suggested to Li Hongzhang, one of the most powerful officials in China, and leader of the “Self-strengthening Movement,” to establish a Chinese military academy. Li rejected Upton’s proposal as too expensive for nine ‘professors and instructors’ from the United States and a six-year program of instruction in the English language.5 In 1885, ten years later, Li Hongzhang founded the Tianjin Military Academy for Chinese army officers with German advisers.6 Meanwhile, Japan borrowed the British Royal Navy as a model. Reforms under the Meiji government gave significant priority to the armed forces. The country modernized its national army and navy with special emphasis on warship construction. 7 In addition, Japan sent numerous officers abroad for training. Those officers had to observe and evaluate the relative strengths and tactics of Western armies and navies. British advisors were sent to Japan to train the naval establishment, while Japanese students, in turn, went to England to study and observe the Royal Navy. Through drilling and tuition by Royal Navy instructors, Japan developed expertise in the arts of gunnery and steamships.8 In 1885, Jacob Meckel, a former general in the German army and a veteran of the FrancoPrussian War (1870–1871), used his experience as a military advisor to bring the Japanese armed forces to a high level of efficiency. Following Germany’s victory over France, the Japanese invited Meckel (with the rank of major at the time) to Japan. Meckel became a professor at the Army Staff College and an advisor to the general staff of the Imperial Japanese Army. From this position, he worked closely with future Prime Ministers Tarō Katsura and Yamagata Aritomo and with army strategist Gen. Kawakami Soroku. He helped to reorganize the war ministry, refine the general staff, improve military education, and develop systems of logistics and medical services. He also helped to restructure the army into divisions and taught the Japanese the demands of fullscale mobilization, including a strategic railway network, a new conscription act, and improved staff exercises. Altogether, it could be said that Meckel had a tremendous impact on the development of Japan’s military. He is credited with having introduced Clausewitz’s military theories and the Prussian concept of war games (Kriegspiel) as a way to refine fighting tactics.9 To honor his services, in 1910, the Japanese displayed his bust in front of the Army Staff College in Kita-Aoyama, Minato, Tokyo, where he taught.10 By 1872, the Japanese government introduced conscription, i.e. forced military service to promote military consciousness, attitudes and practice among the people. At the same time, it created centralized military and naval academies and sent Japanese officers abroad for additional training. In 1878, an independent general staff was created, and, in 1883 a staff college. Close cooperation was ensured between the army and navy.11 At the start of the hostilities with China, in 1893, the Imperial Japanese Navy comprised a fleet of twelve modern ships, eight corvettes, one ironclad warship, twenty-six torpedo boats, and numerous auxiliary armed merchant cruisers, and converted ocean inners. The Japanese also had a relatively large merchant navy, which, at the beginning of 1894, consisted of two hundred eighty-eight vessels. Of these, sixty-six belonged to the Nippon Yusen Kaisha Shipping Company that Japan subsidized to maintain the vessels for use by the navy in case of war. Consequently, even without a large fleet of battleships, Japan could call on enough numbers of auxiliaries and transports.12 When fighting began on August 1, 1894, most military experts had predicted an easy victory for China. China, they said, had several advantages over Japan. Its army was vast, and its navy was strong; they both outnumbered and outweighed Japan’s capability. Foreign observers considered a Japanese victory improbable. However, in an interview with Reuter News Service, German officer William Lang predicted that despite significant Chinese advantages, the Japanese forces would win the war due to critical operational weaknesses that ultimately doomed China —lack of a unified command, lack of regular pay and medical care for its soldiers, failure to appreciate the importance of naval power or to use an appropriate naval battle formation. — Lang continued to say, China only has one operable railway, poorly maintained roads, encryption broken by Japan, a defensive strategic posture, and the country has been unable to mobilize international sympathy. 13 Lang states that at the end, there is no doubt that Japan must be utterly crushed the Chinese army and navy. By mid-September 1894, the Japanese navy controlled the Gulf of Chihli avoiding the Chinese in order to ship reinforcements to Korea by sea. They captured Port Arthur on November 21. Following a victory at Lüshin, the same month, General Yamagata prepared to march on Beijing. By March 1895, the Japanese forces had successfully invaded Shandong province in Manchuria and had fortified ports that commanded the sea approaches to Beijing. China, after suffering more than six months of unbroken losses to Japan’s land and naval forces, and the loss of the port of Weihaiwei, sued for peace in February 1895. Despite the formal opening of peace talks at Shimonoseki, Japanese ships bombarded and landed troops on the Pescadores Islands. The surrender of the Pescadores resulted in China’s cession of those islands to Japan including Taiwan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki on April 17, 1895. 14 The treaty demanded cession of the Liaodong peninsula as well. The conflict between the Qing dynasty of China and the empire of Japan over influence in Joseon, Korea, ended in February 1895.15 In April 1895, China was forced to give up its claims to vassal suzerainty over Korea. The same year, under the guise of protecting Korea, Japanese plotters, with official connivance, murdered Empress Myeongseong. By the end of 1895, Japanese troops occupied Korea. The successful war that Japan won against China (1894–95) also added the Ryukyus to its empire.16 Japan’s victory over China demonstrated the Qing dynasty’s failure to modernize Chinese military and fend off threats to its sovereignty. For the first time, regional dominance in East Asia shifted from China to Japan. Some claimed Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi had arranged the war to cement his political control of Japan. The war rather came from the pressure that Hirobumi received from several different political and economic interests in Japan that wanted further expansion in order to build a vast empire. Starting in 1895, Japan had the strongest and most successful army and navy in Asia. Following their victory over China (1894–1895), the Japanese decided, in 1904, to go to war against Russia over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea.17 War against Russia In 1904, the Russian Empire was one of the largest territorial powers in the world, with vast territories in Eastern Europe and central Asia under its control. Since the late nineteenth century, Russian political influence in Asia had become a major problem for many countries in the region, especially Japan and China, which considered Russia as a real threat for them. As several Western powers that established diplomatic relations with Japan and China, Russia obtained concessions from China after the Second Opium War (1856–1860). Under the Treaty of Aigun in 1858, and the Treaty of Beijing in 1860, China ceded to Russia’s extensive trading rights and regions adjacent to the Amur and Ussuri rivers. The Chinese allowed Russia to begin building a port and naval base at Vladivostok. The 1856 Treaty of Paris, signed at the end of the Crimean War, demilitarized the Black Sea and deprived Russia of southern Bessarabia. The Treaty gave the West European powers the nominal duty of protecting Christians living in the Ottoman Empire, removing that role from Russia, which had been designated as such a protector in the 1774 Treaty of KuchukKainarji. Russia lost naval access to the Black Sea. By 1867, the logic of the balance of power and the cost of developing and defending the Amur-Ussuri region dictated that Russia sell Alaska to the United States in order to acquire much-needed funds.18 In the late 1800s, Russia faced major domestic problems. In 1891, a famine claimed a half-million lives. The activities by Japan and China near Russia’s borders were perceived as threats from abroad. In 1894, the accession of Tsar Nicholas II upon the death of Alexander III had changed the country foreign policies agenda. At the turn of the century, Russia’s ambition to strengthen its dominance in Asia was facilitated by its alliance with France and the growing rivalry between Britain and Germany. By 1895, Germany was competing with France for Russia’s favor, and British statesmen hoped to negotiate with the Russians to delimit spheres of influence in Asia. This situation enabled Russia to intervene in northeastern Asia after Japan’s victory over China in 1895. In the negotiations that followed, Japan was forced to make concessions in the Liaotung Peninsula and Port Arthur in southern Manchuria.19 The next year, Russia got France capital to establish the Russo-Chinese bank. The goal of the bank was to finance the construction of a railroad across northern Manchuria and thus shorten the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Within two years, Russia had acquired leases on the Liaotung Peninsula and Port Arthur and had begun building a trunk line from Harbin in central Manchuria to Port Arthur on the coast. In March 1898, the Russians forced China to grant them a lease covering Port Arthur, Dairen, and much of the Kwantung Peninsula in the southern Liaoning province. Under this agreement, Russia took control of this strategic region for twentyfive years with renewal options. In the early years of the twentieth century, Russia had increased its control over most of Manchuria, stationing troops in key points of the region.20 While, with the Siberian shipping center of Vladivostok forced to close for much of the winter months, Russia sought a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean for its navy and for maritime trade. Vladivostok was operational only during the summer, whereas Port Arthur, a naval base in Liaodong Province leased to Russia by China, was operational all year. In 1900, China reacted to foreign encroachments on its territory with a popular, armed uprising, the Boxer Rebellion. Russian military contingents joined forces with Japan, France, and the United States to restore order in Northern China. A force of 180,000 Russian troops fought to pacify part of Manchuria and secure its railroads. Three years later, the Japanese were backed by Britain and the United States and insisted that Russia evacuate Manchuria. Japan, after its victory over China during the First SinoJapanese War, was widely viewed as the dominant force in Asia. Seeing Russia as a rival, Japan offered to recognize Russian dominance in Manchuria, and Japan would have maintained influence over Korea. Russia refused and demanded that Korea north of the 39th parallel be a neutral zone between Russia and Japan. Based on the superiority of his forces, Tsar Nicholas II knew that Japan would not take any chances to go to war against Russia. Since the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, Russia had deployed more than 150,000 troops to Manchuria. The Tsar boasted a first-class naval base at Vladivostok and another on the southern tip of Manchuria, at Lüshun, which was home to seven battleships, ten cruisers, twenty-five destroyers, and an assortment of gunboats. The Tsar also knew Russia had three times the population of Japan, eight times its gross national product, twice its per capita standard of living, and seven times its armed forces. The war would ultimately cost Tokyo 8.5 times what the First Sino-Japanese War had cost.21 On February 8, 1904, after negotiations between Japan and Russia broke down, the Japanese navy surprise-attacked the Russian Eastern Fleet at Port Arthur. The same day, Japan formally declared war against Russia. The Imperial Japanese Navy, commanded by Adm. Tōgō Heihachirō, sent torpedo boats to attack Russia naval vessels, significantly damaging three of them: Tsesarevich, Retvizan, and Pallada. On April 12, 1904, two Russian battleships that tried to evade the Japanese attack did not escape undamaged. Japanese torpedo boats sank the Petropavlovsk and caused the Pobeda to return to Port Arthur heavily damaged. In August 1904, forces from northern Russia sent to assist the fleet at Port Arthur were defeated by the Japanese in a series of battles: Battle of the Yellow Sea (August 10, 1904), Battle of Ulsan (August 14, 1904), Battle of Korsakov (August 20, 1904), Battle of Liaoyang (August 24, 1904), Battle of Shaho (October 5–17, 1904), Battle of Sandepu (January 25–29, 1905), Battle of Mukden (February 20– March 10, 1905), and Battle of Tsushima (May 27–28, 1905). By mid-1905, the Japanese navy had sunk every ship in Russia’s Pacific fleet. The hostilities ended with the Treaty of Portsmouth mediated by American President Theodore Roosevelt, and signed on September 5, 1905.22 Japan’s decisive military victory not only surprised military experts in the world but changed the balance of power in East Asia. It was the first major military victory of an Asian power over a European one.23 Defeating Russia in 1905, then Japan took the south half of Sakhalin and the southern tip of Manchuria, known as the Liaodong peninsula. At this time, Japan’s empire consisted of the home islands, the Ryukyus, and the Kuril Islands, which stretch approximately 1,300 kilometers (810 miles) northeast from Hokkaido, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the North Pacific Ocean, and which Japan had acquired in a compromise with Russia by giving up claims to the southern half of Sakhalin Island.24 The next step became the annexation of Korea. Annexation of Korea In 1898, America’s ambition to control the Caribbean Sea and bring Cuba under its power resulted in a conflict between the United States and Spain. On April 25, 1898, the United States declared war against Spain. During the hostilities, on May 1, 1898, just ten days after the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor, the American Asiatic Squadron, led by Commodore George Dewey, sailed from its base in Hong Kong to Manila Bay in the Philippine Islands, where it sought out and sank the Spanish Pacific fleet. In the initial naval engagement, 167 Spanish sailors were killed, and 214 wounded out of a total of 1,875 sailors. The Americans had no deaths and only seven wounded out of 1,748 men in action. As a result of this victory, the United States took the Philippines from Spain, and acquired the region’s second largest archipelago after the Dutch East Indies. With this conquest, the United States became Japan’s neighbor to the south and its regional rival. A series of discussions and meetings were held since 1905 between officials of Japan and the United States regarding the position of the two nations in greater East Asian Affairs, especially regarding the status of Korea and Philippines in the aftermath of Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War. On July 27, 1905, the two countries reached an agreement: The United States recognized Japan’s sphere of influence in Korea; in exchange, Japan recognized the United States’ sphere of influence in the Philippines. This agreement was signed by United States Secretary of War William Howard Taft and Prime Minister of Japan Count Tarō Katsura. Under the Taft-Katsura Agreement, Japan would control Korea if it would keep its hands off the Philippines. 25 On August 22, 1910, five years after the Taft-Katsura Agreement, Japan annexed Korea.26 Ye Wanyong, Prime Minister of Korea, and Terauchi Masatake, who became the first Japanese Governor-General of Korea, signed “The Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty.” In the treaty, Emperor Gojong of Korea lost his title. He received a new one, “King Emeritus Yi of Deoksu,” and was recognized as a member of the imperial family of Japan. 27 Soon the new governor of Japan in Korea took drastic measures to break any resistance of the Korean population. It forbade any association and meeting of Koreans, and any “insubordinates” were severely oppressed by the gendarmes in order to counter popular uprisings. To create a colonial economy that served Japan, Masatake proclaimed a decree on societies. The aim was to crush Korean capital and turn Korea into a market of Japanese capitalism. Masatake undertook land investigations set to determine land ownership. Upon investigation, the general government appropriated the lands belonging to the former royal court and abandoned lands, and these lands were distributed to Japanese settlers or spread to the Koreans through the Eastern colonization. Thousands of dispossessed Koreans immigrated to Manchuria. The 1910 annexation treaty, while making Korea an integral part of Japan, had subjected the de facto peninsula to ruthless colonial rule. This period of occupation provided irrefutable evidence of atrocities of the Japanese army against the Korean. André Fabre, in his book, History of Korea, (Éditions l’Asiathèque), notes that “once fully mastered Korea, the Japanese made every effort to exploit it to the fullest, deprive it of its soul, and make it a loyal province Of His Majesty the Emperor of Japan.” By 1911, all Korean forests were under the control of the Japanese government, which implemented a policy of massive deforestation to increase the country’s agricultural area. In 1912, Japanese authorities took control of the Korean fisheries and permitted Japanese fishermen to exploit Korean waters. In the early 1930s, under Hirohito’s rule, Japan took 40 percent of the Korean land to increase rice production for export to Japan. Land expropriations in the countryside led Korean peasants to rural exodus or immigration to Manchuria or Siberia, sometimes, to Japan’s mainland, where their status as migrant workers forced them to work in ruthless conditions. In the industrial sector, the share of capital invested by the Japanese in 1929 was ten times greater than that provided by the Koreans. Despite the new activities developed by the occupiers in the country, the Japanese occupation corresponded to an impoverishment of the Korean population, both in the countryside and the city. Koreans were forced to supply rice or raw materials such as wool and cotton to limit the cost of Japan’s imports into third countries, while at the same time, the low cost of Korean labor encouraged Japanese entrepreneurs to settle on the peninsula without giving any benefit to the inhabitants. In 1939, the Japanese authorities imposed a compulsory labor service on Koreans for more than 4,000,000 people in 1945, including 1,260,000 employed in Japan as unskilled labor. In 1941, with the Japanese occupation relying on 60,000 police officers supported by 180,000 auxiliaries, the situation of Koreans worsened, especially that of peasants (70 percent of the population) who now saw two-thirds of their rice crops sent to Japan. During the war, Koreans were mobilized in the Japanese army. At the same time, tens of thousands of young Korean women were being abducted from their families to serve as “comfort girls” in pleasure homes reserved for the Japanese military throughout occupied Asia.28 Under the Japanese military law, the Korean must be blind, deaf, dumb, and defenseless. Blind, he was forbidden to read uncensored Japanese newspapers; deaf, he must not listen to the stories of the recent resurrection of Poland; dumb, he must not express his own aspirations; and defenseless, the nation remained powerless in front of the garrison of the soldiers who possessed it. No Korean could leave his territory. His correspondence was censored in the mails. His person was searched on trains and in the streets.29 After the annexation of Korea, further opportunity to get more territories was provided to Japan by World War I. A League of Nations mandate gave Tokyo temporary command of the German colony of Tsingtau. Then Japan controlled many of Germany’s former South Pacific territories including Palau, the northern Marianas Islands of Saipan, Tinion, and Rota, as well as the Truk Lagoon and Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands.30 Chapter Three Training a Tyrant A Prince Was Born Japan’s longest-reigning monarch, Emperor Hirohito, was born Michinomiya Hirohito, on April 29, 1901, in the Aoyama Palace in Tokyo. Hirohito was the first grandson of Emperor Mutsuhito and the first son of Crown Prince Yoshihito (later Emperor Taishō) and Princess Sadako (later Empress Teimei).1 Being the first male child in the family, Hirohito was destined to carry on the tradition of an imperial line whose descent is traced in legend from Amaterasu Omikami, the sun goddess in the pantheon of Shinto.2 According to Japanese tradition, the imperial line began in 660 BC with the legendary Emperor Jimmu, considered as a direct descendent of the sun goddess Amaterasu. Around the third century AD, this “imperial clan” defeated rival chieftains and first asserted dominance over central and western Japan. The imperial institution survived for more than 2,600 years despite some individual emperors being deposed and others murdered from court intrigues. For the next several hundred years, power shifted to various aristocratic and military clans. In 1868, the leaders of what is now called the Meiji Restoration claimed the reestablishment of direct imperial rule.3 Japan became a centralized nation-state with the emperor as the symbol of national unity; loyalty to him was expected to be a sacred duty and a patriotic obligation. Assuming the position of highest priest of the Shinto cult and claiming to be of divine ancestry, the Japanese emperor presented himself with an aura of sacred inviolability.4 Hirohito was born into this 2,600-year lineage. Upon his birth, scholars of the imperial court sought an appropriate name for him. They found a passage written by Confucius in the year 500 BC, about instructions given by a Chinese emperor to his young brother that said, “Make yourself broad-minded and let people live in comfort.” The Chinese character that Japanese pronounce “hiro” was taken from the classic Chinese rendering of the word “broadminded” and was combined with the word “hito” meaning “benevolence,” which is part of the personal name of every Japanese emperor.5 Mutsuhito was still emperor when Hirohito was born in 1901. Following imperial custom, the emperor chose to have his grandson raised not by his parents but by a surrogate family that could teach him the merits of honor and discipline. Therefore, while only a few months old, Hirohito was taken to the residence of ex-navy minister and former vice admiral, Count Kawamura Sumiyoshi.6 When Kawamura died three years later, in November 1904, at age sixty-seven, Hirohito and his younger brother Chichibu-no-miya Yasuhito Shinno (born in 1902) rejoined their parents at the Togū-gosho, the crown prince’s palace in Akasaka. On January 3, 1905, Hirohito’s second brother, Takamatsu-nomiya Nobuhito, was born.7 The Crown Prince’s Education After Kawamura died, Count Maresuke Nogi, an illustrious warrior of the Japan military, a hero of the First Sino-Japanese War and the war with Russia, became one of Hirohito’s tutors.8 By then, Nogi was an old soldier and the headmaster of a school for the sons of the aristocracy. He taught Hirohito the traditional spirit of Bushido and the way of the samurai.9 To Hirohito, Nogi personified the virtues of patriotism and the samurai ethic of personal austerity and devotion to duty, which constituted part of the legacy of Tokugawa to Meiji Japan. In addition, Nogi emphasized physical fitness, ‘the habit of diligence,’ punishment for misbehavior, no leniency in grading, plain living, and military training.10 Thus schooled from an early age to military principles, Shintoism and respect for the Daigensui, this was effectively a military education. A firm believer in Confucianism, Bushidō, and the precepts of Zen, Nogi favored a strict military-style education for Hirohito.11 Under the routine he established; the young prince had a very difficult schedule. He awoke early in the morning for prayers to honor the sun goddess and Emperor Meiji. Then he attended lessons. He was instructed in many subjects considered important for the education of an emperor: math, physics, economics, calligraphy, language (French, Chinese, and Japanese), ethics, martial arts, and natural history. All were part of teiōgaku, the making of an emperor.12 Before the Meiji constitution; monarchs in Japan were educated in subjects such as abstract Confucian philosophical texts and practiced reciting Shinto prayers. 13 Hirohito’s education as the future emperor was well prepared and meticulously oriented. First, he attended the Gakushūin Peer’s School, from 1908 to 1914, and was tutored by the special institute established for the crown prince’s education. An academy called Tōgū-gogakumonsho took over his tutelage from May 4, 1914 until late February 1921.14 From 1914 to 1921, Dr. Hirotarō Hattori became Hirohito’s teacher of natural history and physics. Under Hattori’s guidance, Hirohito read Darwin’s theory of evolution as interpreted by the popular writer Asajirō Oka, whose book Shinkaron kōwa (Lectures on evolution) was published in 1904.15 Hirohito developed at this early age an interest in marine biology.16 Hattori remained his mentor and chief scientific collaborator for more than thirty years.17 He accompanied him on many collecting expeditions and also served as his scientific proxy.18 He wrote to European naturalists and distributing specimen collections on the emperor’s behalf.19 Hirohito’s regular military teachers at the Ogakumonjo School included the president of the peer’s school, Ōsako Naoharu. Ōsako, the older brother of General Naomichi, was a general in the early Imperial Japanese Army, and expert on the Russo-Japanese War. Capt. Satō Tetsutarō, who served as a lieutenant in 1892, as chief navigator aboard the gunboat Akagi, delivered lectures to Hirohito on the American admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan’s theories of naval power, especially those explained in his first two books: The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, and The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812.20 From Mahan’s theories, Hirohito learned “how having a strong presence on the seas is one of the biggest factors that help a country win wars and become an influential world power.” According to Mahan, control of the sea by a large fleet of battleships was key to successful expansionist.21 Satō also lectured Hirohito on Western and Japanese military history (including the Battle of the Sea of Japan, [May 1905] in which the combined Japanese fleet with large British-made battleships under Admiral Togō destroyed the Russian Baltic squadron, effectively ending the Russian-Japanese War). Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu, Hirohito’s uncle, supervised the first stage of his royal nephew’s naval training, which started in July 1916. Hirohito’s army lecturers were generals Ugaki Kazushige and Nara Takeji. Ugaki was sent as a military attaché to Germany from 1902 to 1904 and again from 1906 to 1907. In 1910, he was promoted to colonel, and in 1915 was promoted to major general. In 1917, he participated in planning the Siberian Expedition to stop the spread of the Russian Revolution into that region.22 During Hirohito’s last year at the Tōgū-gogakumonsho Academy, Nara drafted a seven-point guideline for the Crown Prince’s continued education, stating that he should emphasize military affairs and take a deep interest in commanding the country’s army and navy. Nara prepared him for the different role he was to play as an emperor, taught him the nation’s history, which combined elements of nationalism and racism in the myth of his descent from the gods. Under Nara’s direction, Hirohito mastered horsemanship and practiced firing weapons. Sugiura Shigetake, an ultranationalist Confucian educator, lectured Hirohito on the principles that should guide his behavior. In his lectures, Sugiura named several great men in world history whose lives illustrated the value of knowledge. Among them were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for his philosophy of education and independence of thought; George Washington, for his sense of justice and fair play; and Thomas Robert Malthus, for his ideas on population growth and economic change.23 Another fundamental point was that Hirohito had to respect all the rules contained in Meiji’s “Charter Oath of Five Articles” (1868), which included the statement, “Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of Imperial rule” and the “Imperial Rescript on Education” (1890).24 Sugiura regarded the “Charter Oath” as an important document for political reasons. The document stated that deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by public discussion, and that “all classes, high, low, shall unite in vigorously carrying out the administration of affairs of state.”25 Sugiura pointed out that the Meiji constitution had endorsed that vision by providing for an elected lower house of representatives, as well as an appointed upper house of peers. Together, the charter of oath and the constitution signified that the Japanese monarchy had reached a new stage in its historical evolution that of constitutional monarchy.26 Sugiura’s lectures to Hirohito illustrated a crucial link between domestic reform and maritime expansion, while demonstrating a debt to the new ideologies of Japanism and liberalism. His teachings revealed a distinctive strain of colonial thought that envisioned people on the periphery of a unified Japan, from Ōmi merchants to social outcasts, as central agents of expansion. 27 Dynasty Emperor Meiji died on July 30, 1912. His son, Crown Prince Yoshihito, Hirohito’s father, became emperor, and Hirohito was formally named Crown Prince in a special national ceremony that was held on November 2 that year. He was eleven years old. Eight years later, Hirohito attained the ranks of major of the Imperial Japanese Army and lieutenant commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy. A year later, after graduating from the Ogakumonjo School, he began a six-month trip to England and Continental Europe on March 3, 1921. Dressed as a naval officer, he boarded the 16,000ton Japanese battleship Katori off the coast of Hayama. Several nobles accompanied him, including some cousins and his uncle, Gen. Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni. While for many years, Japanese soldiers and sailors had gone abroad to observe and train, Hirohito’s trip was the first time a member of the royal family had left Japan. Two-thirds of the way there, the battleship Katori passed into the Red Sea, then through Egypt’s Suez Canal, and stopped at Cairo where the British Lord Allenby gave a garden party. Prince George of England (later King George VI) met Hirohito at the island of Malta and took him to a performance of Othello by an Italian opera company. On April 29, 1921, near Gibraltar, at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, Hirohito celebrated his twentieth birthday. At Gibraltar, he visited Britain’s naval base and attended some horse races. He arrived in England at Portsmouth’s naval base on May 9th. Again, dressed as an admiral, he inspected the crew of a British battleship. On May 10, 1921, a second member of the British royal family, Prince Edward, known as the Prince of Wales, son of the reigning King George V and Queen Mary, greeted Hirohito. King George invited the Crown Prince and his entourage of eighteen people to stay at Buckingham Palace. In the following days, Prince Edward ushered him through a series of receptions, banquets, and parades. Hirohito visited the British Museum and enjoyed the exhibits. He went to the Bank of England and visited Oxford University. He met Britain’s Prime Minister Lloyd George. On May 21, Hirohito and his entourage went to Scotland. There, he met Sir John George Stewart-Murray, Marquis of Tullibardine and 8th Duke of Atholl. Returning to England, he visited the industrial city of Manchester, touring factories, meeting and shaking hands with shipyard workers. On May 30 Hirohito traveled to France. Arriving in Paris, he visited the Louvre Museum. Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain showed him the battlefields of the war’s Western Front. The following day, France’s President Alexandre Millerand, previously prime minister, gave a reception for Hirohito at the Elysée Palace. The next day, he visited the Palace of Versailles, France’s principal royal residence from 1682 to the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. Thus, from March 3 to September 3, 1921, accompanying relatives and officials toured Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy as the first have gone abroad. This trip in Europe informed Hirohito and his Britain, France, royal member to and educated the future emperor about the Western world beyond Japan, its politics, alliances, technological powers, and empire aims.28 Under the guidance of Baron Chinda Sutemi, one of the most experienced diplomats in Japan, he learned to appreciate the importance of international peace. “War is a terrible thing,” he said, looking over the ruins of the Battle of Verdun in France, where more than two million soldiers had killed each other, on orders of their superiors, only a few years earlier. Hirohito considered his visit to King George V and the British royal family as the most valuable lesson of the trip. As he said many decades later, “George V intimately explained to me the British constitutional monarchy as it ought to be. Ever since, it has been always on my mind, and I have been constantly thinking about how a monarch under a constitutional monarchy should behave.”29 On November 10, 1921, Hirohito at twenty years old was appointed Prince Regent of Japan (Sesshō) to carry on the imperial functions of government because of his father’s debilitating mental illness. It was a difficult task for the young Prince Regent as future emperor. The same year, Britain refused to renew the AngloJapanese Alliance, and a few months later, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that Japanese were ineligible to become U.S. citizens. These decisions angered the Japanese people and encouraged the creation of many secret societies funded by the army, such as the Black Dragon Society, a prominent paramilitary, ultranationalist group in Japan founded by martial artist Uchida Ryochei, which made public threats against anyone who did not follow the precepts of “good Japanese citizenship.” In 1923, Hirohito was promoted from major to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Imperial Japanese Army. In 1924, he married Princess Nagako Kuni. And in 1925, he was promoted from the rank of lieutenant commander to that of captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy. As an officer in both the army and navy, Hirohito received many years of military training during the Siberian Expedition. During these years of training, he was witness to several political and social “events” in Japan. The Imperial Japanese Army was required to exert “brutal force” against its own citizens. For instance, in the wake of Russia’s “Bolshevik Revolution” against Tsar Nicholas, riots erupted throughout Japan in the summer of 1918. The government mobilized approximately sixty-thousand soldiers to put down the riots. They were the most violent strikes in Japanese history, more brutal than the Tokyo Artillery Arsenal and the Kamaishi iron mine in 1919, the Yawata Steel in 1920, the Ashio copper mine in April 1921, and the Kawasaki-Mitsubishi shipyards strikes in Kobe in July 1921. During the Kobe strikes, thirty-five thousand shipyard workers demonstrated for autonomy in the workplace, better wages and working conditions. The Mayor of the city called in the army. More than three hundred workers were wounded and some two hundred and fifty arrested.30 Japan, in the 1920s, was a country of intense ideological and cultural conflicts and collisions. Several social protest movements that surged during World War I gained in force after the end of the war. Labor strikes, union organizing, and an incipient student movement were the most notable. The Japanese protested labor inequities, political injustices, treaty negotiations, and Japanese involvement in World War I. The number of labor strikes rose from 108 in 1914 to 417 strikes in 1918. At the outset of the war there were forty-nine labor organizations; by the end of the war, there were 187, with a total membership approximately a hundred thousand. A movement for women’s suffrage was started soon after.31 The country’s early women’s organization advocated overturning of Article 5 of the Police Security Act that had prevented women from joining political groups and actively participating in politics. The movement also challenged cultural and family traditions as women entered the workforce in greater numbers and sorted their financial independence.32 This spectrum of critical social issues had accumulated and burst upon post World War I Japan. “Society” wanted to become more “liberal,” meaning free, appreciated, enlightened, and advanced. In 1925, the government gave all men over twenty-five the right to vote if they were not indigent. In 1926, the Japanese National Health Insurance Law of 1922 became operative. The Peace Preservation Law was another. It intended to mollify conservatives, particularly those in the appointed, not elected, House of Peers. The law made it illegal to advocate the abolishment of private property, or the creation of a different political structure than the one in place in Japan. It also established military training at universities and high schools. Despite the general instability that accompanied modernization, the efforts that started with Emperor Meiji in 1860s, continued throughout the Taishō era, which has become known as “Taishō democracy.” Slowly, Japan began to want, enjoy, and benefit from a climate of political liberalism after decades of Meiji authoritarianism. In 1874, Katō Hiroyuki, a Japanese scholar, who analyzed the dominance of Western civilization and urged progress for the Japanese nation, wrote the Kokutai Shenron “New Theory of the National Body/Structure,” which criticized traditional Chinese and Japanese theories of government and, adopting Western theories of natural rights, proposed a constitutional monarchy for Japan. Sharing Katō’s vision, the liberal intellectuals envisioned a political system along the lines of a Western-style parliamentary democracy and wanted to remove the imperial house of Japan completely from politics and government. According to them, the transition from a concept of the monarchy as an institution blessed by the gods to the new image of the sovereign as an emblem of the state under a democratic constitution was a success. This political change took place in Japan after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. However, it was not being tolerated by traditional conservatives, who insisted on keeping the vision of kokutai intact: a concept of national identity in which a personal rule of male emperor has the absolute political authority. The kokutai concept required all imperial subjects to support imperial rule. Those who were part of the so-called nationalist/conservative movement would hold to the centuries of Japanese tradition, rejecting any shifts in gender roles or education and military reforms. For the leaders’ traditional conservatives in Japan, the kokutai was immutable, and that those who tried to turn the emperor into a mere symbol were guilty of lèse-majesté.33 Dr. Sakuzō Yoshino, a Japanese Christian politician and educator, was one of the leading political figures who introduced the term “Taishō democracy.” Yoshino graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1904. He had a long career teaching political history and theory in the Faculty of Law at Tokyo Imperial University. There, he began to write a series of articles promoting the development of a liberal and social democratic tradition. He was, currently, one of the most influential advocates of parliamentary government in the country. Without questioning the monarchy system with the emperor as the head of state, he nevertheless called for a “government for the people” (minponshugi), insisting that the people’s demands to be the basic goal of government. He also advocated universal suffrage, civilian control of the army, the transformation of the House of Peers to a popularly elected body, and the gradual establishment of a socialist state. To materialize these goals, he formed his own party, the Reimekai, in 1918. In the preface of his 1916 essay, “On the Meaning of Constitutional Government and the Methods by Which It Can Be Perfected,” Yoshino wrote: “The fundamental prerequisite for perfecting constitutional government, especially in politically backwards nations, is the cultivation of knowledge and virtue among the general population. This is not the task that can be accomplished in a day. Think of the situation in our own country [Japan], we instituted constitutional government before the people were prepared for it. As a result, there have been many failures... Still, it is impossible to reverse course and return to the old absolutism, so there is nothing for us to do but cheerfully take the road of reform and progress. Consequently, it is extremely important not to rely on politicians alone but to use the cooperative efforts of educators, religious leaders, and thinkers in all areas of society.”34 Many Japanese intellectuals at that time were following Yoshino, who wrote that the global trend toward democracy was coming to Japan. The group’s attempt was to make Japan’s national ideology compatible with modern scientific thought, as well as to address the legitimacy of the emperor’s rule and the sort of moral value that he and the imperial system had, or ought to have, in Japanese society.35 The final goal was to reconcile the imperial house with the spirit and logic of Taishō democracy.36 One of the leaders of the rightist organizations, who militate against the concept of liberalism and the spirit and logic of democracy in Japan, was Baron Hiranuma Kiichirō. Son of a lowranking samurai from the Tsuyama Domain of Mimasaka Province, Hiranuma was the vice president of the Privy Council, which advised the emperor. He graduated with a degree in English law from Tokyo Imperial University in 1888. After graduation, he obtained a posting in the Ministry of Justice. In 1911, he was the prosecutor for the High Treason Incident, the 1910 socialistanarchist plot to assassinate Emperor Meiji. In 1921, he became chief of the Supreme Court of Japan. Under the second Yamamoto administration, from September 1923 to January 1924, he became Minister of Justice. As such, he advocated the creation of the Tokkō to combat Communism, socialism, and the spread of what he considered subversive ideologies. In 1924, he became chairman of the House of Peers and was appointed to the Privy Council. In 1926, he was elevated to the title of danshaku (baron) under the kazoku peerage system. The emperor appointed him prime minister serving for less than a year, from January 5 to August 30, 1939. He returned to the government after his resignation as prime minister, accepting the post of home minister in the second Konoe Fumimaro administration from December 21, 1940, to July 18, 1941.37 During this critical time of intense conflict that emerged between liberals and traditional conservatives in the Japanese society, in 1919, at twenty years of age, Hirohito became Japan’s functional leader due to the failing capacities of his father, who was stricken with neurological disorders and mental illness. Emperor Taishō contracted cerebral meningitis at an early age. The ill effects of the disease, including physical weakness and episodes of mental instability, plagued him throughout his reign. Because of his sickness, there was a shift in the structure of political power from the old oligarchic advisors under Meiji to the members of the Diet of Japan. The elected representative officials increasingly gained more and more influence and power. By 1919, Emperor Taishō’s illness prevented him from performing any official duties. On November 25, 1921, Hirohito became Prince Regent.38 The Prince Regent Hirohito took the role of Prince Regent during a period of economic turbulence in Japan. The Japanese economy of the 1920s went rapidly into a significant regression. After the boom of the First World War, starting in 1919, the economy on the island remained blunt, with low economic growth, mild deflation, and an unsettled financial system. In March 1920, stock prices plunged in Japan as investors anticipated a hard landing for the Japanese economy.39 The next month, Masuda Bill Broker Bank in Osaka failed. The bank had been engaged in the intermediation of interbank transactions, and its customers had included both local banks and large city banks.40 Over the next four months, from April to July 1920, operations were suspended at twenty-one banks, either permanently or temporarily. The Bank of Japan extended various types of “special loans” to ease tensions within the financial markets in general and stabilize the markets by relieving specific key industries.41 At the end of February 1922, Ishii Corporation, a lumber company engaged in speculation, went bankrupt. That affected the bank activities in Kochi Prefecture (in the southwestern part of Japan), and Kansai region (Osaka, Kyoto, and their environs). From October through December 1922, bank activities were interrupted across the country, from Kyushu (the westernmost part of Japan) through Kantō (Tokyo and its environs in eastern Japan). In 1922, operations were suspended at fifteen banks in Japan. The BOJ extended “special loans” to twenty banks from December 1922 to April 1923. By enacting the Saving Bank Act of 1921, the government tightened regulations on small-sized saving banks. What became known as “The Great Kantō Earthquake” in September 1923 hurt the financial system in Japan much more, damaging the financial assets of banks, as well as their physical capital such as the bank headquarters buildings and branches. The delays in the repayment of bank loans affected all financial systems on the island. On September 7, 1923, the government promulgated an emergency ordinance, allowing for the postponement of payments in the districts affected. As the situation became worse, the BOJ made special arrangements, including “special loans.” On September 27, the government promulgated the Earthquake Casualty Bills, or ECBs, to indemnify the BOJ for any losses incurred in the re-discounting of bills and certain other papers payable in the stricken areas. During the period that historians have called “Taishō Democracy,” on January 7, 1924, a new cabinet led by Prime Minister Kiyoura Keigo came to power. At this critical time, the chief figure of the government was a general named Kazushige Ugaki, the minister of war. Ugaki graduated in 1891 at the reformed Imperial Japanese Army Academy and in 1900 from the Army Staff College. A protégé of Gen. Kawakami Soroku and Gen. Tanaka Giichi, as a captain, he was sent as military attaché to Germany. Starting in October 1923, Ugaki served as vice minister of the army. In January 1924, he was appointed army minister by Keigo. Nominated minister of war, in 1924, Ugaki’s assigned task was to strengthen the army by creating a modern armored force. First, he strove to protect the superior position of the Imperial Japanese Army in Japanese politics. Second, he called for an army of fifty divisions. With the fiscal retrenchment policy practiced by the Katō Takaaki cabinet in May 1925, Ugaki was forced to eliminate four infantry divisions (the IJA 13th Division, IJA 15th Division, IJA 17th Division, and IJA 18th Division), which resulted in the firing of approximately two thousand commissioned officers. He was also forced to shorten the period that conscripts served with the remaining divisions and push many senior officers into early retirement. Those measures to implement modernization into the army represented a struggle for him. He had to navigate between the old Chōshū clan faction who represented the samurai of the past and the new officer class, which had grown up in the Meiji era, and was largely led by officers who came up through the ranks from the peasantry. Crown Prince Hirohito’s leadership was challenged by many events that happened in Japan at that time. In September 1923, an earthquake struck the Tokyo area, killing about 140,000 people and destroying 63 percent of the city’s houses. The 7.9 magnitude earthquake occurred near the densely populated, modern industrial cities of Tokyo and Yokohama. The epicenter was in Sagami Bay, just southwest of Tokyo Bay. The earthquake devastated Tokyo, the port city of Yokohama, and the surrounding prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, and Shizuoka causing widespread damage throughout the Kantō region. According to the archives, the earthquake’s force was so great that it moved the Great Buddha statue in Kamakura over 60 km (37mi) from the epicenter. That earthquake brought logistics and infrastructural problems, such as cutting off telephone and telegraph lines, rail communication between Tokyo and the rest of Japan was also cut off. For the army and the army-controlled police, the disaster offered an opportunity to settle many old scores. The Koreans who had migrated to Japan since their country had been annexed in 1910, and who had become Japanese nationals, were massacred in the thousands by the police in the confusion of the earthquake and fires. The Kempeitai, the army’s special police, used the occasion to wipe out many leftists. Comparable to those of Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts, the Kempeitai’s soldiers were free in this time of natural disaster to murder hundreds of political opponents of the regime. Three months after the earthquake, on December 27, 1923, Hirohito was on his way to the opening of the forty-eighth session of the Imperial Diet. In downtown Tokyo, at the Toranomon intersection between the Akasaka Palace and the Diet of Japan, a “Communist agitator” named Daisuke Nanba, a young son of a member of the Diet, attempted to assassinate the Prince Regent by shooting into the emperor’s horse-drawn buggy. The shot missed the target but wounded one of Hirohito’s chamberlains.42 Nanba’s attempt to kill Hirohito was motivated by his leftist ideology, and by a strong desire to avenge the death of Kōtoku Shūsui, a Japanese socialist who played a leading role in introducing anarchism to Japan in the early twentieth century. Kōtoku translated into the Japanese society the works of European and Russian anarchists, such as Peter Kropotkin executed on January 24, 1911, aged thirty-nine, for his alleged role in the High Treason Incident of 1910.43 Although Nanba claimed that he was rational, he was proclaimed insane to the public. On November 13, 1924, he was found guilty at an extraordinary session of the Supreme Court of Japan. Sentenced to death, he was executed by hanging two days later. On January 26, 1924, Hirohito and Princess Nagako Kuniyoshi were married at the Imperial Palace. The Shinto wedding ceremony was performed in traditional fashion, which included the purification ritual where the couple exchanges cups of sake. Seven hundred noble guests, all of them Japanese, attended the ceremony, which was followed by 101 salutes from the battery on Miyake Hill, from the ships in the harbor, and from the guns of the forts all over Japan. Then the couple went on their honeymoon, to the palace of Hirohito’s brother, Nobuhito Prince Takamatsu, at Okajima. Chapter Four Make-Believe Government Taking the Throne The four months from the end of 1921 to the beginning of 1922 were consequential for Japan. On November 4, 1921, a right-wing railroad switchman, Nakaoka Kon’ichi, stabbed to death Prime Minister Hara Takashi in Tokyo station.1 Three weeks later on November 25, 1921, Crown Prince Hirohito became Prince Regent, a stand-in position conferred on him by the Diet to allow his rule in place of his ailing father, Emperor Taishō. Three months later, on February 6, 1922, the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan signed a treaty in Washington, D.C., mutually agreeing to limit their construction of warships, specifically battleships, battlecruisers, and aircraft carriers. Japan’s delegation, prominently led by Marshal-Admiral Viscount Katō Tomosaburō, Japan’s chief commissioner plenipotentiary to the Washington Naval Conference, promised that Japan would withdraw its troops from Siberia and its military forces from Kiaochow Bay (on the Southern side of the Shandong peninsula), and from other regions in northern China. The Japanese agreed to share with the United States the right to establish and maintain cable and radio stations and residences on the island of Yap in the Caroline Islands. In return, the United States consented to Japan’s mandate of the Pacific Islands north of the equator that had been granted to Japan at Paris. The British and Americans agreed to build no naval bases west of Hawaii or north of Singapore. According to the agreement, Japan agreed it would have only three big warships for every five for Britain and the United States. It was agreed that no nation would keep aircraft carriers larger than 27,000 tons or that had guns with bores larger eight (8) inches. 2 In Japan, Takahashi Korekiyo, Uchida Kōsai’s successor as prime minister, was very concerned about the influence of the United States in the Pacific and East Asia. As a tactician, he arranged Japan’s participation in the Washington Conference to strengthen the ties with the United States.3 Takahashi believed that in order to flourish economically, Japan had to adopt policies that appeased the Americans.4 But his political move was not well received by right-wing groups and some Japanese military leaders who railed against the Washington treaties.5 They denounced that the United States had drafted the Washington treaties to restrain Japan in China and roll back the advances it had made there during World War I.6 Japan’s Chief of the Naval Board, Commander Kato Kanji, was so upset that he declared a war between the United States and Japan had begun. On September 1, 1923, a powerful earthquake and tsunami struck Yokohama and Tokyo. Eight months later, on May 10, 1924, a general election was held. No party won a majority of seats, resulting in a coalition of the two political parties: the Kenseikai and the Rikken Seiyūkai Club that formed the first coalition government in Japan led by Katō Takaaki. On December 27, 1924, a dynamite explosion killed ninety-four people in Temiya Railroad Station, Otaru, Hokkaido. Despite the continuing climate of tension and violence stemming from dissatisfaction from the Washington Naval Treaty, Prime Minister Katō was able to enact significant legislation. The General Election Law of 1925 extended the vote to all male citizens over the age of 25. Up to that time, only were permitted to vote those who were taxpayers. His government also produced the Peace Preservation Law that suppressed leftist political organizations and concluded the Russian Japanese Basic Convention. He also initiated universal military service and strove to reduce government spending.7 On December 25, 1926, Emperor Taishō died. On November 10, 1928, at twenty-five years old, Hirohito came to the throne. He became officially the 124th emperor of Japan. This marked Japan’s entry into the Shōwa era, meaning “radiant or enlightened peace.” According to the 2,600-year-old tradition, the emperor was regarded as a monarch of divine essence, for whom Article 3 of the constitution of February 11, 1889, enshrined the “sacred and inviolable” character of his person.8 The structure of the Meiji constitution and the de facto divine status inherited by birth placed Hirohito at the top of the state. He was the nation’s highest spiritual authority and commander-in-chief of the armed forces.9All branches of government, including the Diet and the cabinet, had to refer to him before making any important decision. One year after he took the throne, a nationwide financial panic was expanded to the country. The debates in the Diet revealed financial difficulties between the Bank of Taiwan and Suzuki & Co. Ltd. This huge trading house based in Kobe was founded in 1874 by Iwajiro Suzuki as a trading house for importing Western sugar. The firm became one of the eight major trading companies in Kobe, specializing in Western sugar and oil. Later, the company added beer, alcohol, flour milling and metal businesses in the Dairi region of Kita-kyushu. After the Great Kantō Earthquake of September 1, 1923, the company was forced to inflate loans from its main bank, the Bank of Taiwan. As the economic climate continued to worsen due to the post-war recession, it eventually succumbed to bankruptcy during the Shōwa Financial Crisis of 1927. The crisis necessitated reforms in the financial sector through large-scale injections of public funds on the market. In January 1927 the Wakatsuki cabinet of the ruling Kensei-kai Party submitted a legislation to the Diet, requiring adjustments of the ECBs. This primary step was to facilitate the final disposition of the bad debts incurred during the Great Kantō Earthquake. The legislation would allow the government to issue bonds, which would be exchanged with the ECBs. On March 14, 1927, Finance Minister, Kataoka Naoharu, declared that the Tokyo Watanabe Bank had failed. This statement set off a financial panic in the regions, particularly in Tokyo and Osaka. On March 23, the Diet approved the legislation, temporarily calming the depositors’ panic.10 This was only for a short period, however, during the first week of April, the cabinet led by Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō drafted an emergency ordinance authorizing the BOJ to send the Bank of Taiwan relief funds, and indemnifying the BOJ for any losses incurred by this action up to a ceiling of ¥200 million. The Privy Council, instead of approving the emergency ordinance, politicized the cabinet’s plan and rejected it on April 17. The Wakatsuki cabinet resigned on April 20, 1927, and financial panic spread nationwide. On the same day, Giichi Tanaka, of the opposition Seiyu-kai Party, took office. Takahashi Korekiyo became finance minister for the fourth time, and the government proclaimed an emergency ordinance imposing a three-week moratorium, effective from April 22 to May 12. The following day, the Diet during an extraordinary session deliberated on measures to dispose of the bad loans and stabilize the financial system. On May 30, 1927, under the governor of the Bank of Japan, Junnosuke Inoue, the new Banking Act was promulgated. Despite all those measures, the Japanese economy continued during the interwar period (1927–1931) to be in chronic crisis. Japan experienced the deepest economic downturn in modern history. From 1929 to 1931, WPI fell about 30 percent, agricultural prices fell 40 percent, and textile prices fell nearly 50 percent. After the Shōwa Financial Crisis of 1927, Japan’s economy was facing the challenge of the Great Depression of the 1930s. This worldwide economic collapse had been intensified in the country by the return to the gold standard at the old parity in January 1930.11 Facing Economic Crisis The stock market crash of October 29, 1929, in the United States, started a worldwide economic crisis called “The Great Depression.” This economic crisis had devastating effects in all countries in the world. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide (GDP) fell by an estimated 15 percent. Cities were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by about 60 percent. Personal income, tax revenue, profits, and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50 percent. In some developed countries, unemployment rose as high as 33 percent. Japan experienced the deepest economic downturn in modern history. Some economic measures taken by the government of Osachi Hamaguchi had major consequences on the economy. The Minsei Party government led by Prime Minister Hamaguchi, Finance Minister Inoue, and Foreign Minister Shidehara deliberately adopted a deflationary policy in order to eliminate weak banks and firms and prepare the nation for the return to the prewar gold parity (fixed exchange rate with real appreciation). 12 The policy of deflation and return to gold was strongly advocated and implemented by Finance Minister Inoue. Inoue was deeply committed to the policy of deflation and returning to gold. This policy caused severe depression. People became greatly frustrated with the cabinet. Finally, the government (second Wakatsuki cabinet) was removed and succeeded by a Seiyukai government led by Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi who took charge on December 13, 1931.13 Japan, contrary to countries in Asia like China, Russia, Malaya, Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, and India, because it has few natural resources, relied almost entirely on foreign trade. When the Great Depression hit the world in the early 1930s, foreign countries no longer imported Japanese luxuries such as silk. The value of Japanese exports dropped by 50 percent between 1929 and 1931.14 As soon as the new government was sworn in, Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo completely reversed Inoue’s policies. On the very first day, Takahashi ended the gold standard and the fixed exchange rate and floated the yen that had immediately been depreciated. The new government took the two major measures to fight the crisis: fiscal expansion financed by government bonds issues (called “Spending Policy,”) monetary expansion, and low interest rates. Despite fiscal pressure, the army and navy pressured for more military spending. Takahashi resisted. For his position, he was assassinated by a member of Ketsumeidan in the League of Blood Incident, on February 26, 1936. The assassination of Takahashi greatly opened the door to the return of these policies and systems that were deliberately adopted by Japan in the late 1930s through the early 1940s. Tanaka Chigaku, a Japanese Buddhist scholar and preacher of Nichiren Buddhism, orator, writer, and ultranationalist propagandist in the Meiji, the Taishō, and early Shōwa periods, was one of the spiritual leaders of the Kokuchūkai, National Pillar Society, based in Miho. Tanaka was deeply hostile to Taishō democracy. He was a fervent partisan to the expansion of the Japanese Empire. From his nationalist and imperialist convictions, he believed that Japan’s 1931 takeover of Manchuria was divinely ordained and part of a divine plan to spread the “true” Nichiren Buddhism throughout Asia.15 Tanaka even went as far as to predict that “Nichirenization” would spread around the world. He subordinated everything to the kokutai, and asserted that Japan, with its “unbroken” line of emperors, had a unique destiny “to guide and induce every country in the world to become a state ruled by the Way of the Prince.” 16 Only the emperor of Nippon was “unchangeable for good with his origin in Heaven…a God or morality itself,” he said. All the emperors had “inherited from the first Emperor Jimmu, his virtues and brilliant work,” and “the extraordinary great Emperor Meiji [had] appeared to become the axis of the world.” This was finding fulfilment in Manchuria, and, with Japan’s help, it would spread to China and the whole world.17 In Bukkyō fūfu ron, a work dedicated to the imperial family, Tanaka wrote that, while previous sages had spoken of enbudai no Nippon (Japan of the inhabited earth), Nichiren had used the term Nippon no enbudai, to include the whole inhabited earth in Japan. He claimed that, as a result, the mausoleums of Japan’s imperial deities, Amaterasu Ōmikami and Hachiman, were to become universal objects of worship. Ishiwara wrote that he had believed in Nichiren because he had a completely satisfying view of the kokutai, and so had to be the one to unify world thought and faith. 18 This objective was to be realized by shakubuku, which means to conquer evil aggressively.19 He extended the meaning of shakubuku to justify military aggression against China in 1931: “ When it is said that the Imperial Japanese Army is an army of humanity and justice, for maintaining justice and building peace, it means that it is a force for compassion. The shakubuku of Nichirenism must be like this.”20 Tanaka used his contacts inside the imperial court to make the Nichiren faith as the state religion of Japan, and to introduce the Nichiren philosophy into the army. Ishiwara Kanji was one, who worked hardly to implement Tanaka’s vision among the Japanese troops. After graduating from the War College, through his wife’s influence in 1919, Ishiwara joined the Kokuchū-kai (Pillar of the Nation Society) founded by Tanaka. After studying military science in Germany in 1923–1924, Ishiwara joined the staff of the military academy in Tokyo, before being sent to Manchuria in 1928. He later became the chief plotter of the 1931 Manchurian Incident. “He saw Japan’s mission as that of overthrowing the military clique, freeing Asia from domination by the United States and Europe and forming a single economy and combined defense system for Japan, Manchuria and China. He helped to establish the puppet state of Manchukuo and believed that, with the cooperation of China, a model state would develop. However, in 1949, after Japan had been defeated by the Allied powers, Ishiwara wrote to General MacArthur, recognizing he had been wrong in supposing that the “final” war would be fought between East Asia on the one hand and Western countries on the other. But he still hoped for “a fundamental world reformation” based on new family life, new villages, and government according to Rissho ankoku.21 As Tanaka, Ishiwara believed that world unity centered on the Japanese emperor and would be achieved when the Lotus Sūtra was recognized by the court as the substance of the Japanese polity.22 The same perception was shared by Shigeru Honjō, the commander of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, who was also a Nichiren believer, and also by Ikki Kita who was in contact with many people on the extreme right of Japanese politics. Different governments such as Saitō Makoto, Keisuke Okada, Kōki Hirota, and Senjūrō Hayashi, saw Kita’s ideas as disruptive and dangerous. Therefore, after imposing the kokutai, which literally means “national body,” as a unique sense of significance regarding their national community, which is variously expressed as national character, national essence, national substance, state structure, national polity; the next challenge for the ultranationalist groups was to fight the expansion of Communism in the region, particularly in China. Fighting Communism By the fall of 1916, Russia had been at war for more than two years with the Central powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (modern-day Turkey). The Russian Empire’s involvement in World War I began in 1914 when Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum that threatened Serbian sovereignty in the aftermath of the assassination of Archduke Frantz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne. Russia, as an ally of Serbia, mobilized its armies. France and Great Britain as Russia’s allies in the Triple Entente also went to war with the Central powers. Russia suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Tannenberg in the first weeks of the war, resulting in 78,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded and 92,000 captured by the Germans. After the defeat, Tsar Nicholas II assumed direct control of the army as commander in chief. Over three years, nearly 2 million Russian soldiers were killed in battle and another nearly 5 million were wounded. The Russian people blamed the Tsar for entering the war and for getting so many citizens killed. In February 1917, the Bolsheviks Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin and a group of revolutionaries had started with the peasants and working-class people of Russia revolting against the government. The revolution began when several workers decided to strike. Tsar Nicholas II ordered the army to suppress the protesters. However, many of the soldiers refused to fire on the Russian people, and the army began to mutiny against the Tsar. After a few days of riots, the entire army turned against the Tsar, who was forced to exile. A new government that was run by two political parties: the Petrograd Soviet (representing the workers and soldiers), and the Provisional Government (the traditional government without the Tsar), took over. Over the next several months, the two sides ruled Russia. In October 1917, Lenin who led the main factions of the Petrograd Soviet and the Bolsheviks took full control of the government issued from the Bolshevik Revolution. Russia became the first Communist country in the world.23 In Japan, the beginning of the Shōwa era was the years of the “Red Scare.” Japanese officials feared more than anything the expansion of Communism in Asia, particularly in China, where Vladimir Lenin intended to spread the Bolsheviks revolution with Mao Zedong as an ally. The officials in Japan believed that invading China was the only solution to set limits to the expansion of Communism in the region. Also, responses to the Russian Revolution were therefore for Japan to occupy the entire countries in the Pacific and East Asia in order to eliminate the harm of Communism.24 Chapter Five A Political Monarch Emerges At the start of his reign on December 25, 1926, Hirohito avoided implicating himself in the defense of the country. He relegated this role to the generals and admirals in the army and navy. With his entourage, he preferred to concentrate on domestic affairs. As he assumed control of the empire, Japan was at the stage of a crisis with a military-industrial complex that was seizing more and more executive power.1 The Diet had limited power and could not make important decisions. Generals and admirals were more powerful than the rest of the Diet. They had direct access to the emperor, and could veto any policies that were unfavorable to them, for example opposing cuts to the military budget by the Diet, and more.2 The officers in the army and navy very often intervened to impose their choice when it came to governmental cabinet picks. As time passed, although Hirohito maintained a very low interest in military affairs, generals and admirals wanted him to participate more and more in questions related to the plan to strengthen Japan’s military capability. Japan Empire at that time faced major threats from the United States, Britain, France, and Russia. Those countries tried to prevent it from expanding its territories. Starting in 1927, naval officers presented strategies on how best to meet the navy’s national defense requirements. Adm. Kanji Katō, the leading opponent of the Washington Naval Treaty, advised Hirohito on the benefit to enlarge the geographic sphere of national defense.3 Kanji wanted a big navy and believed in the doctrine of winning a war by fighting a decisive naval battle. Those ideas advanced by one of the leading figures of the Imperial Japanese Navy were well received by those in Japan who publicized the Japanese right to safeguard Asia from the West. Hirohito had responded by supporting the military. As Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, he believed, maintaining a good standing with his recalcitrant army was more important to him at that moment than international goodwill. 4 Japanese supporters of continental expansion got more and more power and were able to execute their political agenda. On March 24, 1927, soldiers of China’s Nationalist Revolutionary Army led by Chiang Kai-shek pillaged the Japanese consulate in Nanking and assaulted the consul. On that day of violence, six foreigners were killed, and several others were wounded. Demonstrations and boycotts against foreigners occurred throughout China. Two schools of thought dominated. On the one hand the nationalist movement dominated by the Kuomintang or Nationalist Party focused its demands for treaty revision and diplomatic equality for China. Being called moderates, the nationalist people believed the Kuomintang represented China’s greater hope for unity and strength.5 On the other hand the conservatives favored the continuance of the treaty system and accused the Nationalists as Bolsheviks who wished to turn China “red.”6 For the Japanese supporters of continental expansion, the frictions in China offered a unique occasion to launch with full speed their policy of military and economic expansion on the Asian continent. Also, with the strong advice of his chief aide-de-camp Baron Takeji Nara, Hirohito gave his consent to the army’s dispatch of troops to China’s Shandong Province in order to protect Japanese residents. On April 20, 1927, Hirohito appointed Gen. Tanaka Giichi as prime minister. Tanaka replaced Wakatsuki Reijirō who was forced to resign during the Shōwa Financial Crisis.7 Upon taking his post, the new prime minister began actively campaigning for Japan to develop an aggressive policy toward China. On May 8, 1927, Hirohito approved another deployment of troops to China. Five thousand troops of the 6th Division, under Lt. Gen. Hikosuke Fukuda, were deployed to the port of Tsingtao, Shandong, a Japanese protectorate. On May 28, he approved the dispatch of reinforcements to Tsinan where 17,000 Japanese troops were deployed to protect some 2,000 Japanese civilians. A few weeks later, he sanctioned a fourth deployment of troops to Shandong Province. This garrison was led by Col. Kōmoto Daisaku whose staff officers, on June 4, 1928, had assassinated the Chinese leader Zhang Zuolin.8 The plan to kill Zhang was planned several months in advance by Japanese officers of the Kwantung Army staff who remained dissatisfied with the move of forming a puppet government in Manchuria. In 1926, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), began a series of campaigns designed to win control of the Yangtze Valley and the north. By the spring of 1927, Chiang established his capital in Nanking and during the following year, extended his authority toward Peking. As a result, he came into conflict with Zhang, whom Japan had been supporting in Manchuria since 1921. The Tanaka cabinet pressured the Chinese leader to withdraw from northern China into Manchuria, where he could be protected by the Japanese forces. Zhang, after consulting his son Zhang Xueliang, the effective ruler of Northeast China, reluctantly agreed. Several officials in Japan, and several generals in the army, believed that Zhang Zuolin’s assassination would be the most expeditious way of installing a new leader in Manchuria more accountable to Japanese demands. They asked Col. Kōmoto Daisaku, senior staff officer of the Kwantung Army to carry out the assassination. Capt. Kaneo Tōmiya, Kōmoto’s subordinate, oversaw the execution’s plan. One of the officers, Sapper First Lt. Sadatoshi Fujii, planted the bomb on the bridge where Zhang’s train passed. On June 4, 1928, at 5:23 a.m. the bomb exploded. Several officials, including Wu Junsheng, the governor of the Heilongjiang Province, died immediately. Zhang died from his injuries within a few hours at the Shanghai Huadong Hospital. The following day, the Kwantung Army spokesmen falsely accused elements of China’s Southern Army of executing the attack. Two months later, Prime Minister Tanaka learned that Japanese officers had committed the crime and were blaming it on Chinese soldiers. Tanaka ordered that hearings be held in connection with the assassination. A special commission was designated. The prime minister wanted to punish the real assassins and reestablish discipline in the army. Many figures in the cabinet led by Army Minister Yoshinori Shirakawa and Railway Minister Gōtarō Ogawa strongly opposed Tanaka’s decision. This group was rejoined by Adm. Kantarō Suzuki and other influential Japanese officers who wanted to prevent the army’s reputation from being defamed. With the entire army united against him and several members of his own cabinet such as Colonel Kōmoto, and Kwantung Army commander Chōtarō Muraoka, Tanaka went to see the emperor for his support.9 Instead of supporting his prime minister, who told him on December 24, 1928, that he intended to court-martial the assassins, Hirohito pressed Tanaka to give his resignation. At that point, Hirohito accepted the army’s intention to lie to the public about the incident instead of punishing the officers’ involved.10 By firing Tanaka, Hirohito signaled to the political community that a cabinet led by the head of the Seiyūkai Party was not qualified to govern under his rule. On July 2, 1929, he nominated Osachi Hamaguchi, nicknamed the “Lion Prime Minister” (Raion Saishō), a member of the Rikken Minseitō party, as the new prime minister of Japan. 11 The Rise of Nationalist Ideology The introduction of universal military conscription introduced by Yamagata Aritomo in 1873, along with the proclamation of the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors in 1882, signaled and institutionalized the indoctrination of military-patriotic values across Japanese society. These values included honor, courage, mastery of martial arts, and loyalty to a master above all, and were drawn from the samurai code, the Bushidō. The aspect of unquestioning loyalty to the emperor became the basis of the Japanese state (kokutai), i.e. the relationship between the ruler and the ruled. The appearance of political parties in the late Meiji period was coupled with the rise of secret and semi-secret patriotic societies such as the Gen’yōsha (1881) and Kokuryukai (1901), which coupled political activities with paramilitary activities and military intelligence, and supported expansionism overseas as a solution to Japan’s internal problems and failures.12 Nevertheless, this agenda and obligatory relationship between ruler and ruled developed throughout the Taishō and Shōwa periods provided political and ideological cover for Japan’s military in the decades leading up to World War II. During the Taishō period (July 30, 1912 – December 25, 1926), Japan had a short period of democratic government, the so-called “Taishō democracy.” Japanese for a short period of time enjoyed a climate of political liberalism after decades of Meiji authoritarianism. After it annexed Korea in 1910, Japan sought acceptance internationally. It participated in the League of Nations in 1920 and it signed the Washington Naval Treaty. These were diplomatic efforts to advertise its concurrence with “peace” as a world goal. However, with the beginning of the Shōwa era, particularly beginning in 1931, the damage from the Great Depression and the imposition of trade barriers by the West, fanned the sparks of Japanese superpatriotism, a set of attitudes and behaviors that threatened to kill any who objected to or defied the military and its expansionist mission. 13 During the Meiji era (1868–1912), Japan’s soldiers and sailors were forbidden by law to take part in any political activity. Starting in 1927, with the Showā era, ultra-nationalism was affecting every aspect of life in Japan. The conventional wisdom was that empire expansion through military conquest would solve Japan’s internal economic problems. It was argued by several experts that the rapid growth of Japan’s population, which stood at close to 65 million in 1930, necessitated large food imports. To pay for such imports, Japan had to export things of equal value. Western tariffs limited exports. Thus, it was decided by Japanese officials that Japan had no recourse than to invade its neighbors and take what it wanted by force. This political behavior led to the resurgence of so-called “jingoistic” patriotism, a belief that the military could solve all threats both domestic and foreign. Patriotic education also played a key role in strengthening the sense of a hakko ichiu, a divine mission to unify Asia under Japanese rules. Some figures who resisted the “military solution” such as Gen. Jōtarō Watanabe, one of the victims of the February 26 incident, Gen. Tetsuzan Nagata, famous as the victim of the Aizawa Incident of 1935, and ex-foreign minister Kijūrō Shidehara, a member of the kazoku, the leading proponent of pacifism in Japan before and after World War II, were revoked from their official positions or placed in an active role in the government. Several fractions in Japan criticized “Kijūrō Diplomacy,” which to them seemed too soft on China. In 1925, Prime Minister Katō Takaaki had cut off the army by four divisions. Many Japanese officers objected to the restraint shown by Japan toward the Chinese Nationalists’ northern expedition of 1926–1927 and wanted Japan to take a harder line in China. The primary goal was to defend the Japanese interests in Manchuria, more precisely in eastern part of Inner Mongolia. On January 28, 1926, during the period that historians called “Taishō Democracy,” Prime Minister Katō Takaaki died. He was replaced by Wakatsuki Reijirō. After fifteen months, Wakatsuki was forced to resign during the Shōwa financial crisis. On April 20, 1927, Tanaka Giichi became Prime Minister of Japan. Tanaka was the third son of a low-ranking samurai family in the service of Chōshū Domain in Hagi, Nagato Province (modern day Yamaguchi Prefecture). At the age of thirteen, he participated in the Hagi Rebellion. He joined the Imperial Japanese Army at the age of twenty. In 1892, he graduated from the 8th class of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and the 8th class of the Army War College. He served as a junior officer during the First SinoJapanese War. At the end of the war, he was sent as a military attaché to Moscow and Petrograd. In 1906, he helped draft a defense plan that was adopted by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff as basic policy until World War I. Tanaka’s politics as prime minister differed both tactically and strategically to Wakatsuki, the former prime minister, who had been viewed as a moderate. On the domestic front, Tanaka attempted to suppress leftists, Communists, and suspected Communist sympathizers through widespread arrests. The March 15 incident of 1928 and the April 15 incident of 1929 are two good examples. On foreign policy, Wakatsuki preferred to evacuate Japanese residents abroad where conflicts occurred with local nationals, while Tanaka preferred using military forces. Wakatsuki theoretically respected China’s sovereignty, while Tanaka openly pursued a “separation of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia policy” (Man-Mō bunri seisaku) to create a sense of difference between those areas and the rest of China.14 At two separate occasions in 1927 and 1928, Tanaka sent troops to intervene military in Shandong Province in order to block Chiang Kai-shek’s Northern Expedition to unify China. In deficit of support from the Diet and the emperor, Tanaka and his cabinet resigned on July 2, 1929. He was succeeded by Osachi Hamaguchi. Hamaguchi joined the Rikken Dōshikai political party led by Katō Takaaki in 1915. The Party became the Kenseikai party in 1916. After being elected to the lower house in the Japanese Diet in 1915 from the Kōchi Second District, Hamaguchi served as Finance Minister under the first Katō administration. He held the same position under the first Wakatsuki administration. As Finance Minister, he pursued fiscal retrenchment and proposed reducing government spending by 17 percent. In 1927, he became the chairman of the new Rikken Minseitō political party formed by the merger of the Kenseikai and the Seiyūhontō. As Prime Minister, Hamaguchi formed a cabinet based largely on Minseitō party members who favored domestic economic reforms over overseas military adventurism.15 Taking advantage of a strong support from the emperor and his entourage, including the genrō Saionji Kinmochi, Hamaguchi restored the policy of moderation. His government was able to implement several fiscal austerity measures. His primary concern was the Japanese economy, which had been in a long-term recession since 1919, and had been greatly weakened by the devastation caused by the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. The situation became worse with the 1929 Great Depression. Hamaguchi’s cabinet promoted retrenchment, deflation, the rationalization of industry, and fiscal restraint. Backed up by the Minseito party that scored an overwhelming victory in the House of Representatives election in February 1930, winning 273 seats, and gaining the support of some close allies in the Imperial Palace, such as the genrō Saionji Kinmochi, the cabinet implemented fiscal austerity measures, which included ratification of the London Naval Treaty of 1930. This decision helped the government to impose a restriction on military spending. The Treaty negotiations focused on the extent of naval disarmament with restrictions to be placed on the aggregate tonnage of auxiliary ships (cruisers, destroyers, submarines, etc.). It set limits for the first time on the number of cruisers and other auxiliary ships that each nation could build. At the same time, it restricted the number of capital ships of each signatory. It set maximum tonnage for cruisers at 339,000 tons for Great Britain, 323,500 tons for the United States, and 208,850 tons for Japan. The maximum numbers of heavy cruisers were set at 18 for the United States, 15 for Great Britain, and 12 for Japan. It extended the provision of the 1922 treaty that prohibited new capital ships building for five years. Hamaguchi approved the London Naval Treaty that was signed on April 22, 1930, by Japan, and four other countries: United States, United Kingdom, France, and Italy. 16 On October 2, 1930, the treaty was ratified by the Japanese Diet. A few days after the ratification, Hamaguchi was publicly attacked by the Seiyūkai leaders.17 The group —Katō, Suetsugu, and Tōgō— accused him of having signed the treaty without the support of the navy general’s staff, thereby infringing on the emperor’s “right of supreme command.” The group also accused the advisers around the throne —Makino, Suzuki, and Kawai— of relying on arms limitation treaties to gain the “cooperation” of Britain and the United States on the dossier of China. Katō and consorts believed that Grand Chamberlain Suzuki had blocked the formal report of the navy general’s staff to the emperor, and that the government was pursuing a dangerous defense policy.18 One month after the ratification of the treaty, commanders and staff of the army began to criticize Hamaguchi. Those military leaders retained considerable power. They were supported by several organizations pushing to the theme of internal purity and expansion. These fought against excessive Western influence. Another group that opposed civil government control in Japan in the early 1930s was formed by junior military officers. They were largely from rural backgrounds. Born and raised into poverty, ignorant of political economy, distrustful of their senior leaders, such officers were already vulnerable to rightist theorists’ ideas. Also, by allying with other extremist groups, the junior military officers alternately terrorized and intimidated their presumed opponents. Several business leaders were killed. Kita Ikki, a former socialist and one-time member of the Black Dragon Society, declared that the Meiji constitution should be suspended in favor of a revolutionary regime advised by “national patriots” and led by a military government, which should nationalize large properties, limit wealth, end party government and the peerage, and prepare to take the leadership of a revolutionary Asia. Kita encouraged several young officers to take part in the violence of the 1930s with the hope of achieving these goals. The military declared that the treaty’s ratification “infringes on the Emperor’s Supreme Command.”19 The Privy Council president, at the time of the naval treaty deliberations, Yūzaburō Kuratomi, later wrote in his memoirs a detailed account of the exchange between Navy Minister Takarabe Takeshi and the privy councilors over the usurpation of the prerogative of supreme command. The minister of foreign affairs, Kijūrō Shidehara, using the service of Home Minister Makino Nobuaki, sent a letter with an attachment describing the negotiations process at that time. Chief of General Staff Katō (Hiroharu) Kanji, who had accepted the compromise proposal at one point, sent a report to the emperor requesting him to block the treaty. Hamaguchi’s failure on economic policies played into the hands of the extremist activists. Those groups were already enraged by the government’s conciliatory foreign policies and also by Japan’s increasing unemployment.20 Several members of the Rikken Seiyūkai opposition party joined within the Imperial Japanese Navy to accuse Hamaguchi of infringing of the emperor’s “right of supreme command” as guaranteed under the Meiji constitution. On November 14, 1930, Tomeo Sagoya, a twenty-one-year-old, member of the rightist group Aikokusha (Patriots Association), shot Hamaguchi at Tokyo Station.21 Sagoya was a member of an extremist organization supported by the Seiyūkai politicians under the leadership of Heikichi Ogawa. So, the cabinet participated in the fifty-ninth session with Foreign Minister Baron Kijūrō Shidehara who had been chosen as acting prime minister to replace Hamaguchi in convalescence. The Seiyūkai condemned the cabinet on the grounds that Prime Minister Hamaguchi was absent from Diet proceedings and that Kijūrō was not in fact a party member. 22 Devastated by the Seiyūkai politician plans that contributed to an atmosphere of extremism, Hamaguchi resigned at his post of prime minister. He was replaced by Kijūrō Shidehara. Starting in April 1931, after Hamaguchi’s departure, the Shōwa government viewed Japan as threatened by Western imperialism. The prime motivation was to strengthen Japan’s economic and industrial foundations, so that a strong military capacity could be built to defend the nation against outside powers. It was the start of the collapse of Japan’s parliamentary system and its replacement by an expansionist military agenda through the growing power of the army in a country whose economy was subsumed by the Great Depression. The collapse of the Menseito government in December 1931 brought to power right-wing politicians who believed in a more interventionist approach to solve Japan’s economic problems. The maintenance of the yen’s gold parity caused capital outflows that were only solved by the Japanese Diet’s passing of the Capital Flight Prevention Act of 1932.23 This measure was followed by the Gold Purchase Act of 1934, which gave the Ministry of Finance complete power over species holding. Driving Through Disasters In October 1929, the stock market crash in the United States. The 1930s financial crisis caused a significant decline in Japanese production. Most of the industrial growth during the boom following World War I was used to expand the nation’s military power. The social consequences of the economic recession were catastrophic for Japan. Between 1929 and 1930, almost half of small businesses were forced to close. Many Japanese emigrated to Brazil or Manchuria. Children from poor agricultural villages were sold as slaves. In the six prefectures of northeastern Japan, the number of women sold rose from 12,180 in 1932 to 58,173 in 1934. In the pre-war years, an estimated 200,000 women a year were sold as maids and nursemaids. This troubling situation had affected the recruitment in the army as well. By the end of 1931, there were more and more military nationalists entering the Japanese army. The ideology Nihon gunkou shugi reasoned inside each division. The ideology Nihon gunkou shugi refers that militarism should dominate the political and social life of the nation, and that the strength of the military is equal to the strength of a nation. It was the time when the Wanpaoshan Incident happened. The Wanpaoshan Incident occurred on July 1, 1931, two months before the Mukden Incident.24 A group of ethnic Koreans, subjects of the Japanese empire, dug a ditch several miles long, extending from the Itung River across a tract of land not included in their lease and occupied by local Chinese farmers. The Chinese protested to the Wanpaoshan authorities, who dispatched police and ordered the Koreans to cease construction and leave the area. The Koreans called on the Japanese authorities. The imperial Japanese consul based at Changchun responded by sending Japanese consular police to protect the Koreans. The Japanese police fired on the Chinese and dispersed them. Several antiChinese riots erupted throughout Korea, starting at Incheon on July 3, and spreading rapidly to other cities, with the worst one occurring in Pyongyang on July 5. The Chinese government alleged that 146 people were killed, 546 wounded, and considerable properties were destroyed. In China, the Chinese attacked Japanese residents and stormed a Japanese hospital. It has been reported that in Jilin, one of the three provinces of northeast China, Chinese rioters massacred 10,000 Koreans in retaliation and burned or looted Korean houses all over the province, as well as in Changchun, the capital of the province. Starting by Manchuria, the Japanese then decided to invade China. Chapter Six Into Manchuria Since the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), Manchuria has been the scene of perpetual conflict. In 1897, Russia occupied the Liaodong Peninsula, built the Port Arthur fortress in Mukden, and there based the Russian Pacific Fleet. By 1898, the Russians consolidated their position in the region. They constructed the South Manchurian Railroad from Harbin through Port Arthur. During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the Russians sent troops in Manchuria and threatened to attack the Japanese occupying Korea. The Japanese navy then decided to attack the Russian Pacific Fleet at Port Arthur. Early in 1904, Russia and Japan fought the Russo-Japanese War. The major theaters of operations were the Liaodong Peninsula, Mukden in Southern Manchuria, and the seas around Korea, particularly the Yellow Sea. The Battle of Mukden was a major defeat for Russia. Following the Battle of Tsushima, a combined Japanese army and navy occupied Sakhalin Island, forcing the Russians to sue for peace. Japan’s victory was concluded by the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905.1 In it, Japan gained two important positions: the Guangdong (Kwantung) Leased Territory, which consisted of a 218-square-mile (560 km2) peninsula in the southernmost part of Manchuria and southern Sakhalin. The line of the Chinese Eastern Railway ran through northern Manchuria and ended on either side of the tracks. The other side of the railway was Russian territory. Despite its defeat during the Russo-Japanese War, Russia kept a part of southern Manchuria that included the South Manchuria Railway. However, this railway was seen by the Japanese as essential to their future expansion in China. An alliance between Japan and Great Britain allowed the Japanese to station troops in the region to guard their interests.2 They began to develop the area and sent troops from the Kwantung Army to protect their assets. This army maintained 7,000 to 14,000 men in Manchuria and had been tolerated by the Chinese Fengtian Army under the command of Zhang Zuolin.3 During the long civil war that followed the Chinese Revolution of 1911 to 1912, Manchuria was controlled by Zhang, an influential Chinese warlord during the warlord era in China. Backed by Japan, Zhang successfully influenced politics in China during the early 1920s. He invaded China proper in October 1924, during the second Zhili-Fengtian War, and by August 1925, he gained control of three large provinces near the Great Wall (Shandong, Jiangsu, and Anhui). His forces even marched as far south of the city of Shanghai. Zhang’s adventurism collapsed in the winter of 1927. In May 1928, he was defeated by the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang under the command of Chiang Kai-shek. As it was clear that the Nationalists were soon going to take Peking, Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi forced Zhang to withdraw from northern China into Manchuria, where the Japanese forces could protect him. While on his way to Manchuria, Zhang was killed on June 4, 1928, by a bomb planted by members of the Japanese Kwantung Army Staff, who remained dissatisfied with the decision of placing Manchuria under the control of a puppet warlord. 4 After Zhang’s assassination, his son, Zhang Xueliang, nicknamed the “Young Marshal,” became the effective ruler of northeast and northern China.5 In early 1931, Xueliang requested financial assistance from the Kuomintang government in Nanking to begin construction of railroads in Manchuria. The success of this project would directly compete with Japan’s South Manchurian Railroad and would hurt the Japanese’s interests in the region. By March 1931, the Kuomintang government decided to open offices in all Manchurian cities. In April 1931, the Chinese government announced that it would very soon reclaim all former Chinese territories and rights, including concession railroads and other properties. The Chinese claimed that treaties between China and Japan were invalid. China also announced new acts, so the Japanese people who settled frontier lands and opened stores or built their own houses in China were expelled without compensation.6 The officials in Japan, particularly Japanese army officers, convinced themselves that controlling of Manchuria, a land rich in natural resources, was essential to Japan’s territorial expansion over the Pacific and Southeast Asia, decided to take over the region. On September 18, 1931, the Imperial Japanese Army launched an attack and within a few days occupied several strategic points in South Manchuria, which became important during 1930s to Japan’s economy. This invasion created what has become known as the Mukden Incident.7 The Mukden Incident Japan’s opening to military expansion began with the notorious Mukden Incident. On September 18, 1931, Japanese troops sabotaged with explosives a section of track belonging to Japan’s South Manchuria Railway. The explosion was “heard” in Washington. A few days later, U.S. secretary of state, Henry Stimson, wrote in his diary: “Trouble has flared up again in Manchuria. The Japanese, apparently their military elements, have suddenly made a coup.”8 Stimson was correct. The Japanese army officers who wanted to be more powerful than the cabinet had launched this attack. A group of active officers, linked to the nationalistic Nichiren movement, and influenced by the millenarianism of Tanaka’s Kokuchūkai, decided to start a war during which Japan would expand its territory through the Pacific and East Asia by taking advantage of increasing ultra-nationalism in the Japanese society. For many historians, Japan’s road to World War II began on September 18, 1931, with the Mukden Incident.9 In the spirit of the Japanese concept of gekokujō, by provoking the armed conflict, Col. Seishirō Itagaki and Lt. Col. Kanji Ishiwara made a plan to prompt Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. They chose to sabotage the rail section at 800 meters away from the Chinese garrison of Beidaying under the command of Zhang Xueliang. The two officers, with the support of two other members of the Kwantung Army, Col. Kenji Doihara and Maj. Gen. Takayoshi Tanaka, had arranged the attack. The plan was executed by 1st Lt. Suemori Kawamoto of the independent garrison of the 29th Infantry Regiment, which guarded the South Manchuria Railway.10 The attack on the night of September 18, 1931, was not just an act of rebellion of a group of officers of the Kwantung Army. It had been a sophisticated operation that had been orchestrated by Army General Staff in Tokyo as well as at Army Headquarters in Korea.11 The morning following the sabotage, a message from Gen. Shigeru Honjō, commander of the Kwantung Army, reached Lt. Gen. Senjūrō Hayashi, commander of the Korean army at Seoul, asking for immediate reinforcements of the Kwantung Army. A few hours later, a detachment of Japanese fighter planes from Pyongyang, Korea, took off for Mukden. Troops of the 20th Division at Seoul and Pyongyang had deployed by train for the Korea-Manchuria border to stay there and await instructions. The same day, early in the morning, Gen. Jirō Minami called a meeting with the vice minister of war, Gen. Hajime Sugiyama and the chief of the Military Affairs Bureau of the War Ministry, Gen. Kuniaki Koiso. The three officials were on the same page. A few hours later, early in the afternoon, Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō called a meeting of the cabinet. The Diet approval was requested before troops in Korea would move. After the meeting, Wakatsuki had failed to get support from the cabinet and the commander of the army to stop the rebellion. American secretary of state, Henry L. Stimson, wrote in his diary, on September 19, 1931, “The situation is very confused in Manchuria, and it is not clear whether the army is acting under a plan of the government or on its own.”12 The next day, September 20, a new military oligarchy had seized control of the army in Japan, while, in Manchuria, 12,000 troops assigned to the Kwantung Army were moving out and engaging the Chinese. No serious effort was made from Tokyo to stop the invasion. Gen. Yoshitsugu Tatekawa, the emissary sent from the War Ministry to stop the incident, encouraged the enlargement of the field of action.13 Taking full advantage of Yoshitsugu’s position, Lieutenant Colonel Kanji proposed to move the army north. After Japanese troops took Hardin, they continued their advance inside of Manchuria. Next, they attacked Kirin and captured it without resistance. General Tamon, commander of the Japanese forces, compelled the local general, Hsi Ch’ia, to proclaim “independence.” Without waiting approval of the cabinet, the Korean army moved across the border into Manchuria and joined the revolt. At this point, Japanese Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō tried to obtain Hirohito’s disapproval for what had been done in Manchuria. He secured an audience at the Imperial Palace with the emperor and asked him to condemn the action. Hirohito refused. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the emperor was not a partisan of strong action against the conspirators. Since 1929, as soon as he had revoked Tanaka’s cabinet over the incident of Zhang Zuolin’s assassination, he had already made his choice, “strengthening the power of the army over civil government.” By 1930, the right wing of the army was pouring hundreds of thousands of yen into propaganda against the civilian government. Several newspapers had been bribed with secret army funds to hide the information. While the conversation for peace continued between China and Japan, the Japanese army commander of the Chōsen Army, Lt. Gen. Senjūrō Hayashi, on his own authority, ordered his troops to continue the attack. Stimson sent a warning note to Japan and China, urging a cessation of hostilities. Baron Kijūrō Shidehara, the Japanese foreign minister, replied: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your note of September 25, in which you were so good as to convey to me the views of the American government about the actual conditions of affairs in Manchuria. The Japanese government is deeply sensitive to the friendly concern, the fairness, and the attitude with which the American government has observed the recent course of events in Manchuria. Sharing with the American government the hope expressed in your note under acknowledgement this government has already caused the Japanese military forces in Manchuria to refrain from any further acts of hostility unless their own safety as well as the security of the South Manchurian Railway and of Japanese lives and property within the Railway zone is jeopardized by the aggression of Chinese troops and bands…14 Not wasting any time, on September 19, 1931, Gen. Shigeru Honjō, an ardent follower of Sadao Araki’s doctrines, ordered his forces to extend operations all along the South Manchuria Railway. Three days later, on September 22, Army Chief of Staff Hanzō Kanaya reported to the emperor that despite orders to stand by on alert, the Mixed Brigade of the Japanese colonial army in Korea, in accordance with the principle that the field commanders have such discretion, “had crossed the border and advanced on Mukden.” 15 General Shigeru dispatched 10,000 soldiers in the region escorted by a squadron of bombers in advance on Chinchow from Mukden. Hirohito summoned Wakatsuki and told him to see that the Manchurian situation was aggravated. Having now understood the need to reinforce the vastly out-numbered Kwantung Army’s forward units, he accepted the situation as a fait accompli.16 Nara’s diary entry for September 22 reported Hirohito’s attitude at this critical moment: In the afternoon, when I was summoned by the emperor, he asked me whether I had warned the chief of staff [Kanaya] not to broaden the action. I replied, “Yes, I did warn him, but even without my warning he understood very clearly both the cabinet’s intention and your majesty’s will, and he is already addressing each part of the problem in turn. Regrettably, it is touch-and-go with the outlying army, and they often go their own way.” …[Later] [ At 4:20 P.M. Chief of Staff Kanaya had an audience with the emperor and asked him to approve, post facto, the dispatch of the mixed brigade from the Korean Army. I heard the emperor say that although this time it couldn’t be helped [the army] had to be more careful in the future.17 For two more months, Japanese troops and Chinese soldiers clashed in Manchuria. On November 15, 1931, despite having lost hundreds of soldiers, Chinese Gen. Ma Zhanshan, acting as Governor and Military Commander-in-chief of Heilongjiang Province, in absence of Governor Wan Fulin, maintained his position at Qiqihar. Ma declined Japan’s ultimatum to surrender. On November 17, 1931, 3,500 Japanese troops, under the command of Gen. Jirō Tamon, commander of the IJA 2nd Division of the Kwantung Army, attacked the Chinese position. This attack forced the Chinese general to leave Qiqihar in November 19.18 Meanwhile, at the urging of Stimson, the League Council had invoked the Kellogg-Briand Pact against both China and Japan.19 The Council then passed a moral resolution setting a time limit for Japan to withdraw its troops from the occupied areas. 20 On December 13, 1931, Prime Minister Wakatsuki was replaced by a new cabinet led by Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai. Inukai’s first assignment was to initiate negotiations with Hsueh-liang, the leader of the Kuomintang government. As those negotiations failed, the Japanese government authorized the reinforcement of its troops in Manchuria. At the end of December, the rest of the 20th Infantry Division, along with the 38th Mixed Brigade from the 19th Infantry Division, was sent into Manchuria from Korea; while the 18th Mixed Brigade from the 10th Infantry Division was sent from Japan. The total strength of the Kwantung Army was thus increased to around 60,450 men. On January 3, 1932, Japanese forces occupied Chinchow. The following day, they occupied Shanhaiguan, completing their military takeover of southern Manchuria. With southern Manchuria secure, the Japanese turned north to complete the occupation of Manchuria. Col. Kenji Doihara requested collaborationist Gen. Xi Qia to advance his forces in order to take Harbin. The Chinese soldiers resisted and repulsed Japanese forces until the arrival of the IJA 2nd Division under Gen. Jirō Tamon. The Japanese troops had completed the occupation of Harbin on February 4, 1932. Rejecting International Sanctions The months following the invasion of Manchuria were marked in Japan by a series of violence. Japanese ultra-nationalism, dressed as an intellectual movement, simultaneously promoted fascism and expansionism as a remedy to perceive national weakness at home and abroad. Among its leaders were Tōyama Mitsuru (an old generation rightist, godfather of ultranationalist groups, founder of the Genyosha and Black Dragon Society nationalist secret societies), Kametarō Mitsukawa, Shūmei Ōkawa, and Ikki Kita (three right-wing activists and writers), Unosuke Wakamiya, Kōjirō Sugimori, Yanunobu Kuchita, Kanoki Kazunobu, Kaku Mori, and Ichirō Hatoyama. The young Japanese officers, supported by the ultranationalist groups, had convinced that the army could control the political life in Japan. On May 15, 1932, in what the historians called “the May 15 Incident,” young naval officers assassinated Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi. Hirohito blamed the government rather than insubordinate officers for their actions. The Inukai cabinet resigned the same day. Hirohito appointed Takahashi Korekiyo, the former Governor of the Bank of Japan, as prime minister. Four months earlier, on January 7, 1932, United States secretary of state, Henry Stimson, issued a statement that the United States would not recognize any government that was established as the result of Japanese actions in Manchuria. In March 1932, China appealed to the League of Nations. The Council of the League, supported by the United States, sought to negotiate a peaceful solution to the conflict. First, it requested the withdrawal of the Japanese troops in Manchuria. However, Japanese officials in Tokyo ignored the League. In April 1932, a League delegation led by British Diplomat Lord Victor-Bulwer Lytton went to Manchuria to study the situation. The Lytton Commission included four other members: Maj. Gen. Frank Ross McCoy, from the United States; Dr. Heinrich Schnee, from Germany; Luigi Aldrovandi Marescotti, from Italy; and Gen. Henri Claude, from France. By the time the Lytton Commission arrived in China, the Japanese army had already conquered the entire region of Manchuria. They established the Manchurian puppet state of Manchukuo.21 Aisin-Gioro Puyi, the last Qing emperor of China, was officially installed as head of state. In October 1932, the commission recommended that Japan should leave the region. It stated that Japan was the aggressor. The Japanese forces had wrongfully invaded Manchuria, and that the territory should be returned to China. The Commission also argued that the Japanese puppet state at Manchukuo should not be recognized. Further, it recommended Manchurian autonomy under Chinese sovereignty. On February 24, 1933, forty members of the League of Nations voted the recommendations. They blamed Japan for the war and said it should withdraw its troops in Manchuria. Only Japan Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka voted against the resolution.22 The same day, the Japanese delegation in Geneva, defying world opinion, withdrew from the League of Nations. General Sadao Araki, one of the principal politicians nationalist right-wing in Japan, who served as minister of war under Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai, and later served as minister of education during the Konoe and Hiranuma administrations, opened the discussion on the Manchuria Incident and the League of Nations during a press conference on September 23, 1933. Araki said: “The principle of the Imperial way is that the emperor and the people, the land and morality, are one and indivisible.”23 He gave at this point a clear view of the new army’s training method: seishin kyōiku, “spiritual training.” It was a mixture of ideas such as Japanese ultranationalism, militarism, fascism, and state capitalism that were proposed by several political philosophers in Japan during the first part of the Shōwa period. Araki floated the idea of Japan forming its own “League of Nations.” To him, it was clear that if the officials in Tokyo did not comply with the request to withdraw their troops in Manchuria; the League of Nations would impose sanctions on Japan. Despite the consequences and expected sanctions against the country, any of the other generals were prepared to back down. ‘“A question of life or death for Japan,”’ Araki called it. That was the army line: Japan must be imperialist or die.24 In April 1934, Foreign Minister Kōki Hirota announced that the relation between China and Japan was not considered to be the business of the League of Nations or of any other power. In November 1935, there was a proposal protocol to resolve the crisis. First, China’s recognition of Manchukuo, second the suppression of anti-Japanese activities in China, and third an antiCommunist Sino-Japanese alliance. Nine months later, in August 1936, Prime Minister Kōki Hirota approved a statement known as the “Fundamentals of National Policy,” from which the essential features of both the New Order and the Co-Prosperity Sphere were eventually to be developed. In order to achieve those goals, there was to be “‘a strong coalition between Japan, Manchukuo, and China,’” in which north China was to be a “‘special region’” because of its economic significance. Further afield, Japan would extend its interests into Southeast Asia, though only in gradual and peaceful ways. At the end of 1936, in China, nationalists and Communists reached an agreement. The leaders of both camps decided to make a common cause against Japan. The growing determination of the nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists led by Mao Zedong was to prevent China’s fragmentation and ruled out the attainment of Japanese ends without a general conflagration. A Diabolic War Machine The Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors of 1882 called for unquestioning loyalty to the emperor by the newly created armed forces. The rescript asserted that commands from superior officers were equivalent to command from the emperor himself. Topranking military leaders got direct access to the emperor with the authority to transmit his pronouncements directly to the troops. By the twentieth century, the Imperial Japanese Army became the most modern army in Asia; well-trained, well-equipped, and with good morale. Army Training The Imperial Japanese Army inaugurated its Office of Military Training in 1898. Its mission was to provide centralized oversight for the army training efforts. This included the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, specialized weaponry and technical training schools, and the various military preparatory schools located around the country. The Office of Inspectorate General of Military Training (OIGMA) was also responsible for tactical training. Over time, the OIGMA acquired responsibilities for army logistics, transportation, and support matters. The OIGMA also acquired considerable prestige and political power within the Japanese army. He reported directly to the emperor through the Imperial General Headquarters rather than to the army minister or the chief of the Imperial Japanese Army staff. The IG post by the 1930s had become the third most powerful position within the Imperial army. The Imperial Japanese Army Academy was Japan’s principal training school for the Imperial Army. The academy was initially opened at Heigakkō near Kyoto in 1868. It was renamed the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and relocated to Ichigaya near Tokyo in 1874. In 1898, the Academy was assigned to the Army Education Administration. The academy was divided in two sections. The Senior Course Academy was relocated to Sagamihara, in Kanagawa Prefecture, while the Junior Course School was moved to Asaka, Saitama. A separate school was established for military aviation officers in 1938. After successfully completing the two-year junior portion of the training at Asaka in Saitama, army cadets were assigned for eight months to infantry regiments. This was to familiarize them with actual weapons and give them experience with platoon leadership. Next, they started their two-year senior program at Sagamihara in Kanagawa. Graduates were assigned to a regiment with the rank of sergeant-major but treated as officers. After a four-month probation period, the army commander commissioned the graduates as second lieutenants. Japanese conscripts were drafted for two years. A year of that two-year period was devoted to training. Soldiers trained for upward of a year, focusing on marksmanship, squad tactics, and physical conditioning. They also faced “spiritual training,” where they were taught the codes of loyalty, honor, etc. Once the war began, in 1942, the training was shortened to three months. Most conscripts had already received military training through the schools beginning in the primary years. The training was extremely rough and brutal. Recruits were sometimes beaten by their superiors, and there were lots of physical punishments. Discipline was harsh. During the war, those recruits were among the most disciplined, well-trained, and committed soldiers in the world. Conscripts were marched for miles in the summer heat without helmets, and when they were completely exhausted and ready to drop, their officer would give the command for double time and they would run at the last minute. In the winter they trained in the cold, maneuvers were held without tents in subzero weather. The soldiers were taught to be fierce as well as hardy. Always, their officers told them, they must attack. Never must they think of defense.25 Under the falling blade there is a river of hell. Jump into it and you might float. Let the enemy cut your skin You cut his flesh Let the enemy cut your flesh You cut his bones.26 Whether I flow as a corpse under the waters, or sink beneath the grasses of the mountainside, I willingly die for the emperor.” Every day, every morning for two years, that chant greeted the rising sun as the soldiers began their training.”27 It took two years’ time for the cadet to grasp the meaning of such quotations. “Take the offensive,” “surprise the enemy,” “―Death rather than surrender, ―” “―No retreat―”; these were the rules of the Japanese army. The army law is: Obey without question.28 The Japanese army promptly became a diabolic war machine that soon invaded and occupied its neighboring country. Chapter Seven Into China Again In March 1933, the newly inaugurated American president Franklin D. Roosevelt tapped Tennessee Senator Cordell Hull to be his secretary of state. Previously, Hull had served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee and became a presidential candidate at the 1928 Democratic National Convention. In 1930, Hull won election to the Senate, and then resigned to become Secretary of State. From this position, he protested Japan’s annexation of Manchuria, pushing the United States to boycott the puppet state of Manchukuo.1 But, evidently, this was only for public consumption. Privately it is believed Hull wanted to avoid anything that might provoke war with Japan. Others close to Roosevelt, however, were less cautious. The commander of the Asiatic fleet, Adm. Harry E. Yarnell, was vocal, declaring that withdrawal of American armed presence in Asia was not an option: “The time has passed, he said, “when a great nation can increase its safety by such a method.” 2 Adm. William D. Leahy, chief of naval operations, seconded Yarnell, requesting that four additional warships be sent to Shanghai. Roosevelt disapproved the request because he did not want to oppose his secretary of state’s stance. On March 27, 1933, a League of Nations’ report unequivocally condemned Japan for invading Manchuria. In an international telegram to the Secretary-General of the League, Sir Eric Drummond, the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Uchida Kōsai, “gave notice in accordance with the provisions of Article 1, paragraph 3 of the Covenant, of the intention of Japan to withdraw from the League of Nations.” 3 Kōichi Kido, who served as Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal of Japan to become one of the most influential advisors to Emperor Hirohito, noted in his diary, “Hirohito urged his government to note that despite its forced but inevitable and truly ‘“very regrettable”’ withdrawal, Japan would continue its policy of cooperation and intimate international relations with other powers.”4 Contrary to Kido’s account, most of Japan’s foreign policies were based purely on selfish national expansion at the expense and suffering of neighboring countries. Japan’s successive governments were marked by the pursuit and embodiment of ultra-nationalism. Imitating Nazism, Japan’s foreign policy was a succession of invasions beginning in 1933 with Jehol, the Chinese province next to Manchuria. This occurred soon after Japan withdrew from the League of Nations and marked the start of a larger war in the East.5 Making Enemies Soon after Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, its armed aggression began to spread across the subcontinent. Its army began the invasion of Jehol and continued to neighboring Manchuria. 6 The Japanese forces occupied Hopei and created a demilitarized zone in the North of this region. They then took control of many regions near the Great Wall of China while maintaining their main garrisons around Tianjin.7 The Japanese began to concretize their policy goals: military expansion on the continent, naval control of the western Pacific and Southeast Asian sea lanes, and equalization of relations with the Great Powers. In mainland Japan, political instability and violence continued. In November 1934, there was an attempted coup d’état organized by a group of Japanese officers. The rebellion led by Capt. Takaji Muranaka and Capt. Asaicho Isobe failed. Five cadets were expelled from the Academy and the two officers’ leaders, Muranaka and Isobe, were suspended for six months from duty. On December 29th, the Japanese government noticed that it intended to withdraw from the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. The treaty, they said, limited Japan’s capital ship construction, and this, in turn, with the per vessel tonnage limitations, the efforts to build large battleships with bigger guns in wartime were enormously handicapped. The Japanese also rejected the London Naval Treaty of 1930 on the reduction of naval armaments.8 Behind the decision calling for not to be part of the international community, the Japanese wanted to be free of their obligations for respect for international law. They wanted to be free to act alone without applying international agreements signed by them after World War I. For many politically active Japanese officers of the army, instability and violence represented the strategy to strengthen army influence in politics and open the military’s expansion abroad with notions to overcome the West in every field of modernity and greatness. In the Japanese’s mind, Japan is fighting a war of “selfdefense” and a spiritual one over “Western moral decadence.” 9 On August 12, 1935, Saburō Aizawa, a Japanese military officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, assassinated Maj. Gen. Tetsuzan Nagata during the Aizawa Incident. A strong supporter of the Kōdōha (Imperial Way), the radical militarist political faction of the Imperial Japanese Army, Aizawa despised Nagata’s political moves against Jinzaburō Masaki, the Inspector-General of Military Training, who was forced to retirement. The Military Academy Incident and the Aizawa Incident were two separate events that illustrated the increasing politicization and political polarization of the Japanese army, characterized by violence to resolve political differences. Six months later, on February 26, 1936, there was a second attempted coup d’état against the government led by Prime Minister Keisuke Okada. A group of young radical Japanese officers led some 1,400 troops to attack several official buildings in Tokyo. The insurgents killed Home Minister Saito Makoto, Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo, and Army Inspector General of Military Training Watanabe Jotaro. The group failed to assassinate the prime minister or secure control of the Imperial Palace. Three days later, on February 29, the rebels surrendered. Hirohito ordered the army to arrest a hundred twenty-three conspirators. Kita Ikki, a Japanese author, intellectual and political philosopher, and a harsh critic of the Emperor system and the Meiji constitution, and politician activist Nishida Mitsugi, were among the nineteen conspirators who were executed on August 19, 1937. In August 1936, the Russians made a non-aggression pact with the Chinese and sold them a quantity of military aircraft and munitions. Angered by this, on November 25 of the same year, the Japanese signed the “Anti-Comintern Pact” with Nazi Germany directed against the Communist International (Comintern), but, specifically against the Soviet Union.11 Seven months later, on June 4, 1937, Hirohito appointed Prince Fumimaro Konoe prime minister. One month later, on July 7, 1937, the Second SinoJapanese War was formally declared after Japanese forces attacked Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge. The Japanese army commanded by Maj. Gen. Kanji Ishiwara enlarged its grip on China. Thus, the Japanese began to imagine an empire in the Orient large and powerful enough to exclude the West. To achieve this agenda they launched the Pacific War. The Pacific War was engaged over a vast area that included the Pacific Ocean, the South-west Pacific region, and the Southeast Asian area. Japan conscripted many soldiers from its colonies of Korea and Taiwan to help it fight the war. Its main ally was the authoritarian government of Thailand, with which it formed a dangerous alliance. The leader of Thailand, Plaek Phibunsongkhram, sent his Phayap Army to help Japan. Other countries members of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere also assisted Japan in the war, such as the anti-British Indian National Army of Free India, the Burma National Army of the State of Burma, the Manchukuo Imperial Army, and the Collaborationist Chinese Army of the Japanese puppet of Manchukuo. The German and Italian submarines and raiding ships deployed in the Indian and Pacific Oceans gave limited help to Japan. On the opposite side, a group of countries, led by the United States, formed a coalition against Japan. There were China, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom (mostly through its colonial troops from the armed forces of India, Burma, Malaya, Fiji, and Tonga). Those countries were all members of the Pacific War Council.12 Mexico provided some air support and Free France sent naval support. Some active pro-Allied guerrillas in Asia including the Malayan Peoples’Anti-Japanese Army, the Korean Liberation Army, the Free Thai Movement, and the Viêt Minth participated alongside the Allies.13 Japan Contrives an “Incident” at the Marco Polo Bridge On the night of July 7, 1937, Japanese units stationed at Fengtai, twenty miles south of Peking, crossed the border to conduct military exercises. A Japanese soldier failed to return to his post. The Japanese requested permission from Chinese commander Ji Xingwen to enter Wanping to search for the missing soldier. Ji refused. Although the soldier returned to his unit, the Japanese deployed reinforcements to surround Wanping. The commander of the Chinese 37th Division, Gen. Feng Zhi’an, following an order from Qin Dechen, the acting commander of the Chinese 39th Route Army, placed his troops on heightened alert. The battle quickly degenerated into an excessive war, which had provided Japan the pretext for opening a second round of hostilities against China. On July 8, 1937, the Japanese troops deployed in northern China opened fire on the Chinese troops and attacked them at the Marco Polo Bridge. Col. Ji Xingwen led the Chinese defenses with about one hundred men with orders to hold the bridge at all costs. On July 9, 1937, Fumimaro Konoe, who became prime minister of Japan in June of the same year, had a meeting with his cabinet. The group met again on the eleventh. The same day, the Japanese Foreign Affairs, Kazushige Ugaki, began negotiations with the Chinese Nationalist government. The negotiations resulted in the signing of an armistice. The armistice left anxious the expansionists who were since 1931 at work behind the scenes to extend the conflict from Manchuria into north China and so wanted the conflict to be expanded.14 Thereafter, the Japanese Garrison Infantry Brigade Comm. Gen. Masakazu Kawabe rejected the agreement and against his superiors’ orders continued to bombard Wanping and moved his forces to the northeast. Some members of the Army General of Staff, Maj. Gen. Kanji Ishiwara, Chief of Operations Section and Head of G-1, and Gen. Torashirō Kawabe, the younger brother of Gen. Masakazu Kawabe, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Imperial Japanese Army, decided to send more troops to China. The Konoe cabinet met again in emergency session and temporarily postponed sending troops to north China. The expansionists, meanwhile, led by General Kanji, lobbied near Hirohito, who favorably reacted to the events. The emperor supported the Chief of Operations Section who made him believe that sending troops to North China might protect Japan against a possible threat from the Soviet Union. On September 21, while the cabinet was still meeting, Lt. Gen. Senjūrō Hayashi, commander of the Chōsen Army in Korea, on his own authority, ordered thousands of troops to North China. The Chief of the General Staff, Field Marshal Prince Kan’in Kotohito, reported to Hirohito that, despite orders to stand by on alert, the Mixed Brigade of the Chōsen Army of Japan in Korea led by General Hayashi had crossed the border and advanced on Manchuria.”15 Taking over Manchuria was part of a plan constructed by some right-wing Japanese extremists and some expansionist officers led by General Kawabe and Lieutenant General Hayashi. Several months before the invasion of China, the expansionists were already at work. The commander of the Japanese China Garrison Army, Lt. Gen. Kanichirō Tashiro, placed homeland divisions on alert, and drafted orders to send reinforcements to China. A native of Saga Prefecture, Tashiro was among the members of the Japanese delegation to the Washington Disarmament Conference in 1921. Promoted to colonel in the infantry in 1924, he was given command of the IJA 30th Infantry Regiment. He became vice chief of the 5th Section Asian intelligence in 1926 and was promoted to major general in 1930. In 1932, he was promoted to chief of staff of the Shanghai Expeditionary Army and became lieutenant general in 1934. He then served as provost marshal from 1934 to 1935; and as commander of the IJA 11th Division from 1935 to 1936. He was commander of the Japanese China Garrison at the time of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, on July 7, 1937.16 Meanwhile, in northeast China, the border between northern Manchuria and the Soviet Union, an area that included Mongolia and Primorsky Krai, growing tensions between Japan and Russia continued. Both sides accused each other of border violations. From 1935 to 1939, in Mongolia and Manchuria, the Soviets and the Japanese fought an escalating round of border skirmishes and punitive battles. The Soviet and Mongolian victory over the Japanese in the Battles of Khalkhin Gol resolved the dispute and returned the borders to status quo ante bellum. In the Imperial Palace, despite the agreement signed by Japan and Russia over the borders’ dispute, Hirohito became more concerned about a possible threat from the Russians day after day. Would the Russians now attack along the Manchukuo border, the emperor asked Army Chief of Staff, Prince Kan’in Kotohito, before meeting with Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, and Gen. Hajime Sugiyama, the new army minister and army’s commanderin-chief.17 “What will you do if the Soviets attack us from the rear?” Hirohito asked. Kan’in answered, “I believe the army will rise to the occasion.” The emperor repeated his question: “That’s no more than army dogma. What will you actually do in the unlikely event that Soviet [forces] attack?” The prince said only, “We will have no choice, and his Majesty seemed very dissatisfied.” 18 Hirohito was aware of the high-level tension between Japan and Russia regarding the border conflicts. He wanted to know what the army’s plan was if Russian troops attacked along the Manchukuo border. Kan’in did not have a clear answer. Nevertheless, despite his disappointment with prince Kan’in’s analysis, Hirohito approved the Army General of Staff’s decision to move more troops to north China, and without hesitation he put his seal on the order for their dispatch.19 Now having the emperor’s approval to attempt to violently resolve with one blow all of Japan’s outstanding problems with China, Prime Minister Konoe, together with the army expansionists, sent thousand soldiers to north China. Following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, all-out war between Japan and China ensued. On July 28, 1937, war between the two countries was officially declared. In early August 1937, the large Chinese cities of Beijing and Tianjin were taken by Japanese troops. The same month, Hirohito withdrew Japan from adherence to international conventions on the protection of prisoners of war. 20 He thus deprived captive fighters and civilians of humane treatment by advancing Japanese troops. Additional inhumane decisions were to follow. As early as August 1937, the confrontation in Shanghai forced the Japanese troops to descend much farther. On August 13, a major clash of forces between the Japanese army led by Lt. Gen. Heisuke Yanagawa and the Chinese National Republican Army led by Gen. Chang Kai-sek was recorded during the Battle of Shanghai. The Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communists suspended their civil war in order to form a nominal alliance against Japan. Chiang Kai-shek deployed his total army of 300,000 Japanese troops to fight in Shanghai. Joining the Axis Powers Japan’s agenda of continental expansion was at the origin of its alliance with Germany. This alliance was a way to support Japan’s expansionism into Asia and the Pacific. Dissatisfied with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the rules of the League of Nations, and the limits and restraints of the Washington and London naval armament treaties, Japanese politicians contrived an ideology based on the idea of Japanese racial supremacy, and thus a right to dominate Asia (if not the world).21 Many Japanese officers believed in a Japanese form of Manifest Destiny.22 Japan, according to their views, was destined to become the dominant power in Asia. 23 This ideology was embedded into the position and role of the emperor, purported to be a divine monarch descended from god Amaterasu Omikami. The emperor, under this concept, was accepted by Japanese people as a living god.24 All citizens were taught to revere Emperor Hirohito as the embodiment of Japan’s soul. It was a retrograde combination, attempting to restore the militant Shōwa era.25 The ideologies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan shared the motivation to violently attack, subdue and occupy neighboring countries, enslave or eradicate the citizenry, and exploit the resources for their exclusive benefit. They also shared a wariness of Communism, and both seethed at the post-World War I order of international treaties and arms limitations. Japan had come into the colonial game rather late. Unlike the Western powers it never had much in the way of overseas territorial possessions. It was only during the Meiji era that it had decided to consolidate and build up the country’s resources and move out immediately in a program to acquire colonies in Asia. Associated with Italy and Germany, Japan would eventually agree to create with its two allies a new scheme of global domination in which Germany ruled Europe, Italy ruled the Mediterranean and North Africa, and Japan reigned in East Asia and the Pacific. Under the command of Maj. Gen. Kanji Ishiwara, Japan expanded its regional authority in Asia, pushing forward the plan to build a strong empire on the model of the Westerns Powers, particularly Britain and France. Despite some setbacks, such as those endured during the Battle of Pingxingguan (won in September 1937 by the Communists), Japanese troops eventually conquered the northern part of Shanxi in China after a stunning victory in Taiyuan.26 In early of 1938, in Taierzhuang, located on the eastern bank of the Grand Canal of China, two Japanese divisions were surrounded for nearly twenty-four hours by the Chinese army commanded by Gen. Li Tsung-jen.27 They were able to escape, and Gen. Kenji Doihara, who commanded the Japanese division, narrowly escaped death.28 Hirohito was very much in favor of such maneuvers aimed at overthrowing Chiang Kai-shek and replacing him with a pro-Japanese puppet government.29 In November 1938, after fifteen months of fighting, Shanghai fell. The Japanese troops decided to take Nanking, the capital of China, where 200,000 Japanese soldiers crushed tired and poorly organized Chinese troops. Between 200,000 and 250,000 Chinese civilians and military personnel had been killed in Nanking. 30 Report on Nanking Massacre The London Herald reported on December 15, 1937: 50,000 troops from Shanghai and Nanking are preparing to sail and invade Kwantung. Japanese planes bombed Shumchun about the British leased territory north of Hong Kong. Contradicting earlier Japanese claims to have gained complete control of Nanking, Army spokesman at Tokyo admit that the Chinese are still strongly resisting in the north-east portion of the city.31 The Dōmei News Agency (Tokyo) estimated that the Chinese killed in Nanking exceed 70,000 persons. Army spokesmen admitted that the Chinese are still strongly resisting in the north-east portion of Nanking, but claim to have consolidated the position on the Yangtze from Shanghai to Wuhu, (250 miles), and also to have captured Pukow, Kiangpu, Yangchow, and Wulingshan Fort, north-east of the Purple Mountain, capturing eighteen field guns and four anti-aircraft guns. General Matsui issued a proclamation about Wulingshan Fort, urging the residents of Nanking to return to their ancestral homes and pursue their avocations in complete peace.”32 The Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times, Thomas F. Millard, revealed: Those Japanese forces crossing the Yangtze between Wuhu and Nanking a few days ago were driven back near Pukow, which the Chinese strongly hold. They are maintaining a line running southwest close to the Yangtze, to a point south of Wufu, and then to Hangchow. Most of this line is within striking distance of the Japanese, whose transit across the river to affect the junction of their forces will not be easy.33 “While the Australian Associated Press reported that the Chinese are taking up a line centered at Anking, capital of Anhwei Province, and extending to the provinces of Kiangsu and Chekiang, and placing a boom across and mining the Yangtze thereabouts.” 34 Frank T. Durdin, a longtime correspondent for “The New York Times,” who reported on the Second Sino-Japanese War, declared that the Japanese army, six months after the Loukouchiao incident, possessed more than 300,000 square miles of Chinese territory in North China. This area, Durdin said, is comparable with the 301,800 square miles of Manchukuo, and with the 363,700 square miles of the combined areas of Italy and Germany. This North China area covers the whole of Hopei, Chahar, and Suiyan provinces; about half of Shansi and a fair-sized strip of Shandong.35 According to Dr. C. J. Pao, the Chinese have counter-attacked Japan forces in the north. The Chinese soldiers have driven the Japanese from the part of Shandong Province, which they have occupied for some weeks. The invasion of China was followed by indications of intensified military activity on the part of Japan. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, requested from the Japanese government a policy of selfrestraint. Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro who hoped to gain the support of the international community repeated what he already said during a press conference to the Japanese nation on July 11, 1937. He stated that “troops were being ordered to north China because the Chinese side had deliberately perpetrated an armed attack again st Japan.36 He continued, “As our empire’s constant concern is to maintain peace in East Asia, however, we have not abandoned hope that peaceful negotiations may yet ensure nonexpansion of the conflict.”37 On July 12, 1937, Japanese Ambassador to the United States, Hiroshi Saito, met with the American officials in Washington. During the meeting, Japan proposed a plan for the withdrawal of its troops in China. In response, Hull issued a statement resuming the fundamental principles of international policy. It stated that “any situation in which armed hostilities were in progress or were threatened was a situation wherein rights and interests of all nations either were or might be seriously affected. The United States avoided entering into alliances or entangling commitments but believed in cooperative effort by peaceful and practical means in support of the above-stated principles.”38 Nine days later, on July 21, Hull talked separately with Chinese Ambassador Wang and Japanese Ambassador Saito. He said that the United States would help China and Japan to find a peaceful solution to the situation. He emphasized that a war would result in irreparable harm to both countries involved and would have disastrous effect on the entire world. On September 2, 1937, after several exchanges with the officials of China and Japan, Hull sent a telegram to Ambassador Grew in Japan fixing the position of the United States in the China/Japan’s conflict. He repeated his speech on August 23, 1937, in which he declared that the issues and problems that were of concern to the United States in the existing situation in the Pacific area went “far beyond merely the immediate question of protection of the nationals and interests of the United States.”39 He added: The conditions prevailing in that area were intimately connected with and had a direct and fundamental relationship to the general principles of policy made public on July 16. The existence of serious hostilities anywhere was a matter of concern to all nations; that without attempting to pass judgment on the merits of the controversy, the United States appealed to the parties to refrain from war, that the United States considered applicable throughout the world, in the Pacific area as elsewhere, the principles set forth in the statement of July 16; and that statement embraced the principles embodied in the Washington Naval Conference and the Kellogg-Briand Act.40 On September 28, 1937, President Roosevelt declared: “That merchant vessels owned by the government of the United States would not be permitted to transport to China or Japan any arms, ammunition, or implements of war, and that any other merchant vessel flying the American flag which attempted to transport such articles to China or Japan would do so at its own risk.” Following this statement, Hull said: The United States had been approached on several occasions by other governments with suggestions for joint action; that while, the United States believed in and wished to practice cooperation it was not prepared to take part in joint action, though it would consider the possibility of taking parallel action.41 The League was unable to convince the Japanese to leave China, on 4 October, 1937, it turned the case over the Nine-Powers.42 The following day, during an address at Chicago, President Roosevelt declared: The political situation in the world was one to cause grave concern and anxiety. The existing reign of terror and international lawlessness had reached the stage where the very foundations of civilization were seriously threatened. He warned that no one should imagine that America would escape from this or that the Western Hemisphere would not be attacked. He called for a concerted effort by the peace-loving nations in opposition to the actions that were creating international anarchy and instability.43 Two days later, on October 6, the League of Nations adopted a resolution stating that: “The Japanese action in China was a violation of Japan’s treaty obligations.” On the same day, the Department of State issued a statement that: The action of Japan in China was inconsistent with the principles that should govern the relations between nations and was contrary to the NinePower Treaty of February 6, 1922, regarding the principles and policies to be followed in matters concerning China, and contrary to the KelloggBriand Pact.44 In accordance with a provision of the Nine-Power Treaty of 1922, in November 1937, nineteen nations participated in a Conference held at Brussels to consider “peaceable means” for ending the armed conflict between China and Japan. Norman Davis, the U.S. delegate, declared that the first objective of the foreign policy of the United States was national security, and that consequently his country sought to keep peace and promote the maintenance of peace. He added that the United States as a signatory to the Kellogg-Briand Pact had renounced war as an instrument of national policy; and that a public opinion in the United States had expressed its emphatic determination that the United States keep out of war.45 Despite being invited as an interlocutor, Japan refused to participate in the conference. The Japanese leaders argued that their disputes with China were outside the authority of the NinePower Treaty. On November 11, 1937, Japanese troops of the Second Battalion of the 6th Infantry Regiment entered Shanghai and killed nearly 25,000 Chinese including thousands of women and children. The Shanghai Expeditionary Force’s 16th Division, commanded by Lt. Gen. Nakajima Kesago, from Japanese navy planes, bombed villages and towns along the Yangtze toward Nanking, some 180 miles away. Four days later, on November 15, the conference adopted a declaration affirming that the conflict between China and Japan was of concern to all countries’ parties to the Nine-Power Treaty and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. On December 1, 1937, the Imperial Headquarters ordered the 10th Army and the Shanghai Expeditionary Force to invade Nanking. On December 8, troops under Prince Yasuhiko Asaka began the assault on the Chinese defenses. The city of Nanking exposed to constant attack from Japanese troops of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force and the Central China Area Army, led by Gen. Iwane Matsui, fell on December 13.46 Gen. Kesago Nakajima’s 16th Division killed approximately 30,000 Chinese prisoners of war, in just the three first day in Nanking. 47 The postwar Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal accepted an estimate of “over 200,000” civilians and prisoners of war” murdered in Nanking and its vicinity during the first six weeks.48 On December 14, 1937, the day after Nanking fell; Hirohito sent an imperial message to his chiefs of staff, in which he expressed his pleasure at the news of the city’s capture and occupation. The Imperial Message of His Majesty the Supreme Commander was the following: We are deeply gratified that various units of the army and navy in the Central China Area, following up their operations in Shanghai and its environs, have pursued [the enemy] and captured Nanking. Transmit our feelings to your officers and men.49 Two days before this message was sent out, on December 12, 1937, Japanese bombers attacked and sank the American gunboat USS Panay that was anchored in the Yangtze River near Nanking.50 The boat, built in Shanghai, had been used to patrol the river on behalf of Americans and their property in China. The American government sent a note to the Japanese government stating that the United States vessels were on the Yangtze River “by uncontested and incontestable right.”51 Washington requested a formally recorded expression of regret and comprehensive indemnifications from the Japanese government. The message was communicated to Japan on the evening of December 13. On December 14, the Konoe cabinet immediately apologized by sending an official communication to Secretary of State Cordell Hull via Hiroshi Saitō, the Imperial’s Japan ambassador to the United States.52 The Japanese government accepted to pay $2.2 million in reparations after sending two telegrams expressing regret to President Roosevelt and King Georges VI.53 On January 9, 1938, encouraging by the result at the NinePower Treaty Conference in Brussels, and the behavior of the Nationalist representatives, who failed to persuade the participants to declare Japan an aggressor, the newly established Imperial Headquarters-Government Liaison Conference decided on a policy for handling the China Incident.54 On January 11, during an imperial conference, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, in presence of Foreign Minister Kōki Hirota, and the president of the privy council Hiranuma Kiichirō, rejected the Trautmann mediation. This attempt by the German Ambassador to China, Oskar Trautmann, to broker a peace between Japan and China, fell. Therefore, the group shared Hirota’s view by issuing the following statement: “We must strengthen our resolve to fight through to the end with China.”55 On January 16, 1938, Konoe cabinet shut off negotiations with China and issued a statement declaring that Japan would thereafter no longer recognize the Nationalist Government.56 Hirohito approved Konoe’s decision and by doing so, failed to support his Army General Staff on the crucial matter of continuing peace negotiations. Instead, as emperor and commander of the Japanese Armed Forces, he tended to back up the harder army line.57 At that time most of the generals and admirals in the Japanese army believed in gun power. It was assumed that decisive battles would be fought mainly by the big guns of the battleships, supplemented by light cruiser and destroyer attacks and by air attacks from carriers. It was for this strategic reason that the Imperial Japanese Navy had made tremendous efforts to build up its auxiliary strength while its battleships were limited to 60 percent of the U.S.’s number by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and that Japan in 1934 gave notice of withdrawal from that treaty as from 1936.58 Invading More Territories Motivated by a series of rapid victories, the Japanese army continued their advances in China. By November 1938, Japanese troops occupied the “three Wuhan cities” of Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang on the Yangtze River in central China, and Canton in the far south. In November 1938, Prime Minister Konoe issued his famous declaration of a “New Order in East Asia.” The same month he issued his second statement on the war. He declared that it would not veto participation by the Nationalist Chinese government. The next month, on December 22, he made his third statement with the “three Konoe principles.” First, China must cease all anti-Japan activities. It must formally recognize Manchukuo and establish relations of “neighborly friendship.” 59 Second, China would be required to join Japan in defending against Communism.60 Third, China must accept to develop economic cooperation with Japan, including acceptance of Japan’s right to develop and exploit the natural resources of North China and Inner Mongolia.61 By 1939, the Japanese had pressed Chiang Kai-shek’s forces back into Sichuan Province in the southwestern of China and were consolidating their hold on the eastern seaboard.62 They held all the major cities of northern and central China including Chungking and Yenan. The war did not end. The Chinese, more motivated with aid from the Soviet Union and the United States, fought to the death the Japanese troops in central China. On January 4, 1939, Konoe who presided over Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 and the deterioration in relations with the United States and its allies, unable to end the war in China or to bring about a consensus within his cabinet on a military alliance with Nazi Germany, resigned.63 The same day, Hirohito appointed Hiranuma Kiichirō as Konoe’s successor. Being in the past a strong supporter of the army, Hiranuma had distanced himself from the radical right after the army mutiny of 1936 to redefine himself as a partisan of peace. Under coaching from Finance Minister Ikeda Seihin, he dissolved the Kokuhonsha, a nationalistic organization that he led for many years, and which called on Japanese patriots to reject the various foreign political“isms,” (such as socialism, Communism, Marxism, anarchism, etc.) in favor of a mixture of ideas such as Japanese ultra-nationalism, militarism, fascism, and state capitalism. Confronted with military and diplomatic problems arising from the bloodiest war in China, and refusing to enter into a military alliance with Nazi Germany to make enemies of Britain and the United States, Hiranuma resigned on the morning of August 28, 1939, three months after Germany and Italy signed the Pact of Steel, on May 22, 1939.64 Japan’s relations with the Western Powers, particularly with Britain and the United States, continued to deteriorate throughout the summer and the fall of 1939. On July 26, 1939, the United States, to protest Japanese invasion of China, advised the Hiranuma government that it intended not to renew the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, scheduled to lapse in January 1940.65 On August 23, 1939, Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact allowed Hitler to move German forces to the West in preparation for the invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Seven days later, on August 30, 1939, Hirohito appointed Gen. Nobuyuki Abe, the interim War Minister, as prime minister. On September 1, 1939, the first day of the Abe cabinet, German armies invaded Poland, a week after the signing of the MolotovRibbentrop Pact, called the German-Soviet Pact of non-aggression. From the first day of the invasion of Poland, the Nazis in accordance with the orders received from Hitler via Himmler and Heydrich began a massive deportation of the Jewish people: Men, women, and children were placed in the concentration camps to be exterminated. The occupation of Poland caused Britain and France to declare war on Germany on September 3, 1939, two days after the German invasion of Poland, and to turn Europe into World War II. In Japan, the war in Europe between Germany and other European nations soon became national news. Abe sought to maintain Japan’s neutrality in the conflict. The ultranationalists in Japan, who favored the choice of Gen. Ugaki Kazushige as potential prime minister after Hiranuma’s departure, did not enjoin Abe’s position to end the war in China. They were against any agreement looking for peace with the United States and Britain. Instead they wanted to form a political military alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Pleading against this alliance, on January 16, 1940, Abe was forced to resign. Following Abe’s resignation, Hirohito appointed Mitsumasa Yonai as prime minister. Navy Minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Senjūrō Hayashi in 1937 and serving in the same position under the first Fumimaro Konoe and Kiichirō Hiranuma administrations, Yonai wanted to defuse the tensions with the international community. He also wanted to develop peaceful diplomatic relations with Britain and the United States. Four months after Yonai’s nomination as prime minister, in Western Europe, on May 10, 1940, Hitler launched his armies on the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. The Nazi victories in Europe had created unprecedented opportunities for Japan to take over the Asian colonies of Britain, France, and the Netherlands. At the same time, the Second World War in Europe placed the Yonai cabinet in a delicate position. Despite the pressure from the army requesting Japan to align to Germany, Yonai continued to maintain his strong opposition to the Tripartite Pact with Nazi-Germany and fascist Italy. When Vichy France signed an armistice with Germany, in late June 1940, leaving Great Britain as the only country fighting the war, the ultranationalists and the right-wing officers in Japan entered in direct conflict with Yonai for his anti-German policy. The disagreement became apparent in early July 1940, as Army Minister Shunroku Hata began to criticize the Prime Minister openly. Yonai was forced to resign on July 21, 1940. He was replaced by Fumimaro Konoe, who occupied for a second term, the position of Japan prime minister. Konoe was aware why Yonai’s government fell. As a former prime minister from 1937 to 1939, he learned a lot from his past experiences. His first move was to create the Imperial Rule Assistance Association (IRAA), a wartime mobilization organization to mobilize the rural population. 66 His second move was to give green light to the army for the invasion of French Indochina. As an advised politician, who assumed the vice presidency of the house of peers in 1931, and ascended to the presidency of the house of peers in 1933, and as a former prime minister, he knew that this invasion would enormously help Japan to get resources it needed to continue the war with China, cut off western supply of Kuomintang armies, and finally intimidate the Dutch East Indies into supplying Japan with oil. 67 His third move was to request an audience with Emperor Hirohito, and tell him that just over a month, if no agreements could be reached with the United States, the war with the Western powers would begin. During that meeting, Hirohito asked a series of questions. He wanted to know the percentage of success that Japan would have to win a war against the United States. “The army and navy chiefs were confident that they could win a war in three months,” said Konoe. Hirohito was not optimistic. When Konoe left that day, he met with Prince Kan’in Kotohito, Chief of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff, and Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu, Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff. Both generals confirmed what Konoe had just said about Japan’s percentage of winning a war against the United States. Soon after that meeting, Hirohito asked the Department of National Planning for a report and learned that oil reserves were only for ten days of operations. Kerosene supplies would last one month. There was crude oil to run the industrial plants for forty-five days. The supply of nickel would make weapons for two months. Heavy machine oil, to keep the tanks going, would last only three months. 68 The great principle of the eight corners of the world under one roof [bakkō ichi’u] is the teaching of our imperial ancestors. We think about it day and night. Today, however, the world is deeply troubled everywhere and disorder seems endless. As the disasters that humankind may suffer are immeasurable, we sincerely hope to bring about a cessation of hostilities and a restoration of peace, and have therefore ordered the government to ally with Germany and Italy, nations which share the same intentions as ourselves…69 One week later, on October 4, 1940, at a press conference in Kyoto, Konoe issued a strong statement. He said that if the United States did not end its provocative actions and deliberately chose to misunderstand the actions of the tripartite powers, there would be no option left but war.70 In November 1940, Japan signed the SinoJapanese treaty with Wang Jinwei, the head of a rival Kuomintang government in Nanjing. In December 1940, the British reopened the Burma Road and lent 10 million pounds to Chang’s Kuomintang.71 Konoe recommended negotiations with the Dutch in January 1941 to secure an alternate source of oil. 72 In Europe five months later, on June 22, 1941, Hitler broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by invading the Soviet Union. Nazi troops, according to plans that had long matured, entered Russia without any declaration of war. From the very first day of their attack on the Soviet territory, the Nazis, in accordance with the orders received from Hitler, began the destruction of cities, towns, and villages, the demolition of factories, power stations, and railways. While in Asia, on July 28, after being threatened with military actions by the Roosevelt administration for invading and occupying the southern half of French Indochina, the Japanese began to formally occupy southern Indochina. On October 16, 1941, realizing his failure to find an accord with the United States demanding for Japanese troops to withdraw from China and Indochina, Konoe resigned. The following day, Hirohito chose Gen. Hideki Tōjō as prime minister. Tōjō served in Siberia as part of the Japanese expeditionary force sent to intervene in the Russian Civil War. After that mission, he served as Japanese military attaché to Germany for three years (1919–1922).73 By 1928, he was bureau chief of the Imperial Japanese Army and was shortly thereafter promoted to colonel taking control of the 8th Infantry Regiment. On July 30, 1940, he was appointed Army Minister in the second Fumimaro Konoe cabinet and remained in that post in the third Konoe cabinet. A militant ultra-nationalist, he believed that the emperor was a living god and favored “direct imperial rule,” ensuring that he would faithfully follow any order from the emperor.74 He advocated the signing of the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in 1940. After Konoe resigned, he became prime minister while occupying in its cabinet the position of army minister and assuming the offices of minister of commerce and of industry as well.75 In the summer of 1941, three months before Tōjō’s nomination as prime minister, the United States demanded that Japan withdraw from Indonesia, which it had only recently occupied. As the Japanese refused, Washington declared an embargo against Japan, depriving it of strategic commodities, especially oil, on which it depended for the war in China.76 In response; on December 7, 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the American war fleet at Pearl Harbor. The following day, Japanese troops invaded Thailand and attacked the British colonies of Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, as well as the territories of Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines. China remained the main territory where most of the actions started at the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War.77 BUILDING AN EMPIRE – TREATIES SIGNED BY JAPAN from 1854 to 1941 Kanagawa Treaty Japan-American Frienship, March 31, 1854 Japan and Korea, February 27, 1876. Treaty of Kanghwa Treaty of Chemulpo Japan and Korea, August 30, 1882. Japan and China, April 18, 1885. Convention of Tianjin Unequal Treaty Anglo-Japanese Treaty Commerce and Navigation Treaty of Shimonoseki Taft-Katsura Agreement of Japan and Western Powers, 1889. Japan and Britain, July, 16, 1894. Japan and China, April 17, 1895. Japan and United States, July 27, 1905. Treaty of Portsmouth Japan and Russia, September 5, 1905. Eulsa Treaty Japan and Korea, November 17, 1905. Japan-Korea Annexation Japan and Korea, August 22, Treaty 1910. Treaty of Versailles Allied Powers (United States, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Washington Naval Treaty London Naval Treaty Tripartite Pact Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact Canada, Australia, India, New Zealand, Japan) and Germany, June 28, 1919. Great Britain, France, Italy, United States, and Japan, February 6, 1922. Great Britain, United States, France, Italy, and Japan, April 22, 1930. German, Italy, and Japan, September 27, 1940. Japan and Russia, April 13, 1941. Chapter Eight Sneak Attack By the summer of 1941, the Japanese took advantage of the overthrow of the French government by the Nazis and its replacement by the puppet Vichy regime. They expanded their empire with the conquest of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The occupation of French Indochina not only put the Japanese army just across the water from Luzon, but also threatened to cut all supply to Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang government based in Chongqing. For the next months, step-by-step, Japan’s conquest of territories in the Pacific continued. The next major decision was the attack of the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The strategy was clear: The Japanese navy should conquer Hawaii. According to Rear Adm. Matome Ugaki: Time would work against Japan because of the vastly superior national resources of the United States…Unless Japan quickly resumed the offensive —sooner, the better— it would eventually become incapable of doing anything more than sitting down and waiting for the American forces to counterattack.1 For Ugaki, a Japanese victory in this decisive engagement might force Washington to negotiate. Attacking America, the decision was unanimously accepted by the commanders of the Japanese army and navy, who were certain of the success of their plan. However, for some Japanese planners, an attack on Pearl Harbor was very risky because it would automatically represent a declaration of war against the United States, which would not hesitate for revenge to attack Japan from a base in Australia, Guinea, or the Philippines. To counter this threat, the new Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Osami Nagano, suggested the invasion of north Australia. Talking about this operation, Tōjō declared: “Australia must learn that defense against our invincible forces is impossible in view of her sparse population, the vastness of her territories, and her geographical position, which makes her so distant from the United States and Britain.”2 Australian Prime Minister John Curtin took seriously Tōyō’s threat. Speaking on March 13, 1941, he said: “This is a warning. Australia is the last Allied bastion between the west coast of America and Japan. If she succumbs, the entire American continent will be wide open to invasion… I tell you that saving Australia will be the same as saving the Western side of the United States.” 3 However, for many experts, Japan’s plan to invade Australia was unrealistic. With 70 percent of its troops engaged in China, the Japanese navy had neither the manpower nor the transport capacity to launch a campaign of this magnitude. Accepting this fact, ViceAdm. Shigeyoshi Inoue, commander of Japan’s southern fleet, pushed for a more limited campaign. Adm. Sadatoshi Tomioka, head of the Project Section at Naval HQ, proposed that Australia’s potential as a base for counterattack could be neutered without the logistical cost of conquest and occupation. According to Tomioka, by occupying Port Moresby in New Guinea and Tulagi in the southeastern Solomon Islands, the supply to Australia from America could be disrupted. The Japanese overall plan was to enclose an area that would include Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), to Port Moresby in Papua, and from there to the Salomon islands, New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa, and on through the central Pacific back to Japan. This vast area, it was thought, could be secured and defended with available naval, army, and air forces, and it would provide Japan with its needs for oil, rubber, minerals, timber, and other resources. It would become part of Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.4 To execute this plan, the first thing was to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. Prelude to Pearl Harbor As Japan had prepared to go to war against hypothetical enemies, since 1907, the Japanese military planners had defined a strategy to determine how the country would defend itself in case of an arm conflict, particularly against Russia and the United States. From a geo-strategic standpoint, the Japanese army would have a major role in a war against Russia and the Japanese navy in one against the United States. In 1941, the Americans froze Japanese overseas assets and then imposed a total embargo on oil and oil products to Japan.5 Following that decision, the basic assumption was that sooner or later, Japan would be fighting a war against the United States. Japanese’s plan to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet that had been stationed at Pearl Harbor since April 1940, had been calculated on the basis to occupy Luzon and Guam, and then the Japanese navy in cooperation with the army would intercept and destroy any forces from the United States that would come to protect the Philippines. The calcul was that destroying the U.S. Pacific Fleet would delay an intervention of the U.S. in the Western pacific to challenge Japanese aggression. Therefore, the Japanese navy had decided to launch a strong attack at Pearl Harbor; while, the Japanese army had been deeply implicated in a plan to simultaneously invade a group of countries in the region. On June 19, 1940, Japan took advantage of the Nazis invasion of France to present a request to Georges Catroux, the governor general of Indochina. The solicitation was the closure of all supply routes to China and the admission in French Indochina of a Japanese inspection team under Gen. Issaku Nishihara. Catroux initially rejected the proposition and finally in June 20, he complied with the ultimatum. Two days after, the Japanese issued a second demand: naval basing rights at Guangzhouwan and the total closure of the Chinese border by July 7. The inspection team led by Gen. Nishihara Issaku arrived in Hanoi on June 29. On July 3, 1940, Japan issued a third demand: air bases and the right to transit combat troops through Indochina. Although Jean Decoux, the new governor general who arrived in Indochina in July to replace Catroux, believed that Indochina could not defend itself against a Japanese invasion, he urged the officials in Paris to reject the demands. Gen. Jules-Antoine Bührer, chief of the Colonial General staff, a supporter of Decoux, also counseled resistance. On August 30, 1940, Japanese foreign minister, Yōsuke Matsuoka, and French foreign minister, Paul Baudouin, signed an agreement, in which it said: “Japanese forces would be stationed in and transit through Indochina only for the duration of the SinoJapanese War.” Five days later, on September 3, negotiations between the supreme commander of Indochinese troops, Maurice Martin, and General Nishihara, began at Hanoi. On September 6, during the negotiation, an infantry battalion of the Japanese 20th Army based in Nanning, violated the Indochinese border near the French fort at Dông Dăng. Twelve days later, on September 18, Nishihara sent an ultimatum to the French government warning that Japanese troops would enter Indochina if the request of the Japanese southern China Area Army, that was demanding that 25,000 Japanese troops be allowed to station in Indochina, was not approved. On September 21, 1940, Martin and Nishihara signed the agreement that authorized the stationing of 6,000 Japanese troops in Tonkin north of the Red River. On September 22, simultaneous with the Battle of South Guangxi, Japanese troops invaded French Indochina.6 The main objective was to prevent China from importing arms and fuel through the Kunming-Hai Phong Railway. After that invasion, Japanese troops occupied Tonkin in northern Indochina and effectively organized the blockade of China. On September 26, French administration in Indochina was allowed by the Japanese as a puppet government. The following day, on September 27, 1940, Japan joined the Axis powers.7 On April 13, 1941, the Japanese alerted that the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 23, 1939, would be violated by Hitler, immediately decided to sign a treaty of neutrality with the Soviet Union.8 Japan wanted to have free hands in Asia. After this treaty, the officials in Tokyo, with the approval of Hirohito, had prepared a secret plan to go to war with the United States. One of the chief architects of this attack was Gen. Hideki Tōjō, nicknamed “The Razor.”9 Tōjō’s intent was predicated on the assumption that Japan would invade and defeat American forces in the Philippines. After being defeated, Washington would use the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor to retake the Philippines. It was imperative for Japan to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet.10 After briefing the emperor, Tōjō ordered Japanese vice Interior Minister, Michio Yuzawa, to concert with the army in order to materialize the attack.11 The militarists in power quickly outlined a plan to attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet.12 However, some disagreements came from a group of officials in the cabinet. Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō, a senior diplomat and moderate, who replaced Adm. Teijirō Toyoda, pleaded that war with the United States must be put off, and the diplomatic consultation to secure an accommodation with Hull and Roosevelt must be continued. Tōgō was one of those who signed the declaration of war against the U.S. in 1941, but he was not confident about Japan’s ability to defeat the U.S. during a war.13 He was rejoined by Kichisaburō Nomura, who was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy and was the ambassador to the United States at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Arguing that those Americans who trusted him were “poor deluded souls” for thinking that he had any influence with the new military cabinet, Ambassador Kichisaburō Nomura wrote, on October 23, 1941: “I don’t want to be the bones of a dead horse. I don’t want to continue this hypocritical existence, deceiving other people…Please send me your permission to return to Japan.” To which Tōgō replied the same day: “I appreciate the efforts you are making…We express our hope that you will see fit to sacrifice all of your own personal wishes and remain at your post.” 14 In October 1940 Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto with good sense warned that “to fight the United States is like fighting the whole world…Doubtless I shall die aboard the Nagato [his flagship]. Meanwhile, Tokyo will be burnt to the ground three times.” 15 Two months before Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto predicted: It is obvious that a Japanese-American war will become a protracted one. As long as the tides of war are in our favor, the United States will never stop fighting. As a consequence, the war will continue for several years, during which [our] material [resources] will be exhausted, vessels and arms will be damaged, and they can be replaced only with great difficulties. Ultimately we will not be able to contend with [the United States]. As a result of war the people’s livelihood will become indigent… and it is hard not to imagine [that] the situation will become out of control. We must not start a war with so little chance of success.16 Meanwhile, in the Japanese Imperial Headquarters at Tokyo, preparations for war moved quickly. On November 5, Hirohito made the final decision for war by sanctioning both the completion of “preparations for operations” and a deadline for terminating the Washington diplomatic negotiations, at midnight December 1.” 17 On November 7, the high command of the Japanese army and Tōyō cabinet had communicated to the United States a revised version of ideas of the Japan-U.S. talks, including the question of stationing troops in China, the principle of nondiscriminatory trade in this country, and the interpretation of the Tripartite Pact. On the question of north China and Mongolia, Tōjō requested a fixed period for the Japanese forces to leave the region, and not automatically to act in accordance with the Tripartite Pact. On the principle of nondiscrimination in commerce, he insisted on attaching the condition that it was acceptable if it was applied not only to China but worldwide. On November 20, Tōjō promised that Japan would not advance by armed forces farther than French Indochina and would withdraw to the northern part of the region after peace was reached in the war with China. In return, the United States was asked to restore relations prior to the freezing of Japanese assets, furnish Japan with a million tons of aviation fuel, and assist it in procuring raw materials from the Dutch East Indies.18 On November 26, 1941, after U.S. soldiers abroad were put on high alert, Hull issued a final ultimatum to Japan. 19 As soon as the imperial policy makers in Tokyo had received the ultimatum, the attack on Pearl Harbor was ready to be executed.20 One week before the execution, Adm. Osami Nagano, navy chief of staff, went over the war plan in detail with Hirohito. “Imperial Navy Operations Plan for War Against the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands” had been drafted by the general staff of the Combined Fleet aboard the battleship Nagato, and then forwarded directly to the Navy General Staff before going up the chain of command.21 Hirohito after a secret meeting with the Army and Navy General Staff —no minister of state attended this audience— gave the final go-ahead to attack Pearl Harbor.22 Pearl Harbor: Attack, Casualties, and Facts The Japanese fleet assembled at Hitokappu Bay, aided by German spy service, secretly prepared the attack on Pearl Harbor. Conceived by the commander in chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Isoroku Yamamoto, the operation was designed to immobilize the United States Fleet for one year in order to give Japan enough time to win a certain number of victories before attempting a negotiated settlement.23 Vice-Adm. Chūichi Nagumo led the mission.24 On month before the attack, on November 8, 1941, flag officers of the combined fleet were assembled and Admiral Yamamoto, commander in chief Japanese Combined Fleet, told them: The success of our attack on Pearl Harbor will prove to be the Waterloo of the war to follow…It is clear that even if America’s enormous heavy industry is immediately converted to manufacture of ships, aircraft, and other raw materials, it will take several months for her manpower to be mobilized against us. If we assure our strategic supremacy from the outset…by attacking and seizing all key points at one blow while Americans is still unprepared, we can swing the scale of operations in our favor.25 On December 1, 1941, at the final Gozen Kaigi, it was decided that on December 8, Japan would officially declare war with the United States. On December 6, the fourteen-part coded text of the memorandum, which ended with a declaration of war against the United States, arrived at the Embassy of Japan in Washington. The same day, the Imperial Japanese Army attacked British and Dutch troops in the Pacific without a declaration of war. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Air Force by surprise attacked the U.S. naval base on the island of Oahu, in the U.S. territory of Hawaii.26 Authorized by the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy Staff, the attack came in response to the U.S. oil embargo on Japan. Confronted with military strangulation by oil embargoes and the pressure to abandon a large part of its continental empire, Japan opted for launching a war against the United States and Britain.27 The attack also was a response to the economic sanctions taken by Washington against Japan after the invasion of China and French Indochina. It directed to the entry of the United States into World War II.28 Led by Gen. Hideki Tōjō and executed by three Japanese commanders of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service: Chūichi Nagumo, Isoroku Yamamoto, and Mitsuo Fuchida, the attack against the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was launched on Sunday, December 7, 1941, at 7:48 a.m.29 The first-wave strike, a total of 183 planes led by Lt. Comm. Shigeharu Murata, took off from six carriers. They arrived, completely by surprise, at 7:55 a.m. over Hawaii, and began their attack. The first group consisted of fifty Nakajima “‘Kate’” B5N bombers armed with 800 kilograms armor piercing bombs, and another forty “‘Kates’” armed with Type-91 torpedoes. The primary targets were capital ships, aircraft carriers, and battleships. A second group of forty-four Aichi D3A “‘Val’” dive-bombers were targeted at Ford Island, Hickam Field, and Wheeler Field, while a third group of forty-five Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters would provide cover. A second wave of 171 planes, led by Comm. Shigekazu Shimazaki, arrived at Pearl Harbor at 8:40 a.m. The planes attacked Hickam Field as well as the aircraft and hangars at Kaneohe, Ford Island, and Barbers Point. At 9:15 a.m., the second wave of 167 aircraft caused less damage. During the operation, in total, 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,247 were wounded. Four battleships were sunk: USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma, USS Nevada, and USS West Virginia, and four were severely damaged: USS Cassin, USS Downes, USS California, and USS Oglala, while 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed. The damaged ships also included light cruisers USS Helena and USS Honolulu, which were torpedoed. The destroyer USS Shaw, the repair vessel USS Vestal, and the battleship USS Maryland, escaped with minor damages. Out of 402 planes on the islands, 347 were either destroyed or heavily damaged. Five planes flying back to Hawaii from the carrier USS Enterprise were shot down. By comparison, the Japanese lost 29 aircraft and had 64 men killed; losses included 5 midget submarines of which 4 were sunk.30 In Washington, news on the attack had been received with incredulity. Cordell Hull, the secretary of state, Frank Knox, the secretary of the navy, and Henry L. Stimson, the secretary of war, were shocked when they received the news. The Japanese government’s fourteen-part message with its declaration of intent to terminate negotiations with Washington had been delivered by the ambassador of Japan to the United States, Adm. Kichisaburō Nomura. Nomura delivered the message several hours after the attack. The same day, a formal declaration of war with an imperial rescript was issued. The diaries of the Privy Seal Kōichi Kido and Hirohito’s naval aide, Eiichiro Jo, allow us to follow a minute-by-minute sequence of the attacks.31 According to Jo: “Before dawn on December 8, (Tokyo Time), the forces heading for Malaya started landing at Singora at 1:30 a.m. and completed the landing at 4:30 a.m. 2:30 a.m.: Foreign Minister Tōgō presented the emperor with a message from President Roosevelt, which according to the recollection of a Chamberlain seemed to annoy him. 3:30 a.m.: The Pearl Harbor surprise attack was successful. 4:00 a.m. Japan issued a final ultimatum to the United States. 5:30 a.m. Singapore bombed. Air attacks on Davao, Guam, and Wake. 7:10 a.m. All the above was reported to the emperor. The American gunboat Wake was captured on the Shanghai front. The British gunboat Petrel was sunk. From 7:15 to 7:30 a.m. the Chief of the Navy General Staff reported on the war situation. At 7:30 a.m. Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō informally reported to the emperor on the imperial rescript declaring war. At 7:35 a.m. (Cabinet meeting) the Chief of the Army General Staff reported on the war situation. At 10:45 a.m. the emperor attended an emergency meeting of the Privy Council. At 11:00 a.m. the Imperial Rescript declaring war was promulgated. At 11:40 a.m. Hirohito conferred with Kido for about twenty minutes. At 2:00 p.m. The emperor summoned the Army and Navy Ministers and bestowed an Imperial rescript on them. The Army Minister, representing both services, replied to the emperor. At 3:05 p.m. The emperor had a second meeting with Kido, lasting for about twenty minutes. At 4:30 p.m. The Chiefs of Staff formally reported on the draft of the Tripartite Military Pact. At 8:30 p.m. The Chief of the Navy General Staff reported on the achievements of the Hawaii air attack. Throughout the day, Hirohito wore his naval uniform and seemed to be in a splendid mood. In his post-war Shōwa-Tenno Dokuhaku Roku (The Emperor’s Soliloquy), Hirohito said, “[In 1941] we thought we could achieve a draw with the U.S., or at best win by a six or four margin; but total victory was nearly impossible…When the war actually began, however, we gained a miraculous victory at Pearl Harbor and our invasions of Malaya and Burma succeeded far quicker than expected.” In the Dokuhaku Roku, Hirohito added, “If not for this [agreement], we might have achieved peace when we were in an advantageous position.”32 Pearl Harbor: Analyzing the Attack U.S. attempts to deter Japanese expansion into the Southwestern Pacific via the imposition of harsh economic sanctions, redeployment of the U.S. Fleet from southern California to Pearl Harbor, and the dispatch of B-17 longrange bombers to the Philippines all failed because the United States insisted that Japan evacuate both Indochina and China as the price for a restoration of U.S. trade. The United States demanded, in effect, that Japan abandon its empire, and by extension its aspiration to become a great power, and submit to the economic dominion of the United States — something no self-respecting Japanese leader could accept.—33 On Pearl Harbor many questions are still today in debate. Whether or not officials in Washington knew that the U.S. Pacific Fleet would be attacked by the Japanese navy on December 7, 1941, or did Gen. George C. Marshall, chief of staff, had been advised of the operation? According to a source from the National Archives, Washington knew a Pacific attack was coming but those in position refused to jeopardize the security of their code-breaking success. They decided to not contact Rear-Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, the commander in chief of the United States Fleet and the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The “war warning” arrived at Pearl Harbor after the last attacking plane had departed. Even with advance warning, the U.S. forces in Hawaii could have neither repelled nor neutralized the attack. Washington misjudged Japan’s superior weaponry and the size and skill of her attacking forces.34 There were a lot of recriminations and blame on the U.S. Navy for lack of leadership after the raid on Pearl Harbor. Within the week, Secretary of State for the Navy, Frank Knox, visited Hawaii and decided that Admiral Kimmel would have to be replaced. Lt. Gen. Walter Short, technically responsible for the defense of Hawaii, was also relieved of his command. The question was: “How could Kimmel and Short have been so unprepared to defend Pearl Harbor?” In Washington, Adm. Rainsford Stark, chief of naval operations warned Rear Adm. Claude Bloch, commander of the Fourteenth Naval District in Hawaii: “Tell Kimmel I will be asking him how far out the patrol craft were and in what sectors.” On December 2, 1941, the navy’s Fourteen Naval District Combat Intelligence Unit on Oahu, known as Station Hypo, under the command of Lt. Comm. Edwin Layton, had warned Kimmel: “As there had been no radio traffic from four Japanese carriers for fully fifteen and possibly twenty-five days, their location was unknown.” A few days earlier, on November 27, 1941, Secretary of State for War, Henry Stimson, sent a message to Kimmel and Short to the effect that a war with Japan could start at any moment. 35 Adm. Harold Rainsford Stark had himself sent a warning to Adm. Thomas C. Hart, commander of the Asiatic Fleet, and Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii, “…An aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days.” Stark also informed them that the Japanese embassies had destroyed their codebooks in Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila, Washington, and London. The day before the attack, Joseph Harsch of the Christian Science Monitor had asked Kimmel whether Japan would attack America, and the admiral answered categorically, “No, young man, I don’t think they’d be such damned fools.” Robert Stinnett in his book Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor claimed that the United States was reading Japan’s naval operational messages prior to Pearl Harbor. Stinnett alleged that Franklin Roosevelt and his administration deliberately provoked and allowed the attack to bring the United States into World War II. Stinnett argued that the attacking fleet was detected by radio and intelligence intercepts, but the information was deliberately withheld from Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, the commander of the Pacific Fleet at that time. In Washington, Adm. Rainsford Stark, chief of naval operations, and Rear Adm. Richmond Kelly, head of War Plans Division of the Navy Department, failed to give Kimmel all the information that was available from PURPLE, a diplomatic crypto-graphical machine used by the Japanese Foreign Office, and JN-25, the name given by code-breakers to the chief, and most secure, command and control communications scheme used by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Access to this information would have given Kimmel a much direct warning that a Japanese attack was imminent.36 While the army passed the full MAGIC intercept information package to MacArthur, Rear-Admiral Turner failed to pass key pieces of information to Kimmel in Hawaii because of an internal political battle with naval intelligence chief, Capt. Theodore Wilkinson. At a later government inquiry into Pearl Harbor, Adm. Patrick Nieson Lynch Bellinger, Kimmel’s air defense officer, testified that “the information available to me —limited and unofficial as it was— did not indicate that I should recommend to the Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet [Kimmel] that distant patrol plane search for the security of Pearl Harbor be undertaken at this time.” After the first Pearl Harbor inquiry conducted by Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, Adm. Ernest King, who had replaced Stark as head of the navy, declared that Robert’s committee had “merely selected a ‘scapegoat’ to satisfy the popular demand…” 37 King endorsed the blame allocated to admirals Stark and Kimmel by Supreme Justice Owen Roberts for the disaster. He later retracted his endorsement given to Admiral Hewitt. In April 1948, he wrote a letter to the Navy Department to say that he had been in error in endorsing Hewitt’s report and requested that his endorsement be withdrawn. On May 25, 1999, the Senate passed a non-binding resolution exonerating Kimmel and Short, however, the resolution only passed by fifty-two to forty-seven votes, and was not endorsed by Pres. Bill Clinton.38 In August 1945, Adm. Henry Kent Hewitt began to conduct the second inquiry, called The Pearl Harbor Court of Inquiry, and under pressure from Secretary of the Navy, James Vincent Forrestal, he pushed to endorse Hewitt’s report with an endorsement that read: Admiral Stark and Admiral Kimmel though not culpable to a degree warranting formal disciplinary action, were nevertheless, inadequate in emergency, due to the lack of the superior judgment necessary for exercising command commensurate with their duties. Appropriate action appears to me to be the relegation of both officers to positions in which their lack of superior strategic judgment may not result in future errors.39 David Kahn, in a review of Stinnett’s book in the New York Review of Books, November 2, 2000, (59–60), captured the reader’s attention to an archived official history of the cryptanalytic section of OP-20-G that reported the number of Japanese naval messages read in 1941. The number was “none.” Duane L. Whitlock, a veteran of Station Cast on Corregidor, attested in 1986: “The reason that not one single JN-25 decrypt made prior to Pearl Harbor had ever been found or declassified is that no such decrypt ever existed.” On January 22, 1946, Capt. Joseph R. Redman, chief of naval communications, wrote to the judge advocate general: “All appropriate files of the Naval Communication Service have been searched for any dispatches of a war-warning nature from the Navy Department to naval commanders in the field between noon, Eastern Standard Time, on December 6, 1941, and 2:30 p.m., Eastern Standard Time on December 7, 1941, inclusive. This will certify that no such dispatches are contained in those files.” 40 More Analyses on Pearl Harbor The disaster that awaited Japan in its war with the United States was rooted in a fatal excess of ambition overpower. Japan’s imperial ambitions, which included Soviet territory in Northeast Asia as well as China and Westerncontrolled territory in Southeast Asia, lay beyond Japan’s material capacity. Japan wanted to be a great power of the first rank like the United States, Great Britain, and Germany but lacked the industrial base and military capacity to become one.41 Who would imagine at this late date, seventy-nine years after Pearl Harbor, the debate is still open among the historians on the veracity of the facts? Robert S. Stinnett and Stephen Budiansky in The Truth About Pearl Harbor: A Debate, wrote: Could this tragic event that resulted in over 3,000 Americans killed and injured in a single two-hour attack have been averted? In his book, Day of Deceit, Stinnett said, that American officials in Washington not only knew that Japanese attack was imminent, but that they had deliberately engaged in policies intended to provoke the attack in order to draw a reluctant peace living American public into a war in Europe for good or ill.42 In 2020, two crucial questions are still not been categorically answered by the historians: Did U.S. naval radar in the Pacific had depicted the Japanese naval armada before the attack; and American commanders at Hawaii had chosen to allow the attack to happen and push the United States in World War II? Did Pearl Harbor was indeed a surprise attack and must be regarded as President Roosevelt described it as a “Day of Infamy?” The Roberts Commission, as it came to be called, commenced sworn, recorded hearings in Hawaii on 22 December. The pertinent question is: When former commanders —Walter Short and Husband E. Kimmel— acknowledged during the hearings that they had made mistakes; to what degree the two commanders were sincere in their declarations? Short said, “I think that we [the Army] made a very serious mistake when we didn’t go to an alert against an all-out attack.” Kimmel accepted that he underestimated the importance of the code burning message, and that his judgment on torpedoes running (in Pearl’s shallow water had been “entirely wrong.”43 The two men were not connected in sharing information. For example, Kimmel did not know that Short’s radar was operating only for a limited number of hours each day, and Short did not know that Kimmel was not conducting distant aerial reconnaissance. (Quoted in Kimmel, Admiral Kimmel’s Story, 144, “The language “dereliction of duty,” originated, apparently, in the White House executive order establishing the Roberts Commission dated 18 December 1941. It mandated that the commission determine whether “dereliction of duty or errors of judgment on the part of Army and Navy personnel” had contributed to the Japanese success.” The testimonies of the commanders present at Pearl Harbor and other important figures in position at Washington such as Gen. Walter C. Short, commanding general of the Hawaiian Department, Rear Adm. Claude C. Bloch, commander Fourteenth Naval District, Rear Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner, chief, War Plans Division, Navy Department, Adm. Harold R. Stark, chief of Naval Operations, Frank Knox, secretary of the Navy, Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief, United States Fleet, and commander in chief, Pacific Fleet, Gen. George C. Marshall, chief of staff, United States Army, Henry L. Stimson, secretary of war, proved one thing: “Washington knew a Pacific attack was coming but the officials there did not believe during the first part of December that Hawaii was directly at risk. They predicted the United States would be at war with Japan within the next few months. Considering all the facts, I must say, the conspiracy theory that accused President Roosevelt to force the United States into war by a secret and deliberate contrivance that place the fleet in harm’s way, is inaccurate.44 More Japanese Attacks One day after Pearl Harbor, Japanese troops attacked Hong Kong, and, two days later, sank Britain’s two main warships, the Prince of Wales and the cruiser Repulse. The same day, Japanese forces, led by Lieutenant General Yamashita, landed at Kota Bharu on the border of Malaya and Thailand. Despite being inferior in terms of number, the Japanese pushed the Allied forces farther and farther until they retreated to Singapore. The invasion of the Philippines started on December 8, 1941, ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite resistance led by General MacArthur, on December 10, Japanese troops landed in the country.45 Lacking air cover, the American Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines withdrew to Java on December 12, 1941. Guam, Wake Island, fell a few days later. Joint navy-army Japanese task forces seized the Celebes and the Dutch oil fields in Borneo on December 16, and landed troops and planes in the northern, southern, and eastern parts of the Philippines during late December.46 On January 3, 1942, Japanese troops occupied Manila without resistance. American forces were too weak to defend the capital. Facing defeat, MacArthur had declared it an open city to protect the civilian population. Pushing further into the Southwest Pacific, Japanese troops captured Java in the Dutch Indies, and then seized the Australian naval, and air base at Rabaul in New Britain. 47 Japanese troops also invaded Thailand and pressured its leaders to declare war on the United States and Great Britain. In less than half a century, Japan had increased its empire from 147,669 square miles to more than one million square miles. In the summer of 1941, Japan controlled an empire of over 300 million people (including 200 million Chinese) and territories covering 3 million square miles. By March 1942, Japan had seized Singapore and Malaysia (127,000 square miles), taking a significant part of the British Empire in the process. The Netherlands’ Indonesian colonies (735,000 square miles) were subsumed by Japan after the surrender of Dutch forces on March 9. Added to these territories, Japan also took Guam (US territory), Wake Island (US territory), Hong Kong (British territory), and the mandated Australian territories of the Bismarck Archipelago. In addition, the islands of Attu and Kiska, in the Aleutian chain linked with Alaska, were captured as a prelude to Yamamoto’s Midway campaign. By comparison, in 1939, the British Empire had 449 million people and covered 22 million square miles; France, 56 million people over 7.5 million square miles; Holland, 61 million over 1.3 million square miles; and America, 17 million people over 1.3 million square miles (including the territories of the Philippines, Alaska, and Hawaii).48 Japan’s empire at its peak, in June 1942, stretched from the Russian borders in the north, the barren wastes of Kamchatka and the islands of Alaska in the northeast, to Jakarta in the southwest and Timor in the south, and from the borders of Burma/India in the west to the Marshall Islands in the east, and Guadalcanal in the southeast. The area covered by Japan, including oceans, was 20 million square miles, an area almost 140 times larger than Japan’s home islands. The diameter of Japan’s Imperial borders had expanded to 5,000 miles.49 Foreign Minister, Matsuoka, proclaimed before the war, “The Co-Prosperity Sphere in the Far East is based on the spirit of Hakko Ichiu, or the Eight Corners of the Universe under One Roof …We must control the Western Pacific…” Building an empire was the aspiration for the Japanese officials. During a short period of time, Japan conquered more territory than had any other military campaign in history over a five-month period. At Pearl Harbor, the Japanese navy sank four out of eight American battleships, destroyed 180 aircraft, and damaged 167 others. The Thai government capitulated on December 10, 1941, the Dutch oil field in Borneo on December 16, and Hong Kong on December 25. Manila fell on January 3, 1942, Australian military bases at Rabaul on January 23, Malaya on January 31, Singapore and the Palembang oil fields on Sumatra on February 15, Lashio on March 8, and Corregidor on May 6. Chapter Nine Land and Sea Invasions Japan’s aggression in China, military alliance with Hitler, and proclamation of a “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” that included resource-rich Southeast Asia were major milestones along the road to war, but the proximate cause was Japan’s occupation of southern French Indochina in July 1941, which placed Japanese forces in a position to grab Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies. Japan’s threatened conquest of Southeast Asia, which in turn would threaten Great Britain’s ability to resist Nazi aggression in Europe, prompted the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt to sanction Japan by imposing an embargo on U.S. oil exports upon which the Japanese economy was critically dependent. Yet the embargo, far from deterring further Japanese aggression, prompted a Tokyo decision to invade Southeast Asia.1 Attacking the Philippines In the six months following Pearl Harbor nothing seemed to stop Japan’s advance in the Pacific.2 As tensions rose between Tokyo and Washington, Japanese troops invaded several islands, looking to take control of their natural resources. On December 8, 1941, they attacked Guam in the Mariana Islands. Naval Governor of Guam, George McMillin, surrendered to the Japanese forces led by commander and leader Tomitaro Horii on December 10, 1941. 3 For the next three years, (Dec. 1941 – August 1944), Guam was controlled by the Japanese troops who were housed in schools and governments buildings in Agama. Commander Hayashi Horace, one of the military leaders during the Japanese invasion of Guam, made the Agama’s former governor’s palace as the headquarters for the Keibitai.4 Japanese troops then attacked the Philippines. The Japanese launched the invasion by sea from Formosa, over 200 miles (320 km) north of the Philippines, and on December 8, 1941, landed on Luzon. Two days later, on December 10, 1941, the Japanese navy sank the British battleship Prince of Wales and the cruiser Repulse off Singapore. In Manila, capital and chief city of the Philippines, Japanese bombers caught most of the U.S. Army’s Far East air strength on the ground, destroying more than half its fighter and bomber planes. Other raids, the Japanese forces destroyed Cavite Naval Yard, south of Manila. MacArthur’s alternative plans to Rainbow-5 became a total disaster.5 Adm. Thomas C. Hart, commander of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, in accord with MacArthur, had sent part of his forces south in November.6 With little air protection left, the remaining surface vessels in the Philippines were in grave danger. Hart sent the rest of his larger ships to Java or to Australia. Only the ground forces, a few fighter planes, about thirty submarines, and a few small vessels remained to defend the Philippines.7 Taking advantage of the situation, Lt. Gen. Masaharu Homma, the commander of Japan’s 14th Army invasion force, rapidly achieved the invasion of northern Luzon. A great tactician, Homma encircled the American forces and cut off their line of retreat to Manila.8 The American Far East Air Force (FEAF), in the only action, sunk a Japanese minesweeper and slightly damaged several other ships.9 The triple landings on the main Philippines island of Luzon were made with 4,000 Japanese troops landed at Aparri and Vigan in the north.10 On December 12, 1941, a group of 2,500 men landed at Legazpi in the south. On December 21, the main 14th Army units, consisting of 43,000 men of the 48th Division, landed at Lingayen Gulf some 150 miles north of Manila.11 MacArthur’s forces composed of 32,000 American troops of which 12,000 were Philippine Scouts, and an estimated 120,000 conscript of the Philippine army, were crushed by the Japanese forces. Major General Wainwright’s plan to defend Homma’s advance at the Agno River, 16 miles south of Lingayen Bay, with the aim of holding the Japanese advance long enough to enable the Bataan Peninsula to be supplied, failed. Japanese forces landing on Luzon Island continued until December 22 with the U.S. Air Force only capable of offering a weak resistance. Under pressure of General Homma’s troops, the American forces in the Philippines withdrew to the Bataan Peninsula and to the island of Corregidor at the entrance to Manila Bay. As the Japanese converged on Manila, MacArthur began executing plans to retreat his forces on the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island so as to deny the use of Manila Bay to the Japanese. 12 On January 2, 1942, the Japanese troops occupied Manila, which MacArthur had declared an open city, ostensibly to protect its civilian population but also because his forces were to weak to defend it. 13 Once the Philippines fell to Japanese troops, Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to travel to Melbourne to take command of the Allied forces in the area. On March 11, 1942, MacArthur and several members of his family and staff left the Philippines island of Corregidor.14 They traveled in patrol torpedo boats through stormy seas patrolled by Japanese warships and reached Mindanao, the second-largest island in the Philippines, two days later. From there, the group flew to Australia in a pair of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, ultimately arriving in Melbourne by train on March 21. By early 1942, over 25,000 US troops, unable to travel on the Philippines, had already arrived in Australia. There, MacArthur made his famous speech in which he declared to journalists: The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines and proceed from Corregidor to Australia for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary object of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through and I shall return.15 Meanwhile, most of the 80,000 prisoners of war captured by the Japanese at Bataan were forced to undertake the infamous “Bataan Death March,” to a prison camp 80 miles to the north.16 MacArthur wrote to Gen. Henry H. Arnold in Washington to explain the annihilation of his Air Force. “Their losses were due entirely to the overwhelming superiority of enemy force,” he wrote, “No Unit could have done better…No item of loss can properly be attributed to neglect or lack of care…”17 Invading Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, and Burma Under the command of Maj. Gen. Kiyotake Kawaguchi, an escort of the cruiser Yura commanded by Rear Adm. Shintaro Hashimoto, the destroyers of the 12th Destroyer Division, Marakumo, Shinonome, Shirakumo, and Usugumo, submarine-chaser Ch 7 and the seaplane tender Kamikawa Maru, ten transport ships carrying the Japanese 35th Infantry Brigade HQ, the cruisers Kumano and Suzuya, the destroyers Fubuki and Sagiri commanded by Rear Adm. Takeo Kurita, left Cam Ranh Bay in French Indochina. On December 8, 1941, the combined Japanese forces led by Lieutenant General Yamashita landed at Kota Bharu on the border of Malaya and Thailand. This mission was done simultaneously with the attack on Pearl Harbor to prevent America from interfering in Southeast Asia. The Japanese troops attacked British territories in Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, and Burma, a total of 260,000 square miles. Those attacks that began four hours after Pearl Harbor were in violation of international law as Japan had no declared war against the British Empire. Commanded by Maj. Gen. Christopher Maltby, the British forces composed by British, Canadian, Indian, as well as the local Hong Kong Chinese Regiment and the Hong Kong Volunteer Defense Corps, could not resist the Japanese 21st, 23rd, and 38th Regiments led by Lt. Gen. Takashi Sakai. It took just 70 days for the Japanese forces to crush the British Empire forces in Malaya and Singapore, which surrendered on February 15, 1942. Hundreds of people were massacred by the Japanese troops in Hong Kong after the surrender.18 Controlling the Pacific The Japanese forces intended to capture Miri and Seria, while the rest would capture Kuching. At dawn on December 16, 1941, two landing units secured Miri and Seria with only very little resistance from the British forces. A few hours later, Lutong was captured as well. On December 22, a Japanese convoy left Miri for Kuching, but was detected by Dutch flying boat X–35. The following day, under the command of Lt. Comm. Carel A. J. van Groeneveld, K XIV infiltrated the convoy and began its attack.19 The Japanese army transports Hiyoshi Maru and Katori Maru were sunk with the loss of hundreds of troops. The rest of the soldiers were able to land. By the afternoon, although the 2nd Battalion, 15th Punjab Regiment, resisted the attack, they were outnumbered and retreated up the river; Kuching was in Japanese hands. Three weeks after capturing Kuching, on January 11, 1942, Japanese forces invaded the island of Tarakan. The landing on Tarakan was assigned to the 26th Brigade, a force of around 12,000 troops under the command of Brigadier David Whitehead. The small Dutch garrison managed to destroy some of the infrastructure before being overwhelmed. On January 18, 1942, using small fishing boats, the Japanese landed at Sandakan, the seat of government of British North Borneo. The North Borneo Armed Constabulary, with only 650 men, provided any resistance to slow down the Japanese invasion. On January 23, 1942, Japanese forces captured Rabaul, the capital of the Australian-controlled territory of New Guinea.20 The small Australian garrison, Lark Force, was overwhelmed and most of its troops, including six Army nurses, were captured. On January 29, the Japanese Army General Staff ordered the Combined Fleet to capture the strategic point of Lae, Salamaua, and Port Moresby in the British (eastern) part of the island of New Guinea, thereby implementing the first step of a plan to isolate and ultimately attack Australia.21 On February 3, 1942, Japanese aircraft attacked Port Moresby. Months of air battles occurred above the town. Four days later, on February 7, Hirohito placed his seal on Daikairei Number 14, ordering the Combined Fleet to attack the island of Timor in southeastern Indonesia.22 In the Battle of the Coral Sea, a Japanese invasion fleet headed for Port Moresby, but turned back in the face of an Australian-led naval group in the Jomard Passage. Later, by puting troops ashore at Milne Bay, the Japanese attempted to take Port Moresby by land over the Kokoda Track. This attack was repulsed on both fronts.23 On February 14, 1942, the invasion of Sumatra was planned prior to the invasion of Java in order to destroy the west flank of the Allies by giving access to Java. Following a brief resistance, the Japanese succeeded in forcing an under-equipped force of Allied military known as Sparrow Force predominantly from Australia, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands East Indies to surrender. On February 20, 1942, the joint-navy-army task force captured the Portuguese and Dutch territories on Timor. On March 5, they occupied Batavia on Java, and shortly afterward, took control of Bougainville; the largest island in the Solomons chain, threatening American and British supply lanes to Australia. 24 On March 7, 1942, the liaison conference formalized the expanding Pacific offensive. The new policy document in its first article stated: “In order to force Britain to submit and the United States to lose its will to fight, we shall continue expanding from the areas we have already gained,” and while “working long-term to establish an impregnable strategic position; we shall actively seize whatever opportunities for attack may occur.”25 By March 1942, Japan had occupied Singapore and Malaysia (127,000 square miles.) The Netherlands’ Indonesian colonies (735,000 square miles) fell into Japanese hands after the surrender of Dutch forces on March 9. Japan also took Guam and Wake Island (US territories), Hong Kong (British territory), and the mandated Australian territories of the Bismarck Archipelago. In addition, the islands of Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian chain linked with Alaska were captured as a prelude to Yamamoto’s Midway campaign.26 By April 1942, the Japanese had captured strategic points in the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands, territory belonging to British India and running from the Malacca Straits all the way to the mouth of the Indian Ocean, thereby forcing the small British fleet in the Indian Ocean to remove to the coast of East Africa.27 The Japanese troops occupied Burma on May 1942, and declared the colony independent as the State of Burma. 28 A puppet government led by Ba Maw was installed. Ba was afterwards declared head of state. His cabinet included Aung San as war minister and the Communist leader Thakins Than Tun as minister of land and agriculture; as well as the socialist leaders Thakins Nu and Mya. On June 7, 1942, the Japanese pushed their vast Pacific defense perimeter north toward Alaska by placing garrisons on Kiska and Attu in the Aleutians. On July 21, following the failure of a seaborne assault during the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 1942), Japanese forces landed on the northern Papuan coast at Bhabua, between Buna and Gona, as part of a plan to capture the strategically important town of Port Moresby via an overland advance across the Owen Stanley Range along the Kokoda Track. By August 1942, Japanese control of the Pacific was almost total. Most of the operational goals in the South Pacific that had been set prior to Pearl Harbor had now been achieved. Key strategic resource areas of the south were in Japanese hands; the war’s first stage as initially calculated had ended.29 In eleven years from 1931 to 1942, Japan had expanded its empire from 243,500 square miles to 2.9 million square miles, and, as an emperor, Hirohito imposed his rules over five-hundred million Asians. The Japan Empire stretched from the Russian borders in the north, the barren wastes of Kamchatka and the islands of Alaska in the northeast, to Jakarta in the southwest and Timor in the south, and from the borders of Burma/India in the west to the Marshall Islands in the east, and Guadalcanal in the southeast. The area covered by Japan’s empire including oceans was now 20 million square miles, an area almost 140 times larger than Japan’s home islands.30 Five years of war with China had drained Japan and required a standing army of 120 divisions (1.5 million troops) just to maintain its hold over half of the country. Now, with its sweeping victories over America, Great Britain, Holland, and Australia, Japan had an additional 1.25 million square miles to administer and garrison.31 Prisoners who had been captured during these invasions would be put to work as slave labor: building infrastructure, harvesting on plantations, and digging in the mines. Fighting under the name of hakkō ichiu, a belief that the entire world must be united under one emperor, Japanese troops occupied almost 80 percent of the territories in Asia during World War II. The diameter of Japan’s imperial borders had expanded to 5,000 miles. For several years, Japan was at war with most of the countries in the Pacific. At the same time, it was fighting an all-out war with the United States, the world’s most powerful economy, Great Britain, the world’s largest empire, and China, the world’s most populous country.32 During the first six months of the Pacific War, Japanese forces achieved victories so shocking and in such rapid succession that in April 1942, Admiral Yamamoto wrote to his geisha, Plum Dragon: “The first stage of operations has been a kind of children’s hour, and will soon be over; now comes the adults’ hour, so perhaps I’d better stop dozing and bestir myself.”33 NOTES Chapter 1 From Samurais to Soldiers 1. Born in Newport, Rhode Island, Matthew C. Perry was a Commodore of the United States Navy who commanded ships in several wars, including the War of 1812 and the Mexican American War. With the advent of the steam engine, he became a leading advocate of modernizing the U.S. Navy and came to be considered “The Father of the Steam Navy” in the United States. He played a leading role in the opening of Japan to the West with the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. On Commodore Perry see Jean M. Copes, “The Perry Family: A Newport Naval Dynasty of the Early Republic.” (Newport History: Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society, Newport, RI: Newport Historical Society, Fall 1994) 66, Part 2 (227): 49–77. Also see David Curtis Skaggs, “Olivier Hazard Perry: Honor, Courage, and Patriotism in the Early U.S. Navy.” (US Naval Institute Press, 2006), 4. 2. When Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay in 1854, Japan had been a military dictatorship, known as the Tokugawa Shogunate, closed to the outside world for 250 years. President Fillmore sent Perry to Japan to protect the rights of American whalers, set up navy coaling stations, and opens the country for trade. Perry managed to gain the first two objectives in the Treaty of Kanagawa of 1854, and in 1858, the U.S. Consul to Tokyo completed negotiations of the commercial treaty. These treaties with the United States were the catalyst to a chain of events that ten years later led to the Meiji Restoration, 1866–1869. The Japanese emperor retook power and began the industrial revolution, which was to transform Japan to a world-class industrial and military power by the end of the century. Cited by Dana R. Dillon, The China Challenge: Standing Strong Against the Military, Economic, and Political Threats that Imperil America, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 8. 3. Perry was aware of the difficulties involving attempting to establish relations with Japan, and initially protested that he would prefer to command the Mediterranean squadron of the US Navy instead of being assigned to yet another doomed attempt to “open” Japan. These precedents included: In 1846, Commander James Biddle, anchored in Edo Bay on an official mission with two ships, including one warship armed with seventytwo cannons, asking for ports to be opened for trade, but his requests for a trade agreement remained unsuccessful. In 1849, Captain James Glynn sailed to Nagasaki, leading at last to the first successful negotiation by an American with Japan. James Glynn recommended to the United States Congress that negotiations to open Japan be backed up by a demonstration of force, thus paving the way for Perry’s expedition. See Chang-su Houchins, Artifacts of diplomacy: Smithsonian collections from Commodore Matthew Perry’s Japan Expedition (1853–1854), (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995). See also Samuel Eliot Morison, Old Bruin: Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry 1794–1858, (Boston: Little Brown, 1967). 4. Tokugawa Ieyoshi was the twelfth shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan. He was the 121st emperor of Japan. On Eras of Ieyoshi’s bakufu, see Harold Bolitho, Treasures Among Men: The Fudai Daimyo in Tokugawa Japan, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974). Also see Conrad Totman, Politics in the Tokugawa bakufu, (1600–1843), (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967). 5. On the treaty, see this article on (weaponandwarfare.com, May 14, 2017), “Commodore 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Perry Anchors in Tokyo Bay” Also see Rhoda Blumberg, Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun, (HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1985), 18; John H. Schroeder, Matthew Calbraith Perry: antebellum Sailor and Diplomat, (Booksgoogle.com), 286. See Harold Bolitho, Abe Masahiro and the New Japan, in the Bakufu in Japanese History, edited by Jeffrey P. Mass and William Hauser, (Stanford California Press, 1985). Review by Mary Elizabeth Berry, The Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 13, no. 1 (Winter, 1987), 186–194. See also Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); S. Well Williams, A Journal of the Perry Expedition to Japan (1853–1854), (F.W. Williams, 1910). Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 9. “In 1639, Japan closed itself to all Western powers except the Netherlands. In 1854, following the visit of U.S. warships Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry in 1853, Japan reopened its doors to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia. The following year, France was included by the Treaty of Amity.” Vice Admiral Yoji Koda, “The Russo-Japanese War: Primary Causes of Japanese Success,” (Naval War College Review, spring 2005, vol. 58, no. 2. Edwin Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 13. Shogunate, Japanese bakufu or shōgunshoku, government of the shogun: The shogunate was the hereditary military dictatorship of Japan (1192–1867). Legally, the shogun was under the control of the emperor who remained in his palace in Kyōto as a symbol of power behind the shogun. The shogun’s authority was limited to control of the military forces of the country. The samurai leader Minamoto Yoritomo gained military hegemony over Japan in 1185. Seven years later he assumed the title of shogun and established the first shogunate or bakufu at his Kamakura headquarters. The Kamakura shogunate possessed military, 11. 12. 13. 14. administrative, and judicial functions although the imperial government remained the recognized loyal authority. See Stephen Turnbull, Samurai Commanders (940–1576), (Osprey Publishing, 2005). See also James Mudoch, A History of Japan: 1652–1868, (Routledge, 1996); Dorothy Perkins, The Samurai of Japan: A Chronology from their Origin in the Heian Era (794–1185) to the Modern Era, (Diane Publishing, 1998). Alexander McKay, Great Britain and the Opening of Japan (1834–1858), 1993, 30. By June 1863, the Chōshū domain, in response to a general order to repulse foreigners that was forced upon the Edo government by the conservative court in Kyoto, attacked Western ships. In 1864, the United States and United Kingdom, in retaliation, bombarded Shimonoseki and landed troops. A peace agreement was signed, and Chōshū moved from anti-foreign policies to opposing bakufu that tried to reinforce the general order to expel foreigners. See John Denney, Respect and Consideration; Britain in Japan 1853–1868 and Beyond, (Radiance Press, 2011). See also see Meron Medzini, French Policy in Japan during the Closing Years of the Tokugawa Regime, (Harvard University Press, 1971). Marius Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000) 314–315. The Tokugawa shogunate, (Tokugawa bakufu), also known as the Edo Bakufu, was the feudal military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1600 to 1868. The Tokugawa Shogunate was established by Tokugawa leyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara (October 21, 1600), ending the civil wars of the Sengoku period following the collapse of the Ashikaga Shogunate. The Tokugawa shonugate organized Japanese society under the strict Tokugawa class system and banned most foreigners under the isolationist policies of Sakotu to promote political stability. While Choshu was one of the three clans that were instrumental in bringing down the Tokugawa (1604–1867) that had governed Japan’s closed agriculture-based feudal system for nearly 300 years. The Chōshū clan vision for a unified and powerful Japan. See Louis-Fréderic Nussbaum, and Käthe Roth, Japan Encyclopedia, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005). 15. Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 13–14. 16. Ibid., 15. 17. In 1867, the shogunate family and anti-shogun daimyō united for a common cause to overthrow the prowestern government and established the restoration of imperial rule. The shogunate supports and places the Emperor of Japan as its highest authority, and has its own armed force, the Imperial Japanese Royal Guard, to ensure the security of the Shogunate and the emperor. The shogunate draws its candidates for the position of shogun from the Five Regent Houses of Koubuin, Ikaruga, Saionji, Kujou, and Takatsukasa. The Regent Houses are the highest-ranking nobles of Imperial Japan, superseded only by the Emperor of Japan. Their rank color is blue, with the appointed shogun donning purple. Under the Regent Houses are the fudai, hereditary vassals with many generations of direct service to the shogun. Fudai daimyō and their descendants filled the ranks of the Tokugawa administration in opposition to the tozama daimyō and held most of the power in Japan during the Edo period. The fudai wear yellow as their rank color. One rank under the fudai is the samurai who wear white as their rank color. The samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early modern Japan from the 12th century to their abolition in the 1870s. At that time, they were 5 percent of the population. They had high prestige and special privileges such as wearing two swords. They cultivated the bushido codes of martial virtues, indifference to pain and engaging in many local battles. Most serve under the fudai as their direct subordinates. The Meiji Restoration ended their feudal roles and they moved into professional and entrepreneurial roles. The last rank of those serving in the Royal Guard and 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. Shogunate are those not related to the samurai families, and thus do not have any actual status or nobility within the Shogunate. They wear grey as their rank color. See Kenjirō Yamakawa, Aizu Boshin Senshi, (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1933). See also Harold Bolitho, Treasures among Men: The Fudai Daimyō in Tokugawa Japan, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974); Harry D. Harootunian, “The Progress of Japan and the Samurai Class, 1868–1882.” (Pacific Historical Review, 1959) 28 # 3: 255–266; Stephen Turnbull, “Samurai: The Story of Japan’s Great Warriors,” (London: Prc Publishing Ltd, 2004). Henry Kissinger, On China, (Penguin, 2011), 79. “The Charter Oath (Gokajō no Goseimon, more literally, the Oath in Five Articles) was promulgated at the enthronement of Emperor Meiji on April 6, 1868, in Kyoto Palace. The Oath outlined the main aims and the course of action to be followed during Emperor Meiji’s reign, setting the legal stage for Japan’s modernization. This also set up a process of urbanization as people of all classes were free to move jobs, so people went to the city for better work. The Charter Oath can be considered the first constitution of modern Japan.” See Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). See also Donald Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). Hugh Borton, Japan’s Modern Century, (Ronald Press, 1955), chapter 2. Okazaki Tetsuji, “Lessons from the Japanese Miracle: Building the Foundations for a New Growth Paradigm,” (nippon.com, Feb. 9, 2015). Edwin Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1986), 17. Kōichi Hagiwara Illustrated life of Saigō Takamori and Ōkubo Toshimichi, (Kawade Shobō Shinsya, 2004). Margarey Earl David, “Saigō Takamori, Japanese Samurai,” Encyclopedia Britannica). 25. See Mark Ravina, The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigō Takamori (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2004). See also Charles Yates, “Saigō Takamori: The Man behind the Myth,” (New York, NY: Kegan Paul International, 1995). 26. On the punitive expedition to Taiwan, see Edward H. House, The Japanese Expedition to Formosa, (Forgotten Books, 2018). 27. In 1876, Korea established a trade treaty with Japan after Japanese ships approached Ganghwado and threatened to fire on the Korean capital city. Treaty negotiations with several Western countries were made possible by the completion of this initial Japanese overture. See Kim Chun-gil, The History of Korea, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2005). See also Yŏng-ho Ch’oe, William Theodore De Bary, Martina Deuchler and Peter Hacksoo Lee, Sources of Korean Tradition: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries, (New York; Columbia University Press, 2000). 28. In 1876, Japan forced the hermit Kingdom of Korea, over which China’s emperor claimed suzerainty for the previous two hundred years, to open trade with Japan and to declare independence from China in its foreign relations. Although the treaty was forced on the king, it was Korea’s first modern treaty and the first time that Korea was treated as an equal in international negotiations. See Dana R. Dillon, The China Challenge: Standing Strong against the Military, Economic, and Political Threats that Imperil America, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 9. 29. During the Boshin War, Kirino also known as Nakamura Hanjirō was a senior commander of Satsuma forces. He became a high-ranking officer of the new Imperial army. Shinohara was a prominent military commander in Bakumatsu and early Meiji period Kagoshima. 30. Seppuku sometimes referred to as hara-kiri is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment; it was originally reserved for samurai but was also practiced 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. by other Japanese in the belief that they were restoring their personal or family honor. See Toyomasa Fusé, “Suicide and Culture in Japan: A Study of seppuku as an Institutionalized Form of Suicide,” (Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 1979) 57–63. See also Stephan R. Turnbull, The Samurai: A Military History, (New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1977), 47. Michael J. Seth, A History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 234. Ibid., 234–235. Jinwung Kim, A History of Korea: From “Land of the Morning Calm” to States in Conflict, (New York: Indiana University Press, 2012), 287. See also Seth Michael J., A History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010). Ibid., 288. Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 49. Ibid., 51. Donald Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 372. Gojong was the last king of Joseon and the first Emperor of Korea. Japan, after the Meiji Restoration forced Joseon to sign the Treaty of Ganghwa in 1876. Japan established a strong economic presence in the peninsula, heralding the beginning of Japanese Imperial Expansion in East Asia. See Lee Jae-min, “Treaty as prelude to annexation,” (The Korea Herald, 8 September 2010.) Donald Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 373. Ibid., 373. Ibid., 373. Ibid., 237. Ibid., 374. See Michael J. Seth, A Concise History of Modern Korea: From Antiquity to the Present, (Rowman & Littlefield, 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 2011), 236. See also Michael, J. Seth, A Concise History of Modern Korea: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010). Ibid., 237. The Chinese had three reasons they wanted to remove the Daewongun: First, he attempted to overthrow the pro-Chinese Min faction. Second, “he created a situation which invited the Japanese troops to Korea, thus precipitating the danger of a military conflict between Japan on the one hand and Korea and China on the other.” And third, “the Taewongun [Daewongun]-inspired disturbance threatened the foundation of a lawfully constituted government in a dependent nation.” Jinwung Kim, A History of Korea: From “Land of the Morning Calm” to States in Conflict, (New York: Indiana University Press, 2012), 293. See also C.I. Eugene Kim and Han-Kyo Kim, Korea and the Politics of Imperialism: 1876–1910, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967). Seth 2011, 236. Kim 2012, 293. Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 54. The China-Korea Treaty of 1882 was negotiated between representatives of the Qing Dynasty and the Joseon Dynasty in October 1882. This agreement has been described as the Joseon-Qing communication and Commerce Rules; and it has been called the SinoKorean Regulations for Maritime and Overland Trade. The treaty remained in effect until 1895. After 1895, China lost its influence over Korea because of the First Sino-Japanese War. See Samuel C., Chu, “Li Hung-chang and China’s Early Modernization,” (Armonk, New York: Sharpte, 1994). See also Chun-gil Kim, The History of Korea, (Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2005). Michael J. Seth, A Concise History of Modern Korea: From Antiquity to the Present, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 237. 52. Jinwung Kim, A History of Korea: From “Land of the Morning Calm” to States in Conflict, (New York: Indiana University Press, 2012), 295. 53. Ibid., 295. 54. Ibid., 295. 55. The “Nagasaki Incident” was a riot involving Chinese Beiyang Fleet sailors in Nagasaki. The Beiyang Fleet was one of the four modernized Chinese navies in the late Qing dynasty. It was the largest fleet in Asia and the 8th in the world during the late 1830s in terms of tonnage. 56. Edwin Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, McGraw-Hill, 1986), 23–24. 57. Edwin Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, 19. 58. Ōkuma retired from politics at that time. He was the co-founder of the Constitutional Progressive Party (Rikken Kaishintō), which soon attracted several other leaders, including Ozaki Yukio and Inukai Tsuyoshi. He returned to politics in 1896 by reorganizing the Rikken Kaishintō into the Shimpotō (Progressive Party), and later became Prime Minister of Japan in 1898 and from 1914 to 1916. Oka Yoshitake, et al. Five Political Leaders of Modern Japan: Ito Hirobumi, Okuma Shigenobu, Hara Takashi, Inukai Tsuyoshi, and Saionji Kimmochi, (University of Tokyo Press, 1984). 59. Edwin Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 24. 60. “To the Meiji leaders, political dissent was seditious, because it weakened the state. In Ito’s words, ‘the onslaught of extremely democratic ideas’ had to be resisted, because ‘in a country such as ours, it was evident that it would be necessary to compensate for its smallness of size and population by a compact solidity of organization.” To frame the constitution Ito and Iwakura had worked out an outline of the constitutional provisions they thought to be acceptable, including a cabinet clearly responsible to the emperor. In consequence of this approach, much of the philosophical framework derived from Lorenz von Stein’s concept of ‘social monarchy.’ See W.G. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. Beasley, The Rise of Modern Japan, (St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 76–77, 307. Ito, ‘Some reminiscences,’ in Okuma, Fifty Years, I, 127. The text of the constitution had been published many times in official translation: see, for example, Beckmann, Making, 151–6, and Ishii, Japanese Legislation, 725–33 Ibid., 22. See Hackett Roger F., Yamagata Aritomo in the Rise of Modern Japan 1838–1922, (Harvard University Press, 1971). See also Craig Albert M., Chōshū in the Meiji Restoration, (Harvard University Press, 1961); Jansen Marius B., The Making of Modern Japan, (Harvard University Press, 2000); Dupuy Trevor, on Yamagata, the “father” of militarism. The name given by the Chinese to a series of treaties signed between the Qing dynasty and various Western powers and the empire of Japan during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Gordon, A Modern History, 95. Donald Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji And His World, 1852–1912, (Columbia University Press, 2002). Milton Walter Meyer, Japan: A Concise History, (Rowman & Littlefield, 1992). On May 14, 1878, Ōkubo was assassinated by Shimada Ichirō and six Kaga Domain samurai on his way to the Imperial Palace, only a few minutes’ walk from the Sakurada gate where li Naosuke had been assassinated eighteen years earlier. The New York Times: The New Treaty with Japan, 1894– 10–03. Donald Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 376. Chapter 2 Bad-Neighbor Syndrome 1. The First Sino-Japanese War marked the emergence of Japan as a major world power and demonstrated the weakness of the Chinese empire. The war grew out of conflict between the two countries for supremacy in Korea. In 1875, Japan forced Korea to open to foreign trade, especially Japanese, and to declare independent from China in its foreign relations. “A new balance of power had emerged. China’s millennia-long dominance had abruptly ended. Japan had become the pre-eminent power of Asia, a position it would retain throughout the twentieth century.” C. S. M. Paine, The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895: Perceptions, Power, and Primacy, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 82, 266, 293. See also Paine, The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War, (Cambridge University Press, 2017). 2. J.A.G. Roberts, A History of China, (Macmillan International Higher Education, Jul 13, 2011), 192: “In March, Kim Ok-Kyun, the leader of the pro-Japanese group, was murdered in Shanghai by the son of a victim of the 1884 coup. His body was returned to Korea in a Chinese warship, an arrangement which was found offensive by the increasingly vociferous proponents of expansionism in Japan. Meanwhile, the threat of a popular movement, the Tonghak insurrection led the Korean government to appeal to China for assistance. These events gave Japan a pretext for sending troops to Korea. Li Hongzhang attempted to negotiate a settlement, but when the Japanese navy sank the Kowshing, a Chinese troopship bringing reinforcement to Korea, war became inevitable.” Also see Judith Fröhlich, War in History, vol. 21, no. 2 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. (April 2014, 214–250); Lone Stewart, Japan’s First Modern War: Army and Society in the Conflict with China, 1894–1895, (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1994), 222. The war is commonly known in China as the War of Jiawu (Chinese: pinyin: Jiăwŭ Zhànzhēng), referring to the year (1894) as named under the traditional sexagenarian system of years. In Japan, it is called the Japan-Qing War (Japanese: Hepburn: Nisshin sensō). In Korea, where much of the war took place, it is called the Qing-Japan War (Korean: Hanja). Frederick R. Dickinson, University of Pennsylvania, Book Reviews, The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War, by S. C. M. Paine, (Cambridge University Press, 2017) 275. See Peter S. Michie, The life and letters of Emory Upton, 290–8, 309–10. John King Fairbank, The Cambridge History of China, (Cambridge University Press, 1978), 266– 267. David C. Evans and Mark R. Peattie, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887– 1941, (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 12. Ibid., 36. In 1975, Hirohito told an American reporter, concerning Nogi’s influence: “I particularly recall this episode when I was a small boy: I met him at a certain place and he asked me, ‘“How do you come to school when it rains?”’ And I was just a small boy, so I answered off-hand, “‘I come by horse-drawn carriage.’” And Nogi said, “‘when it rains, you must come here on foot wearing an overcoat.’” So, he was advocating a very frugal, strenuous, self-disciplined life. That made a profound impression on me.’” See Helmar Schramm, Ludger Schwarte and Jan Lazardzig, Collection, Laboratory, Theater: Scenes of Knowledge in the 17th Century, (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. See also Claude Emerson Welch, “Civilian Control of the Military: Theory and Cases from Developing Countries,” (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1976). 10. Paul Leopold Eduard Heinrich Anton Bronsart Schellendorff, Duties of the General Staff, translated by William Aldworth Home Hare, (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office). 11. Yamagata Aritomo, “The Japanese army,” in Shigenobu Ōkuma, ed. Fifty Years of New Japan, 2009. Richard J. Smith, “Reflections on the comparative study of modernization in China and Japan: military aspects,” (Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1976), 11–23. 12. Olender Piotr, Sino-Japanese Naval War 1894–1895, (MMP Books, 2014), 39. 13. Frederick R. Dickinson, University of Pennsylvania, Book Reviews, The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War, by S. C. M. Paine, (Cambridge University Press, 2017) 275. 14. The treaty of Shimonoseki, also known as Treaty of Bakan in China, was a treaty signed at the Shunpanrō hotel, Shimonoseki, Japan on April 17, 1895, between the Empire of Japan and the Qing dynasty, ending the First Sino-Japanese War. While the Treaty of Portsmouth ended the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War. It was signed on September 5, 1905, after negotiations lasting from August 6 to August 30, at the Portsmouth naval shipyard in Kittery, Maine, United States. See De Martens, F., “The Portsmouth Peace Conference,” 1905. The North American Review, 181 (558). Also see Trani, Eugene P. The Treaty of Portsmouth: An Adventure in American Diplomacy. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1969). 15. The Joseon dynasty was a Korean dynastic kingdom that lasted for approximately five centuries. Joseon was founded by Yi Seong-gye in July 1392 and was replaced by the Korean Empire in October 1897. See for details Jae-eun Kang, The Land of Scholars: Two Thousand Years of Korean Confucianism, (Homa & Sekey Books, 2006). “Yi Seong-gye issued a royal edict to proclaim the name of the new dynasty to “Joseon” and issued amnesty to all criminals who opposed the transition in the dynasty. The statement by Taizu 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. about “only the name of Joseon is beautiful and “old” naturally refers to Giya Joseon.” …Japan was at the forefront of hegemonic wars in a quest to extend the Japanese hegemony over Korea to the entire Asia-Pacific region–the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 to gain dominance in Korea,” Samuel S. Kim, The Two Koreas and the Great Powers, (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2. The Russo-Japanese War was fought during 1904 and 1905 between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of operations were the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria and the seas around Korea, Japan and the Yellow Sea. See Eugene P. Trani, The Treaty of Portsmouth: An Adventure in American Diplomacy, (University of Kentucky Press, 1969). See alsoYoji Koda, The Russo-Japanese War: Primary Causes of Japanese Success, (Naval War College Review, Spring 2005, 58 (2) – via Questra Online Library. Country Studies, “Transformation of Russia in the Nineteenth Century,” (Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1998). Country Studies, “Transformation of Russia in the Nineteenth Century,” (Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1998). 19. Sheldon H. Harris, Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932– 1945, and the American Cover-up, (Routledge, 2002), 5. S.C.M. Paine, The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War, (Review by Frederick R. Dickinson, Monumenta Nipponica, volume 73, number 2, 2018, 274–288). The Treaty of Portsmouth formally ended the 1904– 1905 Russo-Japanese War. It was signed on September 5, 1905, after negotiations lasting from August 6 to August 30, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, United States. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in the negotiations and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. The Japanese delegation to the Portsmouth Peace Conference was led by Foreign Minister Komura Jutarō, assisted by former Ambassador to Washington, Takahira Kogorō. The Russian delegation was led by former Finance Minister Sergei Witte, assisted by former ambassador to Japan Roman Rosen and international law and arbitration specialist Friedrich Martens. A total of twelve sessions were held between August 9 and August 30. The Treaty of Portsmouth was signed on September 5. The treaty was ratified by the privy council of Japan on October 10 and in Russia on October 14, 1905 . See Text of Treaty; Signed by the emperor of Japan and Tsar of Russia, The New York Times, October 17, 1905. See also Richard Harding Davis, and Alfred Thayer Mahan, “The Russo-Japanese War; a photographic and descriptive review of the great conflict in the Far East, gathered from the reports, records, cable dispatched, photographs, etc. of Collier’s war correspondents, (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1905). 23. On the issue of the Russo-Japanese War, S.C.M. Paine, Professor of Strategy and Policy at the United States Naval War College, the author of Nation Building, State Building, and Economic Development (2010), The SinoJapanese War of 1894–1895 (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Imperial Rivals: China, Russia, and their Disputed Frontier (1996). In his book: The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War, Paine wrote an instructive analysis. The historian said: “Few Japanese civilian or military leaders in early 1904 had any confidence that they could defeat Russia’s military. In fact, aside from the conquest of 203-Meter Hill at Lüshun in November 1894 and the Battle of Tsushima Strait in May 1905, the Russo-Japanese War was an operational disaster for Japan. Admiral Tōgō’s surprise attack on Russia’s Port Arthur Squadron in February 1904 left five of seven Russian battleships intact while putting four of Japan’s six first-class battleships out of commission. Until the Battle of the Yellow Sea six months later, the Port Arthur Squadron remained unscathed and the Vladivostok Squadron continued to menace Japanese merchantmen and troop transports. On the ground, Japan suffered more casualties and expended more ammunition in the May 1904 Battle of Nanshan (Manchuria) that it did during the entire First SinoJapanese War. In the same month, two of its six battleships sank after hitting mines in the Yellow Sea. In the AugustSeptember 1904 Battle of Liaoyang (Manchuria), Russian forces outnumbered the Japanese by 33,000, and Japan suffered 24,000 casualties to Russia’s 18,000. In the October 1904 Battle of Shade, Japanese supplies verged on collapse. General Nogi Maresuke conquered 203–Meter Hill on his fourth try in November 1904 and at cost of 64,000 Japanese lives, more than triple Russian losses. Japan deployed 125,000 fewer troops than Russian in the Battle of Shenyang (Mukden, February-March 1905), suffering 75,000 casualties to Russia’s 70,000.” Cited also by Frederick R. Dickinson, “Review of Paine’s Book,” in (Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 73, number 2, 2018), 274– 280. 24. Fifty-six islands and minor rocks formed the Kuril Islands. It consists of the Greater Kuril Chain and the Lesser Kuril Chain. The total land area is 10,503.2 square kilometers (4,055.3 square miles), and the total population is 19,434). During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Gunji, a retired Japanese military man and local settler in Shinshu, led an invading party to the Kamchatka coast. Russia sent reinforcements to the area to capture and intern this group. After the war was over, Japan received fishing rights in Russian waters as part of the Russo-Japanese Fisheries Agreement until 1945. See John Stephan, The Kuril Islands, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 50–56. See also David Rees, The Soviet Seizure of the Kuriles, (New York: Praeger, 1985). 25. The Taft-Katsura Agreement also known as the Taft Katsura Memorandum was a 1905 discussion between officials of Japan and the United States regarding the 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. position of the two nations in greater East Asian Affairs, especially regarding the status of Korea and Philippines in the aftermath of Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War. See Raymond A. Esthus, “The Taft-Katsura Agreement: Reality or Myth?” (Journal of Modern History, 1959), 46–51. In this treaty, Japan formally annexed Korea following the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1905 by which Korea became a protectorate of Japan and Japan-Korea Treaty of 1907 by which Korea was deprived of the administration affairs. The treaty became effective on August 22, 1910. The treaty had eight articles, the first being: “His Majesty the Emperor of Korea makes the complete and permanent cession to His Majesty the Emperor of Japan of all rights of sovereignty over the whole Korea.” See Mark Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945, (University of Washington Press, 2009), 82–83. See also Alexis Dudden, Japan’s Colonization of Korea: Discourse and Power, (University of Hawaii Press, 2006); Kazahiko Tōgō, Japan’s Foreign Policy, 1945―2009: The Quest for a Proactive Policy, (BRILL, 2010), 159. See Jae-min Lee, “Treaty as prelude to annexation, (The Korea Herald, 8 September 2010.) Asian Women’s Fund, 10–11; Argibay 2003, 376, 377; (Gamble & Watanabe, 2004), 309. H.B. Hulbert, History of Korea, (Routledge, 1999); Mizuno, Naoki. [Colonial control and “human control”]. (Kyoto University, January 3, 2007). “The South Seas Mandate, officially the Mandate for the German Possessions in the Pacific Ocean lying north of the Equator, was a League of Nations mandate in the “South Seas” given to the empire of Japan by the League of Nations following World War I. The mandate consisted of islands in the North Pacific Ocean that had been part of German New Guinea within the German colonial empire until they were occupied by Japan during World War II. Japan governed the islands under the mandate as part of the Japanese colonial empire until World War II, when the United States captured the islands. The islands then became the United Nations-established Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands governed by the United States. The islands are now part of Palau, Northern Mariana Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Marshall Islands. In Japan, the territory known as “Japanese mandate for the South Seas Islands” (Nihon, Inin Tōchi-ryō Nan’yō Guntō). Duncan H. Hall, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeships (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1948), 307. See also Richard Ponsonby-Fane, Sovereign and Subject, (Ponsonby Memorial Society, 1962), 346–353; Mark Peattie, Nan’Yo: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885–1945, Pacific Islands Monograph Series, vol.4, (University of Hawaii Press, 1988). Chapter 3 Training a Tyrant 1. Every Japanese emperor has two names, one for his lifetime, and the other one for posterity. Until their deaths, Emperor Mutsuhito had been known as Emperor Meiji, Yoshihito as Emperor Taisho, and Hirohito as Emperor Shōwa. 2. A leading scholar of the concept of the kokutai, Motoori Norinaga wrote in 1771: “Japan is the birthplace of the sublime ancestral deity Amaterasu Ōmikami. From this, it is especially clear why Japan is so distinguished compared to all other countries. After all, there is no country that is not touched by the power of this sublime goddess. Naobi no mitama = KGS 10:3, Stolte 1939: 193. 3. The Seventeen-Article Constitution written by Crown Prince Shôtoku in the year 604 determined the principles according to which the transformation of Japan occurred from a loose group of dynasties into a centralized state according to the Chinese model. The foundation of the new state in the 7th century, just as later in the 19th century, was the institution of the divine ruler: the emperor. Cited by Klaus Antoni, Kokutai–Political Shintô From Early-Modern to Contemporary Japan, (Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, 2016). 4. The so-called Meiji Restoration was the era in which Hirohito was born, which theoretically was a meaning of the return of authority to the emperor from the military dictators, called shoguns, and for Japan’s amazing progress from feudalism and isolation to the front rank of world powers. See Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), Chapter 1, “The Boy, The Family, And the Meiji Legacies,” 21. See also Edward Behr, Hirohito: Behind the Myth, (New York: Villard, 1989). 5. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, under the 1947 Constitution, the emperor of Japan became the head of the Imperial Family and the head of the state. He is defined in the new constitution as “the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people.” He is also the highest authority of the Shinto religion. In Japanese, the emperor is called tennō, literally “heavenly sovereign.” See Charles Holcombe (2001), The Genesis of East Asia: 221-BC – A.D. 907, University of Hawaii Press, 198. Also read Legacy of Hirohito, (The Times, May 3, 1989). 6. See Robert Trumbull, A Leader Who Took Japan to War, to Surrender, and Finally to Peace, (The New York Times, January 7, 1989). 7. A third brother, Mikasa-no-miya Takahito, was born ten years later, on December 2, 1915. 8. “Emperor Meiji, in consultation with Yoshihito and Sadako, had decided that his grandson Hirohito should be reared in the approved modern manner by a military man. His first choice, Gen. Ōyama Iwao, declined to undertake this heavy responsibility. They then turned to the elderly Count Kawamura Sumiyoshi, a retired vice admiral and ex-navy minister from the Satsuma domain and asked him to rear the child just as though he were his own grandson.” “The Boy, the Family, and the Meiji Legacies,” See Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 22, 23. Other lectures of the young Crown Prince Hirohito during the 1920s included Hirohito’s teacher of Japanese literature, Professor Haga Yaichi; Professor 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Toribe, who taught Chinese literature; Professor Katō Shigeru, who lectured on Chinese history and philosophy; Yamamoto Shinjirō, Hirohito’s translator and teacher of French; and the rightwing constitutional scholar Kakei Katsuhiko. Count Nogi Maresuke also known as Kitten, Count Nogi, was a Japanese general in the Imperial Japanese Army and a governor-general of Taiwan. He was a prominent figure in the RussoJapanese War of 1904–05, as commander of the forces which captured Port Arthur from the Russians. Bushido is a feudal-military code of chivalry that valued honor above life. On Nogi’s instructions, Hirohito and his young brother were made to walk to school every morning, escorted by a medical attendant and two employees of the Imperial Household Ministry. On rainy days, they were allowed to ride in carriages; Hirohito rode alone while his brothers rode together and behind – the only exception being when one was sick. Cited by Stephen S. Large, Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan, (Routledge, 2013). See Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), “The Boy, The Family, And the Meiji Legacies,” 36. See also Takamatsu no miya Nobuhito shinnō, 68. William Stewart, Time Bureau Chief, “The World: Hirohito: A Happy Experience,” Hirohito’s interview inside the Imperial Palace, Tokyo, Japan, published on October 6, 1975. Hirohito graduated two months before his twentieth birthday. Three years before the graduation, and a few weeks before his seventeenth birthday, he became engaged to Princess Nagako, daughter of Prince Kuniyoshi Kuni. They were to have been married in 1923, but the ceremony was postponed until the following January because of the Great Kantō Earthquake in Tokyo on September 1, 1923. 15. In his Lectures on Evolutionary Theory (1904), Asajirō explained Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in plain simple language. He dealt with human problems from the point of view of an evolutionist; in his famous work From the Group of Monkis to the Republic, he compared the modern political system with ape society. He also criticized the absolutism and one-sided ethical education of Japanese society at that time and emphasized the necessity of an objective education oriented to scientific study. 16. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 58. 17. In an interview that appeared in the Sandē Mainichi magazine on October 2, 1949, Hattori offered his opinion on Hirohito’s scientific contribution to marine biology. Asked whether the emperor’s studies should be viewed as genuine scientific research rather than the work of an amateur, Hattori replied, “Recently Professor Satō Tadao [of Nagoya University] wrote in the Nagoya newspaper that it belonged to the category of an amateur’s research. Indeed, depending on how one looks at the matter, I think that is true. He never published anything under his own name and ended up furnishing raw data to various specialists. Therefore, from one point of view he is, in the final analysis, probably a mere collector. But I don’t think so. He did not just hand them material he had collected. Rather, he first thoroughly investigated that material himself, and on that point, he is no amateur.” According to a 1987 interview with Grand Chamberlain Yoshihiro Tokugawa, who served 18. 19. 20. 21. the emperor for fifty years at the imperial palace, Hirohito’s affinity for the biological sciences began in the sixth grade, when he saw his first collection of marine specimens. In this interview, published in the journal Oceanus Tokugawa said that this youthful interest marked for Hirohito the beginning of a lifetime of scientific investigations and contributions to the field of marine biology. Throughout his entire life, Hirohito continued to pursue his interest in marine biology, and, in his later age, became a fellow of the British Royal Society in 1971. He visited the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1974. An American publication reported that the emperor devoted “each Monday and Thursday afternoon” to marine biology. In 1928, during the second year of his reign, Hirohito built the Imperial Biological Research Institute, consisting of a greenhouse and two large laboratories. On the marine biology question see Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 60. See Yves Samyn, ““Return to Sender: Hydrozoa Collected by Emperor Hirohito of Japan in the 1930s and Studied in Brussels,”” Archives of Natural History, vol. 41, Issue 1, (2004), 17–24. See also E. J. H. Corner, “His Majesty Emperor Hirohito of Japan, K.G., April 29, 1901–January 9, 1989,” Biographical Memoirs of the Fellows of the Royal Society, vol. 36 (Dec., 1990), 243; Stephen Large, Hirohito and Shōwa Japan: A Political Biography, (New York: Routledge, 1992). See Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 61. See Suzanne Geisler, God and Sea Power: The Influence of Religion on Alfred Thayer Mahan, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2015). See also Philip A. Crowl, “Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. Historian,” Kenneth Bourne and Carl Boyd, “Captain Mahan’s War with Great Britain,” (U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 94:7 (1968), 71–78. In 1923, Ugaki became vice minister of the army. While Baron Takeji Nara graduated from the eleventh class of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1889 as a second lieutenant in artillery. He participated in the First Sino-Japanese War from 1894–1895, served in Germany, commanded the Japanese garrison at Tianjin, and worked in the Bureau of Military Affairs. See Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 45. Ibid., 49. See Stephen S. Large, Emperor Hirohito and Showa Japan, The Nissan Institute/Routledge, 1992. See also Takashi Ōtake, Phonological Structure and Language Processing, (De Gruyter Mouton 1996), 265. Tsunoda R., et al., 1960, 644. Yamamoto, 1989: 251–2. See Jun, Uchida, “From Island Nation to Oceanic Empire: A Vision of Japanese Expansion from the Periphery, The Journal of Japanese Studies, February 2016. “On Crown Prince Hirohito’s Tour of Europe, 1921,” Frederick R. Dickinson, World War I and the Triumph of a New Japan, 1919–1930. See also Noriko Kawamura, Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War, (University of Washington Press, 2015), 28– 29. The Kobe strike was a protest the injustice of the way in which Japanese labor has been treated by the employer class. While the Kobe strike was the most importan t that has occurred in Japan in many years, it is not the only one inspired by the same general cause – inadequate pay and excessive 31. 32. 33. 34. living expenses. Since January 1 there have been sixty-three strikes, each affecting more than two thousand men, the largest number of strikes in any one trade being 16,000 before the Kobe out-break. 1905–1918 in Japan was called the Era of Popular Violence (minshu sôjô ki). This began with the Hibiya Incendiary Incident, a huge demonstration of hundred thousand people against the terms of the Portsmouth Treaty which ended the RussoJapanese war of 1904–1905. There were also several strikes and riots in 1911 in Tokyo, and a three-day riot in Nagoya, against which a large contingent of troops was required to suppress it. As a response to wartime inflation, low wages and commodity speculation, several strikes occurred in Japan in 1918. The rise in prices, particularly a rice shortage, gave rise to a major social revolution. Strikes increased from 49 strikes by 5,763 workers in 1914 to 108 strikes by 8,413 workers in 1916 to 417 strikes by 66,457 workers in 1918. The right of women to vote was not affirmed by Japan until 1946 after it lost World War II. See Taisho Democracy in Japan: 1912–1926, in the website of the non-profit organization, Facing History and Ourselves. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 63. Yoshino Sakuzō, “On the Meaning of Constitutional Government and the Methods by Which It Can Be Perfected” (Kensei No Hongi O Toite Sono Yūshū No Bi O Seisu No To O Ronzu), 1916, in Sources of Japanese Tradition, Abridged: Part 2: 1868 to 2000, compiled by Wm. Theodore DeBary, Carol Gluck, and Arthur E. Tiedemann, 2nd edition (New Yrok: Columbia University Press, 2006), 168–169. 35. Suzuki Kindai no tennō, 52. See also Herbert P. Bix, “The Politics of Good Intentions,” Chapter 4, 162, in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016). 36. From 1918–1922 and 1924–1930 the military did not yet utilize its prerogative to control the formation of the Cabinet, so in the Taishō period, most of the administrations in Japan operated largely free from military intervention. See Banjo, Junji, The Establishment of the Japanese Constitutional System, (Routledge, 2002). Also see Sims Richard, Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Renovation (1868–2000), (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001); Young, A. Morgan, Imperial Japan 1926–1938, (Borah Press, 2007); Julia Adney Thomas, Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology (Twentieth–Century Japan), (University of California Press, 2002). 37. See Bredon Piers, The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s, (Vintage, 2002). Also see Frank Richard B., Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, (Penguin, 2001). 38. See Taisho Democracy in Japan: 1912–1926, published in Facing History and Ourselves. 39. See Masato Shizume, The Japanese Economy during the Interwar Period: Instability in the Financial System and the Impact of the World Depression, (Institute for Money and Economic Studies, 2009). 40. Masuda Bill Broker Bank was headquartered in Osaka and had branches in the national and regional commercial centers of Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, and Moji. See Tsurumi, Masayoshi [2000] “Senzen-ki ni okeru Kin’yu Kiki to Intaabanku Shijo no Henbo (Financial Crises and Changes in the Interbank Money Market during the Prewar Period),” Itoh Masanao, Masayoshi Tsurumi, and Yoshio Asai, eds., Kin’yu Kiki to Kakushin: Rekishi kara Gendai e (Financial Crises and Innovation: From History to Present), Nihon Keizai Hyoronsha, Tokyo, 67–107; and Ehiro Akira [2000], “Kin’yu Kiki eno Taiou (Financial Crises and the Injection of Public Funds: Policy Responses to the Financial Crises of the 1920s), Itoh, Tsurumi, and Asai, eds., 67–107. 41. “Special loans” refer to various kinds of loans extended by the BOJ with special arrangements. They include loans exceeding a credit line per borrower, loans with extended coverage of collateral, and loans to borrowers who have no present ties to BOJ as clients. See Masato Shizume, “The Japanese Economy during the Interwar Period: Instability in the Financial System and the Impact of the World Depression,” (Institute for Money and Economic Studies, 2009). 42. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 140–141. Also see Nish, Ian, Japanese Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period, (Praeger Publishers, 2002). 43. The High Treason Incident also known as the Kōtoku Incident was a socialist-anarchist plot to assassinate the Japanese Emperor Meiji in 1910, leading to a mass arrest of leftists, and the execution of twelve alleged conspirators in 1911. See Victoria, Brian, Zen at War, Weather hill, Inc., 1997, 38. See also Raddeker, Helen Bowen, Treacherous Women of Imperial Japan, (Routledge, 1997), 6. Chapter 4 Make-Believe Government 1. Shimichi Kitaoka, Diplomacy and the Military in Showa Japan, (MIT Press, 1990). 2. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, A History of Japan Economic Thought, (Routledge, 1998). 3. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 128. 4. Ibid., 128. 5. Ibid., 128. 6. Ibid., 148. 7. William G. Beasley, Japanese Imperialism 1894–1945, (Oxford University Press, 1987). 8. Hirohito was considered a living god forged from a dynastic line that extended back twenty-six centuries. Children were cautioned from looking at his face as they would be blinded, and mentioning his name was considered a taboo. Herbert Bix’s article “The Shōwa Emperor’s ‘Monologue’ and the Problem of War Responsibility” states, “It is permissible to say that the idea that the Japanese are descendants of the gods is a false conception; but it is absolutely impermissible to call chimerical the idea that the emperor is a descendant of the gods.” The emperor reinforces the notion that he is a descendant of the gods. This notion was aligned with the emperor’s role as not only the “head of state” but also the highest authority of the Japanese religion, Shintoism. The emperor’s prewar legitimacy rested on the notion of his descent from the sun goddess. See Patrick H. Choi, The Ambiguous Emperor: Hirohito’s Role in Engaging in and Ending the Pacific War, (Harvard University Extension School, 2017), 4. Also see Peter Wetzler, Hirohito and War: The Imperial Tradition and Military Decision Making in Prewar Japan. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii’s Press, 1998), 3. 9. It was a fiction that he was supreme commander of the army and navy. True, he held the title, but when he attempted to exercise control, he was hamstrung, or his wishes were politely ignored. Of course, it was nothing personal. The mechanism was so rigged that the military could easily block efforts they disapproved. See Lester Brooks, Behind Japan’s Surrender: The Secret Struggle That Ended an Empire, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), 98. 10. See Shizume Masato, “The Japanese Economy during the Interwar Period: Instability in the Financial System and the Impact of the World Depression”, (Institute for Money and Economic Studies, May 2009), 3. 11. Under the gold standard, the parity of one yen was equivalent to 49.845 U.S. cents and 2.0291 shillings. In November 1932, the yen hit 20 cents and 1.14 shillings. See Hugh T. Patrick, “The Economic Muddle of the 1920s,” Morley, James William, eds., Dilemmas of Growth in Prewar Japan, (Princeton University Press, 1971), 211– 266. See also Michael D. Bordo, and Hugh Rockoff, “The Gold Standard as a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval,” (Journal of Economic History, 56–2, 1996), 389–428. Others, such as Nakamura, call the 1920s an “era of 12. 13. 14. 15. unbalanced growth,” for Japan, emphasizing the surge of urbanization and industrialization supported by public investment. See Takafusa Nakamura, Economic Growth in Prewar Japan, (Yale University Press, 1983). Minsei Party (full name: Rikken Minsei to) was originally called Kenseikai, later merged with another party to become Minsei Party in 1927. Its main policies were (i) economic austerity and industrial streamlining (free economy and small government); (ii) return to prewar gold parity; (iii) international cooperation and peaceful diplomacy especially with the United States Its support base consisted of intellectuals and urban population. Minsei means “people’s politics.” Seiyukai (full name: Rikken Seiyukai) was established in 1900 by the union of leading politician (Hirobumi Ito) and a former opposition party who decided to cooperate with the government. Its main policies were (i) fiscal activism with an emphasis on public investment in rural and industrial infrastructure; (ii) acceptance of military buildup and expansion; and (iii) pleasing a narrow voter base (rural landlords and urban rich). It was a party supportive of big government allocating public money and subsidies. Seiyukai literally means “political friend society.” See Gerald Iguchi, Nichirenism as Modernism: Imperialism, Fascism, and Buddhism in Modern Japan, (University of California, San Diego, 2006.) See also Edwin Lee, “Nichiren and Nationalism: The Religious Patriotism of Tanaka Chigaku,” in Monumenta Nipponica 30:1 (1975); Murakami Shigeyoshi, Japanese Religion in the Modern Century, (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1908), 19–32. Tanaka (1935–36), 74–75, 82, 90, 158. 16. Christina Naylor, “Nichiren, Imperialism, and the Peace Movement,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 51 17. Tōa renmei, (1941), quoted by Nakano (1972), 85. 18. Hayashima (1965), 267 19. Quoted in Tokoro (1966), 79 20. Nakano (1972), 87). 21. Christina Naylor, “Nichiren, Imperialism, and the Peace Movement”, (Japanese Journal of Religious Studies), 53–54. 22. Beers, 686. 23. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the most explosive political events of the twentieth century. The violent revolution marked the end of the Romanov dynasty and centuries of Russian imperial rule. The leftist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin seized power in Russia and destroyed the tradition of tsarist rule. The Bolsheviks would later become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 24. Mao’s vision of Communism differed from Lenin in the following sense: while Lenin held that urban workers should form the revolutionary vanguard, Mao Zedong, on the other hand, believed that Communist revolutions should gestate among the rural peasantry, who would later join with their proletariat comrades in the cities to form classless paradises. Chapter 5 Emperor’s Clothes 1. See Edwin P. Hoyt, Hirohito: The Emperor and the Man, (NY: Praeger, 1992), 158. 2. Subject theoretically to the Emperor, the Supreme Command acted outside the administrative authority of the cabinet, including that of its Army and Navy minister members. Military strategies, plans, and operations were the sole prerogative of the chiefs of staff, and they need not be disclosed to anyone save the Emperor, to whom they had direct access. Cited by Michael Gannon, Pearl Harbor Betrayed, (Henry Holt and Company, 2001), 73–74. 3. The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, is an international conference called by the United States to limit the naval arms race and to work out security agreements in the Pacific area. It was signed by the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan. It limited the construction of battleships, battlecruisers, and aircraft carriers by the signatories. See Erik Goldstein, and John H. Mauer, eds., The Washington Conference, 1921– 22: Naval Rivalry, East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor, (Taylor & Francis, 1994). 4. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 263). 5. Carl E. Dorris, Nationalists and The Nanking Incident, 1927: Sources and Impact On United States China Policy, (Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, 1966), 2. 6. Ibid., 2. 7. The Shōwa Financial Crisis was a financial panic in 1927, during the first year of the reign of Emperor Hirohito. It brought down the government of Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō and led to the domination of the zaibatsu over the Japanese banking industry. During the crisis, thirty-seven banks throughout Japan, including the Bank of Taiwan, and the second-tier zaibatsu Suzuki Shoten, would go bankrupt. Prime Minister Wakatsuki attempted to have an emergency decree issued to allow the Bank of Japan to extend emergency loans to save these banks, but his request was denied by the Privy Council and he was forced to resign. See Michael Smitka, The Interwar Economy of Japan: Colonialism, Depression, and Recovery, 1910–1940, (Routledge, 1998). See also Kozo Yamamura, The Economic Emergence of Modern Japan, (Cambridge University Press, 1998). 8. On December 28, 1928, Shirakawa reported to the emperor that the army would investigate Zhang Zuolin death but made no mention of a court-martial. See Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 216. 9. Ibid., 216. 10. Ibid., 2016, 217. 11. Hamaguchi joined the Rikken Dōshikai political party led by Katō Takaaki in 1915, which became the Kenseikai in 1916. In 1927, Hamaguchi became the chairman of the new Rikken Minseitō political party formed by the merger of the Kenseikai and the Seiyūhontō. See Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). See also Buruma, Ian, “Inventing Japan: 1853–1964”, rep. ed. (Modern Library, 2004). 12. As with many modern-day troubled societies, scrutiny might reveal these military-patriotic value linkages as contrivances, bolstered by fake reasoning, benefiting the narrow interests of elites, not the population. Even closer scrutiny might reveal the early signs of empire doom. 13. Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill Book, 1986), 101–102. 14. Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths, (Princeton University Press, 1987). See also William Finch Morton, Tanaka Giichi and Japan’s China Policy, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980). 15. Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). 16. The Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament, commonly known as the London Naval Treaty, was an agreement between Great Britain, Japan, France, Italy and the United States, signed on 22 April 1930. It regulated submarine warfare and limited naval shipbuilding. The terms of the treaty were an extension of the conditions agreed in the Washington Naval Treaty, an effort to prevent a naval arms race after World War I. Under the treaty, the standard displacement of submarines was restricted to 2,000 tons, with each major power being allowed to keep three submarines of up to 2,800 tons and France one. The number of heavy cruisers was limited: Britain was permitted 15 with a total tonnage of 147,000, the U.S. 18 totaling 180,000, and the Japanese 12 totaling 108,000 tons. For light cruisers, no numbers were specified but tonnage limits were 143,500 tons for the U.S., 192,200 tons for the British, and 100,450 tons for the Japanese. (See John Maurer and Christopher Bell, At the Crossroads between Peace and War: the London Naval Conference in 1930, (Naval Institute Press, 2014). 17. While in the opposition during the Minseitōdominated cabinet of Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi, the Seiyūkai attacked the ratification of the London Naval Treaty of 1930 as against Article 11 of the Meiji constitution, which stipulated the independence of the military from civilian control. See David S. Spencer, “Some Thoughts on the Political Development of the Japanese People,” The Journal of International Relations, January 1920, 325. 18. Treaty Series, vol. 25, 202–227. Bix, “The Politics of Good Intentions,” Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 208; Gordon M. Berger, “Politics and Mobilization in Japan, 1931–1945” in Peter Duus, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 6, The Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 105–6. 19. Herbert P. Bix, “A Political Monarch Emerges,” (HarperCollins, 2016), 209. 20. Mark Metzler, Lever of Empire: The International Gold Standard and the Crisis of Liberalism in Prewar Japan, (University of California Press, 2006). 21. “Though the Hamaguchi Cabinet successfully managed to get the Privy Council to deliberate on and approve the London Naval Treaty, a young right winger named Sagoya Tomeo, who was enraged over the alleged usurpation of the Emperor’s prerogative of supreme command, shot Hamaguchi on November 14, 1930. The Prime Minister survived the shooting but was wounded seriously, so the Cabinet participated in the 59th session sans Hamaguchi, with Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijuro chosen as acting Prime Minister. The Seiyukai, however, condemned the Government on the grounds that Prime Minister Hamaguchi was absent from the Diet proceedings and that Shidehara was not in fact a party member.” From Modern Japan in archives: Political history from the opening of the country to post-war, 3–18, “Shooting of Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi,” March 18, 1931 (Shōwa 6) Papers of OKI Misao, #183 National Diet Library. See also Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, HarperCollins, 2016), 210―211. 22. Ibid., 209. 23. “The lack of exchange rate stability constitutes an impediment to trade. But the lack of enough gold reserves leaves government intervention as the only means of stabilizing exchange rates at low levels. Thus, in July 1932, the Japanese government enacted the Capital Flight Prevention Law, restricting inflows and outflows of capital, and began in November 1932 to impose measures to prevent the yen’s further depreciation, placing exchange transactions under nearly total control of the government.” See Akita Shigeru and Nicholas J. White, The International Order of Asia in the 1930s and 1950s, (Routledge, 2010). 24. After the Wanpaoshan Incident and the execution of Capt. Shintaro Nakamura in the Hinganling mountain range by Chinese soldiers, came the shocking incident called the Mukden Incident that occurred on the night of September 18, 1931. Japanese troops in the Kwantung Army invaded south Manchuria. On October 8, 1931, the Kwantung Army bombed Chinchow, the headquarters of Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang. At the end of 1932, the staff of the Kwantung Army planned further moves into the Chinese provinces, invading south of Manchukuo. In the first few weeks of 1933, they added Jehol to Manchukuo. The Chinese authorities intervened near the League of Nations and requested the help of the international community. The League of Nations demanded withdrawal of Japanese troops. The Kwantung Army ignored the League. See Yamamuro Shinichi, Manchria Under Japanese Dominion, Translated by Joshua A. Fogel, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 10–13, 21–23. See also Leslie Alan Horvitz & Christopher Catherwood, Encyclopedia of War Crimes and Genocide, (Facts on File, 2011), 128. Chapter 6 Into Manchuria 1. The Treaty of Portsmouth ended the 1904– 1905 Russo-Japanese War. It was signed on September 5, 1905 after negotiations lasting from August 6 to August 30, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, United States. See De Martens, F., “The Portsmouth Peace Conference, 1905,” The North American Review, 181―558. Also see Eugene P. Trani, The Treaty of Portsmouth: An Adventure in American Diplomacy, (Lexington, University of Kentucky Press, 1969). 2. “… Japan was at the forefront of hegemonic wars in a quest to extend the Japanese hegemony over Korea to the entire AsiaPacific region – the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 to gain dominance in Korea.” The Two Koreas and the Great Powers, (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2; “A new balance of power had emerged. China’s millennia-long regional dominance had abruptly ended. Japan had become the pre-eminent power of Asia, a position it would retain throughout the 3. 4. 5. 6. twentieth century.” S.C.M. Paine, The SinoJapanese War of 1894–1895: Perception, Power, and Primacy, (Cambridge University Press, 2002). A warlord of Manchuria from 1916 to 1928 who rose from banditry to power and influence. Backed by Japan, Zhang Zuolin successfully influenced politics in the Republic of China during the early 1920s. He invaded China proper in October 1924 during the Second Zhili-Fengtian War and gained control of Peking. See Chi Man Kwan g, War and Geopolitics in Interwar Manchuria, (Bill, 2017), 83. Also see Nathan Carl F. Plague prevention and politics in Manchuria 1910–1931, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 66. Zhang was defeated by the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek in May 1928. Leaving Beijing in early June to return to Manchuria, he was killed by a bomb planted by infuriated Kwantung officers on June 4, 1928. See Death of Chang Tso-lin, Manchuria War Lord, Rumored in Peking: Once a Bandit Chief, (The New York Times, 1925-08-17). Zhang Xueliang was the effective ruler of Northeast China and much of Northern China after the assassination of his father, Zhang Zuolin, on June 4, 1928. An instigator of the 1936 Xi’an Incident, he spent over 50 years under house arrest, first in mainland China and then in Taiwan. He is regarded by the Chinese Communist Party as a patriotic hero for his role in the Xi’an Incident. Chang died in Hawaii in 2001 at the age of 100. See Itoh Mayumi, The Making of China’s War with Japan: Zhou Enlai and Zhang Xueliang, Springer, 2016. See also Shai Aron, Zhang Xueliang: The General Who Never Fought, Springer, 2012. See Yoshihisa Tak, Matsusaka. The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904–1932, (Harvard University Asia Center, 2003). See also Shin’ichi Yamamuro, “Manshūkoku no Hou to Seiji: Josetsu,” The Zinbun Gakuhō: Journal of Humanities, 1991; Sin’ichi Yamamuro, Manchuria under Japanese Dominion, Translated by Joshua A. (Fogel University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 10–13, 21–23. 7. The Mukden Incident, or Manchurian Incident, was an event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the Japanese invasion in 1931 of northeastern China, known as Manchuria. Invading Manchuria represented an economic “opportunity” to save Japan from the effects of the Great Depression. See Roger J. Spiller, An Instinct for War: Scenes from the battlefields of history, Harvard University Press, 315. Also see Ferrell, Robert H., “The Mukden Incident: September 18–19– 1931.” Journal of Modern History, (University of Chicago Press, March 1955), 27 (1): 66–72. 8. See Guide to a Microfilm edition of the Diaries of Henry Lewis Stimson in the Yale University Library. The diaries are most detailed during those years that Stimson held public office, as secretary of war under President William Howard Taft (1911–1913), colonel of field artillery with the American Expeditionary Force in France (1917–1918), special envoy of President Calvin Coolidge to Nicaragua (1927), governor general of the Philippine Islands (1928–1929), secretary of state under President Herbert Hoover (1929– 1933), and secretary of war under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (1940–1945). 9. Leslie Alan Horvitz and Christopher Catherwood, Encyclopedia of War Crimes and Genocide. Facts on File (2011), 128; Shin’ichi Yamamuri, Manchuria under Japanese Dominion, translate by Joshua A. Fogel, (University of 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. Pennsylvania, Press, 2006), 10–13, 21–23; Robert H. Ferrel, “The Mukden Incident,” (September 18–19, 1931), March 1955. James Weland, “Misguided Intelligence: Japanese Military Intelligence Officers in the Manchurian Incident, September 1931,” 1994, 445–460. Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 235. See also Eguchi Keiichi, Jūgonen sensō shōshi, shinpan (Aoki Shoten, 1991), 36–37. In 1930, Stimson was the chairman of the U.S. delegation to the London Naval Conference of 1930. He was also the chairman of the U.S. delegation to World Disarmament Conference in Geneva. In 1931, when Japan invaded Manchuria, Stimson, as secretary of state, proclaimed the “Stimson Doctrine”. It said no fruits of illegal aggression would ever be recognized by the United States. See Henry Lewis Stimson, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Retrieved January 5, 2017. See also Henry L. Stimson, The First Wise Man. (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc. 2001). See Nish Ian Hill, Japanese Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period, (Greenwood Publishing Group), 75. In October 1931, Shidehara was featured on the cover of Time with the caption “Japan’s Man of Peace and War.” Hatano, “Manshū jihen to ‘kyūchū seiryoku,”114, citing “Nara nikki,” Sept. 21, 1931. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 239. Ibid., 239–240. “Nara Takeji jijūbukanchō nikki (shō),” in Chūō kōron (Sept. 1990), 340–41. See also Bix, 239. See William Christopher James, Conflict in the Far East, (Brill Archive), 274–275. 19. Ostrower, Collective Insecurity, 94–96. See also Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 242. 20. Edwin P. Hoyt’s Notes in Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 469, secretary of state Henry Stimson’s recollection of the Manchurian crisis shows that at least this one American official was under no illusions about the direction in which Japan had begun to move. As the Mukden incident was developing, he and the Japanese ambassador, Katsuji Debuchi, were congratulating each other on the betterment of relations that had occurred in recent months, and Stimson was indicating his hope that in the new atmosphere of friendliness he could bring about U.S. repudiation of its harsh anti-Japanese immigration laws. The chances looked good. But after Mukden, there was no hope. The Stimson recollections indicate how hard he tried to show the Japanese the full extent and probable future of American disapproval of the Manchurian grab. They show how little long-range effect the disapproval by one nation of another’s policy has had; just as the United States did not “lose China” at the end of World War II, so U.S. diplomacy had no real influence in stopping Japan’s militarists in the 1930s. Even then, force would have been the only stopper. 21. The last Qing emperor, Henry Puyi, was brought out of retirement and made Manchukuo’s ruler, but the state was controlled by the Japanese, who used it as their base for expansion into Asia. See Power Brian, Puppet Emperor: The Life of Pu Yi, Last Emperor of China, 1988. 22. The draft report presented to the Special Assembly is published in League of Nations Documents, A (Extr.) 22. 1933. VII. The 23. 24. 25. 26. report has been published by the World Peace Foundation, as “The Verdict of the League, China and Japan in Manchuria.” On the Report of the Assembly of the League of Nations on the Sino-Japanese Dispute, see also Manley O. Hudson, The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 27, No. 2, 300–305, published by (Cambridge University Press, Apr. 1933). (The League suggested economic sanctions, but nothing was done because many countries, particularly Britain, had important trading links with Japan and did not want the League to take sanctions against this country. The League did not even stop arms sales, because it feared that this would make Japan declare war. On Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations, see Meirion and Susie Harries, Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army, (Random House, 1992), 163. Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill Book Company 2001), 111. Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 25, 1932. See Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, 112, “This invitation to families to watch their sons and brothers inducted was not just a polite gesture. It was a part of General Araki’s plan for the nation. The army was the vanguard; the target was the nation of Japan; the goal was to build a nation of people dedicated to denial of self, with such ardent loyalty to the Imperial Way, that the citizen would feel that dying for the emperor was a privilege.” These bloodthirsty statements were created by the officer corps to teach the men that death was to be expected, that there could be no honorable surrender in battle under any conditions. Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, 113. See also Hillis Lory, Japan’s Military Masters: The Army in Japanese Life, 40. 27. Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, 112. 28. Ibid., 113. Chapter 7 Into China Again 1. Manchukuo, officially the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of Manchuria after 1934, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia from 1932 until 1945. In 1931, the region was seized by Japan following the Mukden Incident. The Japanese initially installed Puyi as Head of State in 1932, and two years later he was declared Emperor of Manchukuo with the era name of Kangde. See Encyclopedia Britannica article on Manchukuo, Archived December 21, 2007 at the Wayback Machine. See also Yamamuro, Shinichi, Manchuria under Japanese domination: Translated by Fogel, Joshua A., (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 116–117. 2. William Stewart, Yarnell Harry Ervin (1857–1959), Admirals of the World: A Biographical Dictionary, 1500 to the Present (McFarland, 2009). 3. Japan left the League of Nations over the Mukden Incident. The Japanese claimed that at Mukden the Chinese had blown up a railway in Manchuria they had been building and invaded China. In December 1932, the League of Nations’ Assembly had adopted a unanimous report (42―1, with only Japan opposing) blaming Japan for the Invasion of Manchuria. Six months later, after rounds of negotiations between the League and Japan had failed; Japan’s formal resignation from the League was filed. Two nations (Costa Rica in 1925, and Brazil in 1926) had previously withdrawn from the League but Japan’s departure was a major blow to the League as it was the first major power to do so. See Alex Selwyn-Holmes, “Japan withdraws from the League of Nations,” June 7, 2009. 4. Marquis Kido served as Emperor Hirohito’s closest advisor during Japanese Aggression into China and the waging of World War II. During the war, he kept a private diary that was subsequently used as one of the definitive sources for the prosecution against Japanese defendants. Kido claimed after the war that Hirohito was never aware of the plans to attack Pearl Harbor. 5. In September 1931, the Japanese controlled the Manchurian railway. They claimed that Chinese soldiers had sabotaged the railway and attacked the Chinese Army. In January―May 1932, they attacked and captured the city of Shanghai. After a few months, the Japanese had conquered the whole of Manchuria, and set up a Japanesecontrolled state called Manchukuo, run by the former emperor of China. China appealed to the League of Nations, which recommended that Manchuria be returned to China. Instead of pulling out of Manchuria, Japan walked out of the League. In 1933, the Japanese troops invaded Jehol, the Chinese province next to Manchuria. 6. “In acknowledging receipt of this telegram, Sir Eric Drummond, Secretary-General of the League of Nations, recited the paragraph of the Covenant referred to and promised “to communicate immediately the telegram from the Japanese government together with his reply to the members of the League. Since it was by no means certain that Japan had fulfilled “all its international obligations and all its obligations under the Covenant” by March 27, 1935, it could not be assumed that Japan ceased to be a member of the League on that date,” Cited by Quincy Wright, Professor of International Law in the University of 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Chicago, in an article: “The Effect of Withdrawal from the League Upon a Mandate.” See on this question Josephine J. Burns, “Conditions of Withdrawal from the League of Nations,” American Journal of International Law, vol. XXIX (1925), 40–50. See also League of Nations, Monthly Summary, March 1933, Vol. XIII, 84–85. The Great Wall built by different dynasties represented a series of fortification systems to protect and consolidate territories of China against various nomadic groups. The most well-known sections of the wall were built by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The entire wall with all its branch’s measures 21,196 km (13,171 mi). The Great Wall is generally recognized “as one of the most impressive architectural feats in history.” See William Lindesay, The Great Wall Revisited: From the Jade Gate to Old Dragon’s Head, (Harvard University Press, 2008). Zara S. Steiner, The Lights that Failed. European International History 1919–1933, (Oxford University Press, 2005). Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 279. Ibid., 312. The Anti-Comintern Pact was an agreement between Germany, Italy and Japan, that they would work together to stop the spread of Communism around the globe. On November 1, 1936, a week after Hitler and Mussolini signed a treaty of friendship, the two dictators announced a Rome-Berlin Axis, showing their common interest in destabilizing the European order. Almost three weeks later, on November 25, 1936, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan signed the “Anti-Comintern Pact” against the Soviet Union. Italy joined the pact on November 6, 1937. The agreement would become known as the Axis Alliance or Axis Powers. See William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, (Simon & Schuster, 1960); Carl Boyd, “The Role of Hiroshi Ōshima in the Preparation of the AntiComintern Pact,” Journal of Asian History, (1977). 11 (1): 49–71; Ken Ishida, Japan, Italy and the Road to the Tripartite Alliance, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Robert Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins of the Second World War, 1933–1940, (New York City: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 12. The Pacific War Council was formed in Washington on April 1, 1942, with a membership consisting of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, his key adviser, Harry Hopkins, and representatives from Britain, China, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Canada. Representatives from India and the Philippines were later added. See Pacific War Council Documents at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Museum and Library. 13. John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. (Pantheon, 1987). See also McLynn, The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph, 1942–1945, 1. 14. Kobayashi Hideo, “Ryūjokō jiken o megutte: Ryūjokō jiken rokujussūnen ni yosete,” in Rekishigaku kenkyū 699 (July 1997), 30–35. See also Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 318. 15. Ibid., 239. 16. Nine days after the incident, on July 16, 1937, Lt. Gen. Kanichirō Tashiro was hospitalized for heart illness and died in Tianjin. 17. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 319. 18. Harada nikki, dai rokkan, 30. Cited by Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarpersCollins, 319). 19. Ibid., 319. 20. The rules protecting prisoners of war (POWs) are specific and were first detailed in the 1929 Geneva Convention. They were refined in the third 1949 Geneva Convention that provides a wide range of protection for prisoners of war. Both conventions define the rights of prisoners of war and set down detailed rules for their treatment and eventual release. See Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, July 27, 1929. See also Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field (1929). 21. While Asians, the Japanese saw themselves as less representatives of Asia than Asian’s champion. They sought to liberate Asian colonies from the Westerners, whom they disdained. But although the Japanese were initially welcomed in some Asian colonies by the indigenous populations whom they “liberated” from European domination, the arrogance and racial prejudice 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. displayed by the Japanese military governments in these nations created great resentment. This resentment is still evident in some Southeast Asian nations. From the article: “Japan’s Quest for Power and World War II in Asia,” (Columbia University, 2009). See also Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 280. “Although racial intolerance and bigotry never became a state policy as in Nazified, anti-Semitic Germany, racial discrimination against other Asians was habitual for many twentieth-centuries Japanese, having begun around the time of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, with the start of Japanese colonialism.” Andrew C. Isenberg, Thomas Richards, Jr. “Alternative Wests Rethinking Manifest Destiny”, (Pacific Historical Review, vol. 86 no. 1, February 2017), 4–17. Harries M, Harries S. Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Army, (New York: Random House, 1991), 142– 154. SL. Large, Emperor Hirohito and Shōwa Japan, A Political Biography, (London: Routledge, 1992), 50–52, 60–75. See also Sheldon H. Harris, “Japanese Biomedical Experimentation during the World-War-II Era,” (OAC, Online Archive of California). The Shōwa era is a period of Japanese history that refers to Emperor Hirohito’s reign from 1926 to his death in 1989. It was preceded by the Taishō period. The Shōwa era was longer than the reign of any previous Japanese emperor. On January 7, 1989, Crown Prince Akihito succeeded to the Chrysanthemum Throne upon the death of his father Hirohito. See Louis-Frederic Nussbaum, “Shōwa in Japan Encyclopedia,” (2005), 188. The Battle of Taiyan was a major battle fought in 1937 between China and Japan named for Taiyan (the capital of Shanxi province). See Hsu Long-hsuen and Chang MingKai, History of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), 1971. Translated by Wen Ha-hsiung, Chung Wu Publishing, 33, (140th Lane Tung-hwa Street, Taipei, Taiwan Republic of China, 2005), 195―200. Gen. Li Tsung-jen was chief leader of the “Kwangsi clique,” victorious at Taierzhuang in 1938 during the Sino- Japanese War, elected vice-president of the Republic of China on April 29, 1948, acting president from January 24, 1949 to March 1, 1950. On Li Tsung-jen, see The Memoirs of Li Tsung-jeng, by TE-KONG TONG and LI TSUNG-JEN. [Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press; Folkestone: Dawson, 1997). 28. From 1936 to 1937, Doihara was the commander of the 1st Depot Division in Japan until the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. He served in the Beiping-Hankou Railway Operation and the campaign of Northern and Eastern Henan, where his division opposed the Chinese counterattack in the Battle of Lanfeng. After the Battle of Lanfeng, he was attached to the army general staff as head of the Doihara Special Agency until 1939 when he was given command of the Japanese 5th Army, in Manchukuo under the overall control of the Kwantung Army. After the occupation of Manchuria, the Japanese secret service, under his supervision, soon turned Manchukuo into a vast criminal enterprise in which rape, child molestation, sexual humiliation, sadism, assault, and murder became an institutionalized means of terrorizing and controlling Manchuria’s Chinese and Russian populations. In 1940, he became a member of the Supreme War Council that shifted its military policy in China to what was called the Three Alls (“Kill all, –burn all, – loot all”). On November 4, 1941, as a general in the Japanese Army Air Force and a member of the Supreme War Council, he voted the approval of the attack on Pearl Harbor. From 1940 to 1941, he was appointed commandant of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy. He then became head of the Army Aeronautical Department of the Ministry of War, and Inspector-General of Army Aviation until 1943. In 1943, Doihara was nominated Commander in chief of the Eastern District Army. In 1944, he was appointed the governor of Johor State, Malaya, and commander in chief of the Japanese Seventh Area Army in Singapore until 1945. At the time of the surrender of Japan in 1945, Doihara was commander in chief of the First General Army. After the surrender of Japan, he was arrested and tried before the International Military Tribunal of the Far East as a class A war criminal with other members of the Manchurian administration responsible for the Japanese policies there. He was found guilty on counts 1, 27, 29, 31, 32, 35, 36, and 54 and was sentenced to death. He was hanged on December 23, 1948, at Sugamo Prison. On criminal enterprise by Doihara, see Ronald Sydney Seth, Encyclopedia of Espionage, (Doubleday, 1974), 313, 315. See also Leslie Alan Horvitz and Christopher Catherwood, Encyclopedia of War Crimes and Genocide, 127, 128. 29. The last Qing emperor, Henry Puyi, was brought out of retirement and made Manchukuo’s ruler, but the state was controlled by the Japanese, who used it as their base for expansion into Asia. See Brian Power, Puppet Emperor: The Life of PuYi, Last Emperor of China, (Universe Pub, 1988). 30. In late 1937, over a period of six weeks, the Imperial Japanese Army forces brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people in the Chinese city of Nanking (Nanjing). The horrific events are known as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking where between 50,000 to 80,000 women were sexually assaulted. There are no official numbers for the death toll in the Nanking Massacre, though estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000 people. Soon after the end of the war, Matsui and his lieutenant Hisao Tani, were tried and convicted for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and were executed. See Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking, 6. Also, see Joshua A. Fogel, The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, 2000, 46–48. Takashi Yoshida, The Making of the “Rape of Nanking,” (Oxford University Press, 2006), 157–158. 31. Herald [NSW: 1842–1954], page 12, /JAPANESE PLAN. 32. Dōmei News Agency was the official news agency of the Empire of Japan. During World War II, Dōmei News Agency came under the control of the Ministry of Communications. The agency collected news and information from various sources to pass on to the government and military and produced various works of propaganda aimed at foreign countries. Under the Allied 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. occupation of Japan Dōmei was disbanded, and its functions divided split between Kyodo News and Jiji Press in 1945 following the end of World War II. Millard was the Shanghai correspondent for the New York Times from 1925. See John Maxwell Hamilton, Edgar Snow: A Biography (LSU Press, 2003): xvi. See also French Paul and Carl Crow: A Tough Old China Hand: The Life, Times and Adventures of an American in Shanghai (Hong Kong University Press, 2007), 18. Australian Associated Press (AAP) is an Australian news agency. It was established by Keith Murdoch in 1935. Eric Pace, “Tillman Durdin, 91, Reporter in China during World War II, (The New York Times, 1998–07–09). Gaimushō hensan, Nihon gaikō nenpyō narabi shuyō bunsho, ge (Hara Shobō, 1969), 366. U.S. Department, Publication 1983, Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1939―1941 (Washington, D.C.: U.S., Government Printing Office, 1943), 44–52. Ibid., 44–52. U.S. Department, Publication 1983, Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1939–1941, (Washington, D.C.: U.S., Government Printing Office, 1943), 44–52. Ibid., 44-52. Ibid., 44–52. Lyman van Slyke, The China White Paper, (Stanford University Press, 1967), 10. See also “Japanese Attack on China,” (Mount Holyoke University, 2011). Quoted on U.S. Department, Publication 1983, Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1939–1941. Ibid., 44–52. Ibid., 44–52. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 334. TWCT, vol. 20: Judgment and Annexes, transcript 49, 608. See also Tim Maga, Judgment at Tokyo: The Japanese War Crimes Trials, (The University Press of Kentucky, 2001); and Tanaka Yuki, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II, 1996. 48. Kasahara, Nankin jiken, 164, citing the Nankin senshi shiryōshū II. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 739. 49. Kasahara, Nitchū zenmen sensō to Kaigun, 302; see also Bix, 340. 50. Cited in Herbert P. Bix note (68), Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 739, “The USS Panay, built in Shanghai in 1928 and named after the island of Panay in the American colony of the Philippines, was one of three gun boats of the American Asiatic Fleet’s “Yangtze Patrol.” Its “right” to navigate the river and protect American lives and property derived from the 1860 Treaty of Peking, which ended the second Opium War. For details, see Kasahara, Nitchū zenmen sensō to kaigun, 22.” 51. Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War (1941–1945), (Bloomsbury Publishers, 2016), 89. 52. Hiroshi Saitō was the Japanese ambassador to the United States from 1934 to 1939. He took part in Japan’s 1934 renunciation of the Washington Naval Treaty. He was a partisan to maintain good relations with the U.S., even as further international condemnation of Japan for the invasion of Manchuria. He was the interlocutor of Prime Minister Konoe during the negotiation based on the USS Panay incident. For more information see Sterling Fisher, Jr., “JAPAN’S ‘AMERICAN DIPLOMAT’ IN ACTION; Hiroshi Saito, Trained in the Ways of This Country, Has Taken the Initiative in Clearing Up Many Old Issues, (The New York Times Magazine, March 4, 1934). 53. Ibid., 739, 344. 54. Yamada, Daigensui Shōwa tennō, 84, citing Harada nikki, dai rokkan, 207. The Tokyo Nichi Nichi shinbun (evening edition), Jan. 12, 1938, carried the banner headlines: HISTORICAL IMPERIAL CONFERENCE HELD, EMPIRE’S UNSHAKEABLE POLICY DECIDED, HOPE TO ERADICATE ANTI-JAPANESE REGIME AND STRIVE TO ESTABLISH PEACE IN THE ORIENT. The Tokyo Asahi shinbun’s announcement described the seating arrangements and the layout of the conference room. 55. Fujiwara, Shōwa tennō nojugonen senso, 97; cited also by Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 345. 56. Ibid., 345. 57. Courtney Browne, Tojo the Last Banzai, (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1998), 28. 58. The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the FivePower Treaty, is an international conference called by the United States to limit the naval arms race and to work out security agreements in the Pacific area. It was signed by the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan. It limited the construction of battlefields, battlecruisers, and aircrafts carriers by the signatories. The treaty was concluded on February 6, 1922. Ratifications of that treaty were exchanged in Washington on August 17, 1923, and it was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on April 16, 1924. See League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. 25, 202–227. 59. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 349. 60. Ibid., 349 61. Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Kusa no ne fuashizumu: Nihon minshū no sensō taiken (Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai), 1991), 27. Tacked on to the three principles was a statement that Japan would not insist on territory or reparations, would respect China’s sovereignty, abolish extraterritoriality, and give positive consideration to returning its concessions in China. Cited by Bix, in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, notes 98, 740. 62. Edwin P. Hoyt, Hirohito: The Emperor and The Man, (Praeger Publishers, 1992), 115. 63. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 350. 64. On May 22, 1939, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany represented by foreign ministers Galeazzo Ciano and von Ribbentrop signed the Pact of Steel. The Pact of Steel, known formally as the Pact of Friendship and Alliance between Germany and Italy, was a military and political alliance between Italy and Germany. The pact consisted of two parts. The first section was an open declaration of continuing trust and cooperation between Germany and 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. Italy while the second, a “Secret Supplementary Protocol,” encouraged a union of policies concerning the military and economy. See Santi Cowaja, Hitler & Mussolini: The Secret Meetings, (Enigma Books, 2013). U.S. Department, Publication 1983, Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1939–1941, (Washington, D.C.: U.S., Government Printing Office, 1943), 87–97. Gordon M. Berger, Japan Young Prince, Konoe Fumimaro’s Early Political Career 1916–1931, (Monumenta Nipponica, 1974), 29 (4): 475. Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to infamy (New York: Vintage Book, 2013), 124. Edwin P. Hoyt, Hirohito The Emperor and The Man, (Praeger Publishers, 1992), 122. Hakkō ichiu, “eight crown cords, one roof” i.e. “all the world under one roof” was a Japanese political slogan that became popular from the Second Sino-Japanese War to World War II, and was popularized in a speech by Prime Minister of Japan Fumimaro Konoe on January 8, 1940. See Edwards Walter, “Forging Tradition for a Holy War: The Hakkō Ichiu Tower in Miyazaki and Japanese Wartime Ideology.” Journal of Japanese Studies 29:2, 2003. See also Brownlee John, Japanese Historians and the National Myths, 1600-1945: The Age of the Gods and Emperor Jimmu, (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997). Eri Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to infamy (New York: Vintage Book, 2013), 54. Ibid., 26. Ibid., 27–28. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 445. Ibid., 320. Before becoming prime minister, Tōjō was among the most popular voice for preventive war against the United States during deliberations leading to the Attack on Pearl Harbor. He served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association for most of the World War II. See Browne Courtney, Tojo: The Last Banzai, (Angus & Robertson, 1967), 170–171. 76. In 1941, Great Britain had 425 tankers (aggregate 3 million tons), the United States had 389 tankers (aggregate 2.8 million tons), while Japan had just 49 tankers with an aggregate tonnage of 0.6 million tons. At the start of 1941, Japan needed to import 85 percent of its crude oil with the remainder accounted for by lower quality synthetic production. Most of Japan’s imported oil came from Standard Oil of California (SOCAL, later renamed Chevron). See Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War 1941–1945, (Bloomsbury, 2015), 147. 77. The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) broke out after Japanese troops invaded the Chinese mainland. Almost a half million Japanese troops moved against Shanghai, Nanjing, and other locations in China. In late 1937, the nationalist government was forced to retreat from its capital, Nanjing, to Chongqing in Western China. The war came to an end in August 1945, after the United States detonated nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Russian troops invaded from the north and suppressed Japanese forces in Manchuria. See Hsu Longhsuen, “History of the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945),” (Taipei, 1972). See also Michael Clodfelter, “Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Reference,” vol. 2, 956. Chapter 8 Sneak Attack 1. Ugaki Matome, Facing Victory: The Dairy of Ugaki Matome, 1941–1945, (Pittsburg, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburg Press, 1991). 2. Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War, 1941–1945, (Bloomsbury, 2016), in Plan Orange and Mac Arthur’s Philippines Debacle, 208–216. 3. David Black, In His Own Words: John Curtin’s Speeches and Writings, (Perth: Paradigm, Books, Curtin University, 1995). 4. John Brown, “Holding New Guinea: A First Defeat for Japan’s Land Forces,” (Warfare History Network). 5. As naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison said: “The oil embargo and assets-freezing order of July 26, 1941, made war with Japan inevitable unless one of the two things happened, and neither was humanly possible. The United States might reverse its foreign policy, restore trade relations and acquiesce in further Japanese conquests; or the Japanese government might persuade its army at least to prepare to evacuate China and renounce the southward advance [which would surely] have been disregard by an Army which, as the facts show, would accept no compromise that did not place America in the ignominious role of collaborating with conquest.” See Samuel Eliot 6. 7. 8. 9. Morison, The Rising Sun in the Pacific 1931–April 1942: History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume 3, (Naval Institute Press, 2010), 63. In November 1939, the Japanese landed on the coast of Guangxi and captured Nanning. The Japanese successfully cut off Chongqing from the ocean, blocking Indochina, the Burma Road and The Hump the only ways to send aid to China. By November 1940, Japanese forces had evacuated from Guangxi. See Hsu Long-hsuen and Chang Ming-kai, History of the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) Second ed., Translated by Wen Ha-hsiung, (Chung Wu Publishing, 1971), Taiwan, 311–318. The “Axis powers” formally took the name after the Tripartite Pact was signed by Germany, Italy, and Japan on September 27, 1940, in Berlin. The pact was subsequently joined by Hungary (November 20, 1940), Romania (November 23, 1940), Slovakia (November 24, 1940), and Bulgaria (March 1, 1941. See Holger H. Herwig, “Reluctant Allies: German-Japanese Naval Relations in World War II, 2002. Also see R. L. DiNardo “The Dysfunctional Coalition: The Axis Powers and the Eastern Front in World War II, (The Journal of Military History, 1996). The Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact was signed between the Soviet Union and Japan two years after the war between USSR and Japan in China. The treaty called for the two nations to observe neutrality when any one of the two signing nations was invaded by a third nation. See Henry Kissinger, “Diplomacy,” 365. Also, see Boris Nikolaevich Slavinsky, The Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact: A Diplomatic History, 1941–1945, (Psychology Press, 2004), 103. Before becoming Japan’s prime minister, Tōjō was among the most outspoken proponents for preventive war against the United States during deliberations leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite saying he favored peace, Tōjō had often declared at cabinet meetings that any withdrawal from French Indochina and/or China would be damaging to military morale and might threaten the kokutai; the “China Incident” could not be resolved via diplomacy and required a military solution; and attempting to compromise with the Americans would be seen as weakness by them. The emperor would one day, down the long bloody road of World War II, praise Tōjō for serving him loyally while saying of Konoe, who had tried to prevent war with the United States, that he lacked “firm beliefs and courage.” See Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 419, 420. See also Youli Sun, China and the Origins of the Pacific War, 1931–1941 (St Martin Press, 1993), 92–95. 10. Pearl Harbor has become one of the most exhaustively examined and debated single events in the United States history –more so than the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or the Watergate political scandal. – The documents from eight official commissions, courts, boards, inquiries, or investigations conducted from December 1941 through May 1946 fill 23 volumes, 40 parts, and 25,000 closely printed pages. The personal archive of Adm. Husband E. Kimmel amounts to another 35,000 pages in typescript, some of it duplicative. More than 140 books and innumerable articles have been written on the subject. “Defeat cries out for explanation; whereas success, like charity, covers a multiple of sins.” Alfred Thayer Mahan. See also notes in Michael Gannon’s book, “Pearl Harbor Betrayed: The True Story of a Man and a Nation under Attack, (Henry Holt and Company, Publishers, 2001), 283.” 11. In a newly released memo written in 1941 by Japanese vice Interior Minister Michio Yuzawa, we can read: Early on the morning of December 7, just hours before the Japanese strike at Pearl Harbor, I (Yuzawa) attended a meeting with Tōjō and his top aides. Tōjō has just briefed the emperor, and he seemed quite happy with the results. The emperor had heard the plans for the attack and approved. “The emperor seemed at ease and unshakable once he had made a decision,” Yuzawa quotes Tōjō as saying: “If His Majesty had any regret over negotiations with Britain and the U.S., he would have looked somewhat grim.” But that hadn’t happened. “There was no such indication, which must be a result of his determination,” Tōjō says in the Yuzawa memo.” “I’m completely relieved. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. Given the current conditions, I could say we have practically won already.” Quoted on “Launching the War? Hirohito and Pearl Harbor,” (The National WWII Museum, December 6, 2008), by Robert Citino, Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy and the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian. Michael Gannon, Pearl Harbor Betrayed: The True Story of a Man and a Nation under Attack, (Henry Holt and Company, 2001), 111. Togo was appointed ambassador in Nazi Germany, in 1937. The following year he was transferred to become ambassador in the Soviet Union. See Togo Shigenori, The Cause of Japan (Translation of Jidai No Ichimen) (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956). Translated by Ben Bruce Blakeney and Fumihiko Togo. Togo’s memoirs. NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 5, Statement of Evidence, (Japanese Diplomatic Dispatches), 332–33. Neither of these two messages was sent to Kimmel or Short. Also cited by Michael Gannon, Pearl Harbor Betrayed: The True Story of a Man and a Nation under Attack, (Henry Holt and Company, 2001), 111. Quoted in Sadao Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006, 276. Quoted in ibid., 277. Tanaka, Dokyumento Shōwa tennō, dai nikan, kaisen, (Ryokufū Shuppan, 1988), 265. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 424. Ike Nobutake, trans. and ed., Japan’s Decision for War: Records of the 1941 Policy Conferences (Stanford University Press, 1967), 204; James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970), 155; Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 425. The Hull note (named after Secretary of State Cordell Hull) was described by Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo as “obnoxious,” unreasonable,” a “marked retrogression from earlier understanding,” and wholly in disregard of the negotiations that had been carried out over the preceding 20. 21. 22. 23. six months. The note was delivered on November 26, 1941. It was considered as an ultimatum for Japan to withdraw from China and other occupied territories and was perceived by the Japanese government as a casus belli (literally, “an occasion of war.”). See William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War 1940–1941, highly detailed semi-official US government history, 871– 901. Also see Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept (McGraw-Hill, 1981); Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History (McGraw-Hill, 1986); and December 7, 1941: The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor (McGraw-Hill, 1988). This monumental trilogy, written with collaborators Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, is considered the authoritative work on the subject. See Capt. Taussig Jr. Joseph., U.S. Navy (Ret.), “A Tactical View of Pearl Harbor,” Paul Stillwell, ed., Air Raid: Pearl Harbor! (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1981). See also Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton, USN (Ret.), with Capt. Roger Pineau, USNR (Ret.), and John Costello, “And I was There:” Pearl Harbor and Midway – Breaking the Secrets (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1985). Yoshida, Nihonjin no sensōkan, 178–79; Senshi sōsho: Rikukaigun nenpyō, fu-heigo, yōgo no kaisetsu (1980) 85. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 426. On January 7, 1941, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku wrote a letter to his nation’s Navy Minister, Admiral Oikawa Koshiro. Yamamoto divided the scheme of his text into five sections, entitled: “Preparations for War,” “Training,” “Operational Policy,” “A Plan of Operations to Be Followed at the Outset of Hostilities,” and “Personnel.” On the margin of the first page, in red ink, he brushed: “For the eyes of the Minister alone: to be burned without showing to anyone else.” See Hiroyuki Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy, translated by John Bester (Tokyo, New York: Kodansha International Ltd., 1979), 220. Oikawa may have burned Yamamoto’s letter, as requested. But a copy, in a sealed envelope, was left by Yamamoto with an academy classmate, Vice Admiral Hori Teikichi, who made the document public on November 9, 1949. See Professor Jun Tsunoda, (Kokushikan University, Tokyo), and Admiral Kazutomi Uchida, JMSDF (Ret.). “The Pearl Harbor Attack: Admiral Yamamoto’s Fundamental Concept,” Naval War College Review, vol. XXXI, no. 2 (fall 1978), 83– 88. See also Michael Gannon, Pearl Harbor Betrayed, (Henry Holt and Company, 2001), 38. 24. Even though he was opposed to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo was in command of the carrier-centered Mobile Force (Kido de Butai). The task force was made up of six carriers, two battlefields, three cruisers, and nine destroyers. From 1937 to 1938, Nagumo was in command of the Torpedo School, and from 1938 to 1939; he was commander of the Third Cruiser Division. Nagumo was promoted to vice admiral on November 15, 1939. There were 1,178 people wounded in the attack. See Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, IJN, (1886–1944; Paul S. Dull, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941–1945, (Naval Institute Press, 1978). See also Hatsue Shinohara, “An Intellectual Foundation for the Road to Pearl Harbor: Quincy Wright and Tachi Sakutarō.” Paper presented at the Conference on the United States and Japan in World War II, (Hofstra University, December 1991). 25. On Admiral Yamamoto, see Mark Stille, Yamamoto Isoroku, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012). 26. Did the Japanese bombers reach Pearl Harbor undetected? “The Japanese Carrier Fleet set sail in secrecy; radio silence; and flags signal are to be used between our fleet in order to avoid detection and sail north to the Aleutian Islands, then south to Pearl Harbor.” There were the orders given to the Japanese fleet. However, according to the facts and documents, they were detected. At the first wave approached Oahu, it was detected by the U.S. Army SCR-270 radar at Opana Point. This post had been in training mode for months but was not yet operational . The operators, Privates George Elliot Jr. and Joseph Lockard, reported a target. Lt. Kermit A. Tyler, a newly assigned officer at the thinly manned Intercept Center, presumed it was the scheduled arrival of six B-17 bombers from California. More than that, the Japanese fleet traveled from northern Japan by a route used by commercial ships and benefited from bad weather along the way, reducing their odds of been seen and reported. On December 20, 1941, at Hickam Field, Lt. Col. Mollison gave an affidavit that included this language: “As this [sending Army pursuit planes to Midway and Wake] would unquestionably weaken the defenses of Oahu, Admiral Kimmel asked a question of Captain McMorris, his War Plans officer, which was substantially as follows: Admiral Kimmel: McMorris, what is your idea of the chances of a surprise raid on Oahu. Captain McMorris: I should say no Admiral [emphasis in the original].” In 1981, Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton (Ret.), a (lieutenant commander in 1941), gave a more extended version of McMorris’s reply: “Kimmel then sent for Captain Charles H. McMorris, his head of war plans, and I can still almost quote what he said: ‘Soc…, Layton here and I have been discussing the chances of the Japanese making an attack on us here.’ And McMorris replied, ‘What’s that?’ We were discussing something that was written in Japanese about a Japanese carrier task force making a strike on Pearl Harbor. Do you think there would be a chance of that?” McMorris answered him, “Well, maybe they would; maybe they would, but I don’t think so. Nope. Based on my studies, it is my considered opinion that there are too many risks involved for the Japanese to involve themselves in this kind of an operation.’ “Layton, “Admiral Kimmel Deserved a Better Fate,” Paul Stillwell, ed., Air Raid: Pearl Harbor, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1981), 279. 27. Samuel E. Morison, Rising Sun, 63, n. 37. In placing on oil exports Roosevelt intended to permit low-grade gasoline for civilian and commercial purposes to continue flowing at 1936 levels, and so informed Ambassador Nomura. However, Secretary Ickes and Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson enveloped the flow in so much red tape that the embargo became total. See John Costello, Days of Infamy: MacArthur, Roosevelt, Churchill – The Shocking Truth Revealed (New York: Pocket Books, 1994), 57. 28. See Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, Boston Little Brown & Co., 1890. Also see Michael Gannon, Pearl Harbor Betrayed, The True Story of a Man and A Nation Under Attack, (Henry Holt and Company, LLC Publishers, 2001). According to Gannon notes, in Pearl Harbor Betrayed, 283, Pearl Harbor has become one of the most exhaustively examined and debated single events in United States history – more than the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or the Watergate political scandal. The documents from eight official commissions, courts, boards, inquiries, or investigations conducted from December 1941 through May 1946 fill 23 volumes, 40 parts, and 25,000 closely printed pages. The personal archive of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel amounts to another 35,000 pages in typescript, some of it duplicative. More than 140 books and innumerable articles have been written on the subject. 29. Though Hideki Tōjō wasn’t the man who orchestrated the attack on Pearl Harbor, and still required the emperor’s approval before going ahead with the plan, he’s often credited as the official who ordered it. See Courtney Browne, Tōjō: The Last Banzai, (Angus & Robertson, 1967), 170–171. Also, see Edwin Palmer Hoyt, Warlord: Tōjō against the World, (Scarborough House, 1933); Ben Ani Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, (Oxford University Press, 1981), 62–63. 30. By December 7, 1941, the U.S. Pacific Fleet consisted of nine battleships, three aircraft carriers, twelve heavy cruisers, nine light cruisers, sixty-seven destroyers, and twenty-seven submarines. An advance force named the Asiatic Fleet and commanded by Adm. Thomas C. Hart, USN, was based at Manila, in the Philippines. It consisted of three cruisers, thirteen destroyers, and twenty-nine submarines. British, Dutch, and Free French naval forces in the South Pacific consisted of two battleships, one heavy cruiser, eleven light cruisers, twenty destroyers, and thirteen submarines. The Japanese Combined Fleet consisted of ten battleships, ten carriers, eighteen heavy cruisers, twenty light cruisers, one hundred and twelve destroyers, and sixty-five submarines. See Michael 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. Gannon, Pearl Harbor Betrayed, (Henry Holt and Company, 2001), 289. Marquis Koichi Kidō was the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Japanese Emperor Hirohito during World War II. While not a member of the government, Kidō was Hirohito’s closest adviser. He was also the liaison between Hirohito and the government. The best known “Kido diary” is the one kept from 1930 to 1945. See “The Diary of Kido Takayoshi,” vol. II: 1871–1874. Review by Robert M. Spaulding, Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 41 no. 1 (Spring 1986), 117–119. See also the Diary of Jō Eiichirō, Nomura Minoru, ed. (Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1982). SHŌBŌGENZŌ, THE TRUE DHARMA-EYE TREASURY, Volume I, (Taishō Volume 82, Number 2582, translated from the Japanese by Gudo Wafu Nishijima and Chodo Cross, 2007. Jeffrey Record, “Japan’s Decision For War in 1941: Some Enduring Lessons,” (The Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), 2009). Michael Gannon, Pearl Harbor Betrayed, The True Story of a Man and a Nation Under Attack, (Henry Holt Publishers, 2001), 148. Stimson was an outspoken advocate of strong opposition to Japanese aggression. Ten days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Stimson entered in his diary the following statement: “[Roosevelt] brought up the event that we are likely to be attacked perhaps next Monday. 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.” Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War 1941–1945, (Bloomsbury, 2016), 180. Ibid., 181. Francis Pike, 181. Hewitt was awarded a Navy Distinguished Service Medal as commander of the United States Eight Fleet for the last two years of the war. In 1945, he chaired a Pearl Harbor investigation. Adm. Ernest King served in the Spanish- American War. He received his first command in 1914, leading the destroyer USS Terry in the occupation of Veracruz. Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, King was appointed as Commander in Chief of the United States Fleet. In March 1942, he succeeded Harold Stark as Chief of Naval Operations. 40. NARA, RG 80, PHLO, Box 17. 41. Jeffrey Record, “Japan’s Decision For War in 1941: Some Enduring Lessons,” (The Strategic Studies Institute, February 2009). 42. Robert P. Stinnett and Stephen Budiansky, “Truth About Pearl Harbor: A Debate,” (Independent Institute, January 30, 2003.) 43. Michael Gannon, Pearl Harbor Betrayed, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001), 277. 44. Michael Gannon, Pearl Harbor Betrayed, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001), 148. 45. The Japanese launched the invasion by sea from Formosa over 200 miles (320 kilometers) to the north of the Philippines. The conquest of the Philippines by Japanese is often considered the worst military defeat in United States. About 23,000 American military personnel were killed or captured, while Filipino soldiers killed or captured totaled around 100,000. MacArthur was forced to abandon the Philippines island fortress of Corregidor under orders from Pres. Franklin Roosevelt in March 1942. Deeply disappointed, he issued a statement to the press and the people of the Philippines, “I Shall Return.” See John T. Correll, “Caught on the Ground,” (Air Force Magazine, December 2007), vol 90, no. 12, 68; Walter D. Edmunds, They Fought with What They Had, 1992, 77, 83. 46. John J. Stephan, The Kuril Islands: Russo-Japanese frontier in the Pacific, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 50–56. 47. The Australian naval base of Rabaul, on the islands of New Britain, was attacked by Japan on January 20, 1942. About noon on January 20, eighty-six planes from the Akagi, Kaga, Zuikaku, and Shokaku delivered heavy strikes against Rabaul, followed up on January 21 by surprise raids by 75 planes of the Zuikaku and Shokaku on Lae, Salamaua, and Madang, on the east New Guinea coast. Rabaul became a major supply base for the Japanese operations in the Pacific and one of the most heavily defended positions in the theater. Rabaul was significant because of its proximity to the Japanese territory of the Caroline Islands, site of a major Imperial Japanese Navy base on Truk. Gen. Hitoshi Imamura, headquartered at Rabaul, commanded Japan’s 70th Army in the Solomons; they were reinforced by the 18th Army, tasked with defending northern New Guinea. See Bruce Gamble, Darkest Hour: The True Story of Lark Force at Rabaul – Australia’s Worst Military Disaster of World War II, (St. Paul, Minnesota: Zenith Press, 2006). See also Kengoro Tanaka, Operations of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces in the Papua New Guinea Theater during World War II. (Tokyo: Japan Papua New Guinea Goodwill Society, 1980). 48. Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War 1941–1945, (Bloomsbury, 2016), 335. 49. Ibid., 335. Chapter 9 Land and Sea Invasions 1. Jeffrey Record, “Japan’s Decision for War in 1941: Some Enduring Lessons,” (The Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), 2009). 2. The Pacific was geographically the largest theater of World War II. It includes the vast Pacific Ocean Theater, the Southwest Pacific Theater, and the Southeast Asian Theater. Japan’s invasion of China began the war in the Pacific Theater. By the end of February 1942, Japan invaded the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), capturing Kuala, Lumpur (Malaya), the islands of Java and Bali, and British Singapore. It also attacked Burma, Sumatra, and Darvin (Australia). See Dower John William, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, (Pantheon, 1987). See also Frank McLynn, The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph 1942–45, (Yale University Press, Reprint Edition (August 28, 2012), 1, Werner Gruhl, Imperial Japan’s World War II, 1931–1945, (Transaction, 2007), 9; Williamson Murray, Allan R. Millet, A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, (Harvard University Press, 143). 3. McMillin George, Carano (ed.), “Surrender of Guam to the Japanese,” (Guam: University of Guam, April-September 1972), 9–25. 4. Tokubetsu-keibi-tai (Imperial Japanese Army), counterinsurgency units of the Imperial Japanese Army. The Emergency Service Unit was a rapid reaction force of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department in the pre-World War II era. The Imperial Japanese Navy Keibitai (Naval Special Police) was a Navy Guards unit tasked with detaining prisoners of War (POW). 5. Rainbow 5, destined to be the basis for American strategy in World War II, assumed that the United States was allied with Britain and France and provided for offensive operations by American forces in Europe, Africa, or both. The plans developed by the Joint Planning Committee (which later became the Joint Chiefs of Staff) were officially withdrawn in 1939 in favor of Five Rainbow Plans developed to meet the threat of a two-ocean war 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. against multiple enemies. See Spector Ronald H. (1985), Eagle against the Sun, 59. See also Miller Edward S., War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897–1945, (Annapolis, MD: United States Institute Press, 1991); Ross Steven, U.S. War Plans: 1938–1945, (Lynne Rienner, 2002), 2. Formerly, Hart had considered himself to be a friend of MacArthur, but in the lead up to the outbreak of war, their relationship had deteriorated dramatically. Hart confided to his wife before the outbreak of hostilities that “Douglas is, I think, no longer altogether sane; he may not have been for a long time.” Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War (1941–1945), (Bloomsbury, 2016), 198. Pacific War: Japan’s Strategy in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica). Ibid., 199. Ibid., 199. Ibid., 199. Ibid., 199. Louis Morton, “The Decision to Withdraw to Bataan,” in Greenfield, Kent Roberts (ed.), Command Decisions, (Washington, D.C.: United States Army, 1960), 151–172. Manila an Open City, Sunday Times, December 28, 1941. See also Manila Occupied by Japanese Forces. Sunday Morning Herald, January 3, 1942. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 445. See Roger Paul P., The Good Years: MacArthur and Sutherland, (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990), 160–169. MacArthur returned to the Philippines with his army in late 1944. The return was not easy. The Japanese Imperial General Staff decided to make the Philippines their final line of defense, and to stop the American advance towards Japan. The kamikaze corps was created specifically to defend the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. The Battle of Leyte Gulf ended in disaster for the Japanese. The campaign to liberate the Philippines was the bloodiest campaign of the Pacific War. On MacArthur’s evacuation from the Philippines, see George W., Smith, MacArthur’s Escape: John “Wild Man” Bulkeley and the Rescue of an American Hero, (St. Paul Minnesota: Zenith Press, 2005). See also 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880–1964, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978). William E. Dyess, Bataan Death March: A Survivor’s Account, (University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 201. Stanley L. Falk, Bataan: The March of Death, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1962). In the worst massacre of POWS of the battle, the Japanese killed at least forty-seven people after taking the Ridge. Among the dead was Major Charles Sydney Clarke of China Command HQ. Around thirty civilians were massacred at Blue Pool. Three captured persons were executed at Causeway Bay. At Wong Nai Chung Gap ten men of the St. John Ambulance were killed, as well as a policeman and a medic. The Japanese executed fourteen captives at Overbays. A further seven were killed at Eucliff. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission report that five men of the Royal Air Force went missing near the Ridge on December 20, perhaps captured and killed. Six men of the Middlesex were killed defending PB 14 at Deepwater Bay Ride. Around hundred were killed during the massacre perpetrated at St. Stephen’s College. At least eight men —six of the Middlesex and two Royal Engineers— were killed after capture at Maryknoll Mission. See Tim Carew, Fall of Hong Kong, (London: Anthony Blond Ltd., 1960). See also Charles G. Roland, “Massacre and Rape in Hong Kong: Two Case Studies Involving Medical Personnel and Patients,” (Journal of Contemporary History, July 26, 2016). K XIV was one of five K XIV class submarines build for the Royal Netherlands Navy. Used for patrols in the Dutch colonial waters, the submarines diving depth was 80 meters (260ft). Three of the five of them were lost in World War II. ANZAC PORTAL, Australian Government, Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Fall of Rabaul, “The 2/22nd Battalion (about 900 men and 38 officers) formed the bulk of Lark Force. It had arrived in Rabaul on Anzac Day 1941. By December, Lark Force had increased to about 1400 troops. They included a headquarter group; part of the 2/10th Field Ambulance with 6 members of the Australian 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. Army Nursing Service (AANS); anti-tank and coastal artillery batteries; and a number of militias in the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, some of whom were only 18 years old. Ten Wirraways and four Hudsons from 24 Squadron joined them just as Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Malaya. In addition, approximately 150 men and officers of the First independent Company were based on nearby New Ireland.” Senshi sōsho: rikukaigun nenpyō, fu heigo yōgo no kaisetsu (1980), 104; Shiryō Chōsakai, ed., Daikairei: kaisetsu (Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1978), 1978), 122; also see the interpretation of these moves in Nakao, “Dai Tō’A sensō ni okeru bōsei teni chien no yōin,”110. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 446–753. Shiryō, Daikairei, kaisetsu, 97 Port Moresby was a strategic location on the south side of New Guinea that could potentially control air and sea off northern Australia; as well as the southern end of the Bismarck Archipelago. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 446. Sugiyama memo, ge, 81–82, cited in Nakao, 110–11. The policy document was entitled “Kongo torubeki sensō shidō no taikō” (Outline for conducting future war guidance). Its third item stated: “We will decide on concrete measures for more positive war guidance after giving consideration to our national power, changes in operations, the war situation between Germany and the Soviet Union, U.S. – Soviet relations, and trends in Chungking.” Also cited in Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 446 and 753. ANZAC PORTAL, Australian Government, Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Japanese Advance (December 1941March 1942; “Approximately 400 of the troops escaped to the mainland and another 160 were massacred at Tol Plantation. In July 1942, about 1,000 of the captured Australian men, including civilian internees, were drowned when the Japanese transport ship Montevideo Maru was sunk by an American submarine off the Philippines coast en route to Hainan.” 27. Bix, 446. 28. See Martin Smith, Burma–Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1991), 49. See also Robert H. Taylor, The State in Burma, (C. Hurst & Co, Publishers, 1987), 284. 29. Nakao Yūji, “Dai Tō’A sensō ni okeru bōsei teni chien no yōin,” in Gunjishi Gakkai, ed. Dainiji sekai taisen (3), Gunji shigaku 31, nos. 1 & 2 (Sept. 1995), 110. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2016), 445. 30. Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War (1941–1945), (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 334. 31. Ibid., 335. 32. Ibid., 335. 33. Looking to the example of the Russo-Japanese War, which ended with the spectacular Japanese victory at the Battle of Tsushima, Yamamoto wanted to draw the U.S. Navy into a battle that would decide, then and there, who ruled the Pacific. With a Japanese victory, he hoped the U.S. would be forced to negotiate for peace. JAPAN THE FALL OF AN EMPIRE JEAN SÉNAT FLEURY CONTENTS Introduction Confronting Defeat Fight to the Death The Potsdam Declaration The Atomic Bomb Aftermath Paying for the War Empire’s Disaster Introduction 1868 is considered as the entry of Japan in modernism. For Japanese officials, it was the critical path to unify the country. They wanted Japan to become a superpower and be able to face and commercially compete with the Occident1. From that vision, the Japanese decided to annex the neighboring countries in the Pacific and South Asia liable to provide their empire with the economic factors to sustain the development: arable lands, sub-soil natural resources, latex, oil, minerals, etc. Industrialization for the 1880s, followed by the first Japanese constitution in 1889, comes as the finalization of the country’s transformation. However, internal and external problems made expansionism necessary. The war against China and Russia, the occupation of Manchuria, the interpositions in Korea and Formosa heighten the National solidarity to help Japan in its industrial revolution. By the end of the First World War 1914 - 1918, despite strong control and civil liberty violations, the Japanese system has been able to enter capitalism2. From 1894 to the end of 1942, Japan has always been battling against supposed or declared enemies. The fights began with the first Sino-Japanese War (July 1894 - April 1895) followed by many other local armed conflicts. In December 1941, the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy invaded Thailand and attacked the United States military and naval bases in Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines. Before invading those territories, Japan’s empire consisted of the Japanese home islands, Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan. In addition, by 1942, Japan had seized Singapore and Malaysia, the Philippines, Burma, the Netherlands’ Indonesian colonies. In just over ten years, Japan had achieved a remarkable expansion of its empire from 243,500 square miles to 2.9 million square miles. The desire for geographical expansion came from the Japanese who believed in the superiority of their civilization over all others. Japanese believed they were superior to the Chinese from whom they borrowed literature, art, and a written language, and from Western society, particularly the Americans, from whom they borrowed technology.3 They believed that Japan had a special mission to dominate the world. They also believed they were descended from gods, their emperor was divine, and they had a heaven-inspired mission to rule the world. For more than 2,600 years, their society consumed and believed the propaganda supposedly originated by their first emperors - Jimmu, Suizei, Annei, Itoku, Kōshō, Kōan, Kōrei - and propagated by those who came after, namely, “Eight corners of the world under one roof.”4 The Japanese government has subjected its population to decades’ propaganda about racial superiority, the destiny and rewards of foreign conquest and occupation.5 The Japanese believed in their mind they must dominate about a billion people in Asia and eventually the world. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a preeminent daimyō, warrior, general, samurai, and politician of the Sengoku period, was regarded as Japan’s second “great unifier.” Toyotomi made the same prediction as Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte, when he said: “All military leaders who shall render successful vanguard service in the coming campaign in China will be liberally rewarded with grants of extensive states near India, with the privilege of conquering India and extending their domains in that vast empire.” Annexing Korea in 1910, invading Manchuria in 1931, and occupying from 1937 to 1942 several territories in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, allowed Japan to rival Britain as an Asian colonial power. The whole concept building an empire by invading neighbors was faulty and costly. Many decades of war had brought Japan to the verge of bankruptcy. The country’s daily life was completely deteriorated during the years of conflicts. Everything was in short supply: food, booze, fuel, medicine, cloth, and metal. Beginning in the summer of 1944, Japan was intensively bombed.6 Forty-one Japanese cities were destroyed by bombing prior to Hiroshima. Military training has caused more disaster. On August 6, 1945, a total of 90,000 to 120,000 Japanese were killed after the first U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. 7 Three days later, on August 9, the second U.S. atomic bomb on Nagasaki caused 150,000 to 200,000 Japanese deaths. 8 The Japanese were shocked when Hirohito had announced Japan’s capitulation to the Allies.9 Japan’s Occupation After its defeat in World War II, the United States led the Allies in the occupation and rehabilitation of the Japanese state. In the Potsdam Declaration, they discussed how to disarm Japan, deal with its colonies (especially Korea and Taiwan), stabilize the Japanese economy, and prevent the remilitarization of the state in the future.10 In September 1945, General Douglas MacArthur took charge of the Supreme Command of Allied Powers (SCAP) and began the work of rebuilding Japan.11 SCAP dismantled the Japanese Army and banned former military officers from taking roles of political leadership in the new government. 12 In the economic field, SCAP introduced land reform, designed to benefit the majority tenant farmers and reduce the power of rich landowners.13 MacArthur also tried to break up the large Japanese business conglomerates, or zaibatsu, as part of the effort to transform the economy into a free market capitalist system. The Potsdam Declaration had pledged that postwar Japan would guarantee freedom of speech, religion, and thought and respect fundamental human rights. The Japanese government was to remove all obstacles to the revival and strengthening of democratic tendencies among the Japanese people.14 In 1947, MacArthur’s advisors dictated a new constitution to Japan.15 The document included downgrading the emperor’s status to that of a figurehead without political control and placing more power in the parliamentary system.16 This new political structure of Japan centered on a new democratic constitution had reversed the Meiji pattern that had placed all sovereignty in the imperial institution, from which power could be drawn by imperial household officials, military officers, and the pricy council as well as by the prime minister.17 Those changes officially brought the Empire of Japan to an end, and led to the fall of the old political system that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the end of World War II. Chapter One Confronting Defeat Several months of hard work allowed Captain Rochefort and his team to break the Japan Navy Code No-25 (JN-25).1 This successful operation facilitated the Americans to decrypt about 5 percent of all Japanese messages. This was a “game-changer.” The intelligence HO in Washington was now able to discover where the Japanese fleet would strike next after Pearl Harbor, which had facilitated the Allied forces during the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Americans knew Yamamoto’s invasion target and his force dispositions were discovered.2 To strengthen their defensive positions in the South Pacific, the Japanese decided to invade and occupy Port Moresby in New Guinea and Tulagi in the southeastern Solomon Islands. The plan to accomplish both operations was called Operation MO. It involved several major units of Japan’s combined fleet. 3 Through signals intelligence, the United States learned of the Japanese plan. Under the overall command of U.S. Adm. Frank J. Fletcher, the Americans sent two navy carrier task forces and a joint AustralianU.S. cruiser force to oppose the offensive. On May 3 and 4, 1942, aware of the presence of U.S. carriers in the area, the Japanese fleet carriers advanced toward the Coral Sea with the intention of locating and destroying the Allied naval forces. Although the battle was a tactical victory for the Japanese in terms of American ships sunk or damaged (Lexington, Yorktown), it marked the first time since the start of the war that the two sides were engaged in airstrikes over two consecutive days. With the United States sinking the Japanese light carrier Shōhō and causing heavy damage to the Japanese fleet carrier Shōkaku; these two Japanese fleet carriers were unable to participate in the Battle of Midway the following month.4 Japan suffered its first major losses of the war during the Battle of the Coral Sea off New Guinea, on May 4–8, 1942. However, Japan’s first major defeat in the Pacific came with the American naval victory in the Battle of Midway Island, from June 4 to 7, 1942, which was the turning point for Japanese naval dominance in the Pacific War. Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, despite his large and powerful fleet, was crushed by an inferior United States force under the command of Adm. Chester Nimitz. “At Midway, the Japanese lost or left behind a naval air force that had been the terror of the Pacific–an elite force, an overwhelming force that would never again come back and spread destruction and fear as it had over the first six months of the war,” said Layton. “This was the great meaning of Midway…”5 The U.S. Navy had lost USS Lexington at the Coral Sea, and then USS Yorktown at Midway, but at the same time, Japan lost four fleet carriers. Japan’s fleet carrier force, which had taken fourteen years to build up, was reduced by two-thirds in a single morning at Midway. As historian Hedley Paul Willmott has noted: “The ability to concentrate mobile forces to dictate the direction and tempo of future operations was the all-important factor in the conduct of the Pacific War.”6 Losing the Battle of Midway ended Japan’s strategic dominance of the conflict. The U.S. Naval War College concluded, “Midway put an end to Japanese offensive action…and … [restored] the balance of naval power in the Pacific.” 7 The severe losses in carriers at Midway prevented the Japanese from reattempting to invade Port Moresby from the ocean. Two months later, the Allies took advantage of Japan’s resulting strategic vulnerability in the South Pacific to launch the Guadalcanal Campaign. This campaign along with the New Guinea Campaign eventually broke Japanese defenses in the South Pacific. It was a significant contributing factor to Japan’s ultimate surrender in World War II. On January 7, 1944, Hirohito sanctioned an offensive from Burma into Assam Province, India, to prevent an Allied drive to recover Burma and possibly bring to power a group of Indian nationalists against British rule. This attempt failed. On July 5, 1944, Hirohito accepted Tōjō’s recommendation. He ordered the end of the disastrous campaign in Burma. By then, approximately 72,000 Japanese troops were killed or wounded. A few weeks earlier, on June 12, 1944, a few days after the Allies’ Normandy landings in France, U.S. air strikes began to hit the Marianas Islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. Operation Forager had begun.8 Battle commenced with a dogfight over Guam in the early afternoon of June 12. During the battle, American submarines torpedoed and sank two of the largest Japanese fleet carriers. To deal with the American navy’s power, the Japanese launched their Guam-based aircraft. These were spotted on radar by U.S. ships. A group of thirty Grumman F6F Hellcats designed to replace the earlier F4F Wildcat and to counter the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero were dispatched from USS Belleau Wood to attack the Japanese aircrafts.9 Eighty-one Zeros were destroyed on the ground and in the air at a cost of eleven Hellcats. After one hour that lasted the clash, some thirty-five Japanese fighters were shot down, and a tanker and four escort destroyers. The battle of the Philippine Sea, from June 19―20, 1944, was catastrophic for the Japanese. In the first day of the battle, they lost more than two hundred planes and two regular carriers. As their fleet retired northward toward safe harbor at Okinawa, they lost another carrier and nearly one hundred more planes. Of the four hundred and thirty planes sent by Adm. Ozawa Jisaburo, twothirds of the air force involved was lost. In addition to the material losses, hundreds of excellent pilots trained since the beginning of the war against China had died, gone missing, or were taken prisoner by the enemy. During the two days of battle, U.S. losses totaled one hundred and thirty aircraft and some damage to ships. Between July 1944 and April 1945, Japan was increasingly losing the war. The Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy were forced to make more and more sacrifices. On July 24, 1944, Hirohito sanctioned plans for showdown battles in the Philippines, Taiwan, the southwest Islands, the Ryukyus, and the Japanese home islands, apart from Hokkaido and the Kuriles. On July 26, he told Koiso to not leave the capital and to control whether the imperial headquarters should be moved to another secret location or not. Two weeks later, during an imperial conference, the Army and Navy General Staff updated Hirohito on the new preparations for defense against the forthcoming enemy offensives. Shortly afterward with the emperor’s approval, the Koiso cabinet decided to arm virtually the entire nation. All subjects began military training with bamboo spears in workplaces and schools throughout the country. From April 1, to June 22, 1945, American forces fought at Okinawa in the last major battle of World War II. The plans for the invasion were well prepared. The Japanese had an estimated 120,000 soldiers and 700 aircraft to defend the island. Their defense had been reinforced in June 1944 after the loss of Saipan following two major defeats: The Battle of the Philippine Sea and the defeat in the Marianas. Being concerned about the danger, the Japanese commanders made immediate plans to airlift the 15th Independent Mixed Regiment from Tokyo to Okinawa. It would be supported by Field Marshal Shunroku Hata’s 9th Infantry Division which was also moved to Okinawa. As Col. Hiromichi Yahara, senior staff officer in charge of the 32nd Army in Okinawa said: “The Marianas line, also known as the Tōjō line, had been considered impregnable.” On October 18, 1945, Hirohito approved a decision of the imperial headquarters that ordered to fight the decisive battle on Leyte and to abandon the defense of Luzon. The Battle of Okinawa Admiral Spruance’s Task Force 58 provided the usual pre-invasion naval bombardment. Okinawa received six days of bombardment compared to the three days given to Iwo Jima.10 Spruance’s task force included seven fleet carriers (soon to be joined by the repaired USS Randolph) in addition to six light carriers and eight destroyers acting as pickets. The American forces were reinforced by British Task Force 57 that included ships from Australia, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand. The combined British and colonies’ forces boasted four fleet carriers, six escort carriers with a total of 450 aircrafts. This represented the most powerful fleet assembled in British history.11 Spruance’s armada brought four full divisions of the 10th Army (7th, 27th, 77th, and 96th Infantry Divisions). The Okinawa landings used 90,000 soldiers in addition to 88,000 Marines (the 1st, 2nd, and 6th Divisions). All in all, 183,000 soldiers (not including Seabees and support staff) were brought to the beaches of Okinawa under the command of Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. In addition to artillery, the invasion forces also brought 245 tanks, outnumbering Japan by almost ten to one. Over the first two weeks, the American armada landed some 577,000 tons of supplies around the Hagushi beachhead. By comparison, the Normandy landings brought 156,000 troops to France. Supplies landed on Okinawa were 750,000 tons compared to 250,000 tons in Normandy. In the first two months of the engagement alone, some 9 million barrels (forty-two gallons) of oil were consumed as well as 21 million gallons of aviation fuel. Less obvious items consumed in bulk over the initial months included 2.7 million packs of cigarettes and 1.2 million chocolate bars. Twenty-four million items of mail were delivered.12 Japanese troops fought until death during the Battle of Okinawa.13 On April 7, 1945, the Japanese battleship Yamato, the greatest battleship in the world at this time, was sunk in Japan’s struggle to defend the position.14 Located 350 miles from Japan’s southernmost island, Kyushu, Okinawa was the main island in the Kyuku chain. Home to some 450,000 people, Japan had annexed the island in 1879. On April 1, 1945, after six days of bombardment, the troops of the U.S. 10th Army, commanded by Gen. Simon B. Buckner, began their amphibious invasion of Okinawa. Determined to defend the island, Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima, who commanded more than 100,000 Japanese troops, left the shoreline relatively undefended, waiting for the Americans to come. It wasn’t until a few days into the invasion that the advancing U.S. soldiers realized the trap. But it was too late for them to retreat. Japanese machine gunners positioned in hidden stone killed thousands of U.S. troops. As the American forces on Okinawa confronted such challenges, Japanese pilots began a barrage of kamikaze attacks on the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, waiting offshore in support of the invasion. The kamikaze tactics used by Japan at Okinawa led the U.S. Navy their worst losses of World War II. 16 On May 8, 1945, on behalf of the German state, Admiral Karl Dönitz surrendered to the Allies. In Japan, the Minister of War, General Korechika Anami, the Army Chief of Staff, General Yoshijirō Umezu, and the rest of the Japanese officials knew that the war was over. The Japanese were retreating everywhere. In the Philippines, the Japanese Air Force was largely destroyed prior to MacArthur's invasion of Luzon. The attacks on Iwo Jima and Okinawa authorized by the American Joint Chiefs of Staff had been the last stage of the American advance towards Tokyo. General Tomoyuki Yamashita's troops in the Philippines were pushed back into the mountains of northern Luzon. Faced with malaria and malnutrition, the Japanese were everywhere surrounded by enemies. Hundreds of soldiers were dying of hunger and disease every day. Some then began to commit suicide. 17 In Burma, after scoring some defensive successes during 1943, in order to stop Allied offensives, in 1944, the Japanese then attempted to launch an invasion of India (Operation U-Go). This attempt failed with disastrous losses. The Allied crossed the Irrawaddy River and defeated the main Japanese armies led by Gen. Heitarō Kimura, Lt. Gen. Masaki Honda, and Shōzō Sakurai. In a final operation just before the end of the war, Japanese forces isolated in Southern Burma attempted to escape across the Sittang River. They suffered heavy casualties. It was the greatest defeat to that date in Japanese history. As the result of disease, malnutrition, and exhaustion, 50,000 to 60,000 Japanese were killed, and almost 100,000 or more were wounded.18 Okinawa was the last major battle of World War II. Japan’s 32nd Army, some 130,000 men, commanded by Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima, defended the island. By the time the Japanese troops were retreated to the southern coast of Okinawa where they made their last stand, casualties were enormous on both sides. By the end of May, the Japanese had lost 50,000 men. In June, another 60,000 fell, and then on the night of June 21, the day Gen. Roy Stanley Geiger declared the American victory on Okinawa, Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima and Lt. Gen. Isamo Cho realized that the end had come. With their ranking officers, they consumed a farewell dinner prepared for them by the commander’s cook, Tetsuo Nakamuta. The following day, on June 22, first Ushijima and then Cho bared their bellies to the upward thrust of the ceremonial knives in their hands…” 19 At the end of June 1945, after taking Okinawa, the American strategy toward Japan had been reevaluated. This strategy evolved from the relationship between the USAAF commander, Gen. Henri Arnold, and the young field commander, Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay. After strategic discussions between the two men at LeMay’s HQ at Saipan in mid-June, they signed off on what was known as the EMPIRE Plan. It was decided to focus firebombing attacks on twenty-five second-tier cities (later expanded to 58 cities) with populations of between 60,000 and 325,000 people.20 These targets were drawn from a list of 171 smaller cities. Niigata, Kokura, and Hiroshima were excluded because they were on the list of potential atom bomb targets. Kyoto has also been excluded from the list for cultural reasons. The goal was to choose industrial targets and cities most at risk of incendiary conflagration. Typical of such cities was Kagoshima in southern Kyushu, which was a major port and rail terminus with large oil storage facilities and four electric power plants. Hamamatsu located in western Shizuoka Prefecture, was an important railway repair center as well as producing propellers, ordnance, and machinery. Hamamatsu flourished during the Edo period (1603 to 1868) under a succession of daimyō rulers as a castle town, and as a post town on the Tōkaidō highway connecting Edo with Kyoto. During the Meiji Restoration, Hamamatsu became a short-lived prefecture from 1871 to 1876, after which it was united with Shizuoka Prefecture. Hamamatsu Station opened on the Tōkaidō main line in 1889. The same year, with the establishment of the modern municipalities system, Hamamatsu became a town.21 Among other cities in the list, was Yokkaichi, the fourth smaller city targeted on June 17–18. With a population of 102,000 citizens pressed into just 1.5 square miles, Yokkaichi had the largest oil refinery in Japan. Yokkaichi was elevated to city status on August 1, 1897. An imperial decree in July 1899 established Yokkaichi as an open port for trading with the United States and United Kingdom. From 1939, Yokkaichi became a center for the chemical industry, with the Imperial Japanese Navy constructing a large refinery near the port area. Yokkaichi was one of the first cities bombed by the Americans during the war. On April 18, 1942, the city was attacked by aircraft from the Doolittle Raid. During the final stages of World War II, on June 18, 1945, eighty-nine B-29 Super fortress bombers dropped 11,000 incendiary bombs, destroying 35 percent of the urban area and killing 736 people. This attack was followed by another eight air raids until August 8, 1945, killing another 808 people at Yokkaichi. Then, we end the list with Ōmuta in Kyushu. With 177,000 people, Ōmuta produced chemicals, coke, synthetic oil, and explosives as well as being the biggest coal shipping port. During the Edo period, Ōmuta was a part of the Miike han (Miike Domain), ruled by the Tachinaba clan who also ruled Yanagawa. In 1871, in a course of the Meiji Restoration, the Han system was abolished, and prefectures were founded. Ōmuta belonged to the Miike (1871), Mizuma (1871―1876), and finally Fukuoka prefectures (1876 to present).22 Nine Japanese divisions, a little more than 500,000 men, were deployed to defend the invasion beaches against the American troops. Almost all were stationed at Kyushu’s southern beaches. American forces captured Japanese codebooks during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, allowing intelligence units based in Pearl Harbor to read top secret enemy documents. The acquisition of the codebooks had facilitated the Allied forces in controlling the other territories occupied by Japan, with fewer casualties until the end of the war. After the United States had taken the key islands of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Formosa, and were ready to invade Tokyo, Hirohito approved the decision from the government to arm every citizen of Japan. Military training was mandatory in all schools and places of employment. Following a decree issued by the government of Prime Minister Suzuki Kantarō, all the schools in Japan were closed. The children were put to work producing foods or munitions. Some were even taught how to operate anti-aircraft guns. Throughout the Pacific, soldiers of the Japanese army were motivated by the message of their leaders who exhorted them to “crush the enemy.” This statement only served to confuse the troops and the Japanese civilians on the issue of the war. On the morning of March 10, 1945, American B-29 bombers dropped 2,000 tons of M-69 napalm bombs on Tokyo. One ton of M-69 could destroy the entire area of a big city. The goal was that Tokyo be “burned down and wiped off the map to shorten the war in order to force Japan to capitulate.” Almost sixteen square miles of Tokyo was destroyed when B-29s swept low over the city, dropping hundreds of tons of incendiary bombs on the streets of one of the most populated regions in the world. Over 250,000 buildings crumbled under flames, which reached an intensity of 2,000 degrees. The entire geisha district, including hospitals, homes, temples, train stations, theaters, hotels, schools, and convents, was destroyed. The civilian population was dying in ever-increasing numbers. LeMay continued to send hundreds of B-29s up the long path from far to the south of the Home Islands, paralyzing sixty-six metropolitan centers in Japan. Tokyo, Osoka, Kobe, Nagoya, and many other vital centers of Japanese industrial areas were destroyed as M-47 and M-69 canisters fell out the fuselages of B-29s, reaching their targets by radar. This firebombing of Tokyo, known as Operation Meetinghouse, was the most horrific bombing in history, far deadlier than any other bombing during World War II. What was Hirohito’s attitude? The emperor, instead of adopting an expression of sorrow and regret toward Tokyo citizens, showed no compassion for his subjects trapped inside walls of flames that threw off unimaginably high temperatures. On March 18, 1945, Hirohito toured the burned-out portions of Tokyo. His caravan of vehicles and his own maroon Rolls-Royce passed slowly through rubble sometimes as high as five feet. Despite the sufferings among Tokyo’s citizens, he kept the same position: The Japanese will not surrender, and not even when Gen. Curtis LeMay had repeatedly dropped thousands of firebombs on Nagoya, Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe, and Kawasaki. Relying more on the help of the Russians, Hirohito refused to end the war. To negotiate with the Russians, Hirohito sent the sixty-sevenyear-old Kōki Hirota to meet with the Soviet ambassador to Japan; Yakov Alexandrovich Malik. Hirota was prime minister of Japan in 1937 shortly before the Second Sino-Japanese War began in July of that year. The meeting between Kōki Hirota and Yakov Malik was scheduled at the Gora Hotel, fifty miles southwest of Tokyo in the town of Hakone. The fall of Okinawa made the Japanese government desperate to find a way to convince Stalin to help Japan seek peace. Malik, a lifelong diplomat and skilled with thirtynine-years as foreign affairs officer, knew that the Japanese were coming from a position of great weakness. The Soviet ambassador was categorical to Hirota’s request: “Russia will not renew its 1941 non-aggression pact with Japan, on the grounds that the Nippon alliance with Germany makes them an enemy of the Soviet Union.” Hirohito himself authorized a second round of discussion just hours later. During this second meeting, Hirota adopted a new strategy, offering to enter into a trade agreement with the Soviets: Japanese rubber from its conquered territories in Southeast Asia in exchange for Soviet oil. “Russia has no oil to spare,” Malik replied. A few days before this meeting, LeMay’s pilots dropped five million M-69s on Japan. The “operation bombing” of Tokyo was a complete success for the Americans, who began to enormously hurt Japan’s capacity to continue the war. B-29 aircrafts were, at this point, the unconditional threat to Japan’s officials refusing to surrender and choosing to fight until destruction. On April 5, 1945, predicting the ultimate defeat of Japan, Prime Minister Kuniaki Koiso demanded that the military structure be altered so that the premier could share in the decision-making process.23 The generals and admirals refused to consider his proposal. On the same day, Koiso resigned. And while the fierce and bloody battle for Okinawa was raging 350 miles to the southeast, Retired Adm. Kantarō Suzuki became the new prime minister. The son of a local government official, Kantarō served in the Sino-Japanese War. He also took part in the Battle of the Japan Sea during the Russo-Japanese War. He successively held military posts as director of the Personnel Bureau at the Navy Ministry, vice navy minister in the second Okuma cabinet, commandant of the Naval Academy, and commander in chief of the Combined Fleet. In 1925, he became chief of the naval general staff office. In 1929, he assumed the concurrent offices of jiju-cho and privy councilor. On February 26, 1936, he was assaulted while he was serving as grand chamberlain. Escaping miraculously from death, he resigned from his post. He was chairman of the Privy Council in 1944 before he became prime minister.24 On April 7, 1945, Kuniaki Koiso resigned, and Kantarō Suzuki was appointed at his place as prime minister. Suzuki became premier while precision bombing from American forces continued to target Japanese aircraft production. On April 7, 1945, large-scale attacks on aircraft factories in Tokyo were mostly successful. Although seven Super fortresses were shot down, VII-Fighter pilots shot down one hundred and one Japanese aircraft. Another attack on the Musashino aircraft plant on April 12 inflicted heavy damage on this facility. Over the next two weeks, precision attacks were made on the Tachikawa aircraft factory at Yamato, the Hiro naval aircraft factory at Kure, the airframe factory at Konan, and the oil storage facilities at Iwakuni, Oshima, and Toyama. By the end of May, 50 percent of Tokyo was destroyed. The capital was so damaged that it was temporarily removed from the list of targets. About 15 percent of Japan’s urban housing stock or some 94 square miles of buildings had been destroyed. Tokyo’s Imperial Palace was not targeted because of the risk of killing the emperor.25 A decree issued by the cabinet of Suzuki had closed all the schools in Japan, which were turned into factories. Japanese students were enlisted to actively help in the war effort. 26 Confronting defeat, the Japanese used another tactic. Their air forces based in Korea, China, and northern Japan, allowed them to launch kamikaze aircraft against the Allied fleet. In addition, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s 12th Flotilla based on Kyushu was deployed with a total of 900 hidden planes that would be utilized for suicide flights. Vintage wooden biplanes invisible to American radar, was put in place for nighttime suicide attacks. Hirohito had one hope left. Under the leadership of Gen. Korechika Anami, the Japanese troops might bleed the Americans so badly on the beaches of Kyushu and Honshu that Japan could extract better peace terms from the Allies. Delayed surrender was the strategy. Chapter Two Fight to the Death The successive defeats of the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy continued toward the Battle of Manila, the Battle of Luzon, the Battle of Iwo Jima, the Battle of the Irrawaddy River, and finally the Battle of Okinawa. After all those defeats, surrender should be the ultimate decision of the Japanese officials in order to avoid the destruction of the homeland. Hirohito, as divine emperor, was the only one who could order the Army General Staff to stop the war. Only the emperor could ask Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki to begin negotiations with the Allies to end the conflict. On the contrary, far from making this wise resolution that would have spared the lives of hundreds of thousands of his subjects, Hirohito decided to support the position of Adm. Osami Nagano, former chief of the Navy General Staff, and from Feb. 1944 to the end of the war, Emperor’s Hirohito personal naval advisor, who wanted to continue the war at any cost.1 As a result of this senseless calculation, there were several major attacks by the American Air Force on Japan mainland, including the air raid on the city of Tokyo on March 10, 1945, the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by Nagasaki, on August 9, and several other deadly American-led air strikes on Tokuyama, Iwakuni, Osaka, Kamagaya, and Isekai. During the U.S. airstrike on Tokyo, the damages from the incendiary bombs (496,000 in total) damaged 261,000 homes, leaving 1.15 million people homeless. Thirty-two shopping malls were destroyed, and the Japanese government recorded the death of 100,000 people. In Hiroshima, about 80,000 people died and about 40,000 people died in Nagasaki. Some figures have put the number at 200,000 people dead as a result of the use of the two atomic bombs. On June 22, 1945, 383 B-29s attacked industrial areas in six different cities in Japan: Kure, Kakamigahara, Himeji, Mizushima, and Akashi, all in southern Honshu. On June 26, saw factories in the same Shikoku Island area were attacked by 510 B-29s accompanied by 148 fighter jets. The use of incendiary bombs affected the following cities: Hamamatsu, Kagoshima, Omuta, Yokkaichi, Fukuoka, Shizuoka, Toyohashi, Moji, Nobeoka, Okayama, Sasebo, Kumamoto, Kure, Shimonoseki, Ube, Kochi, Takematsu, Tokushima, Akashi, Chiba, Kofu, Shimizu, Gifu, Sakai, Sendai, Wakayama, Ichinomiya, Tsuruga, Utsunomiya, Uwajima, Hiratsuka, Kuwana, Namazu, Oita, Choschi, Fukui, Hitachi, Okazaki, Matsuyama, Aomori, Ichinomiya, and Tokuyama. The use of incendiaries was extended into the beginning of August. As Japanese air resistance had entirely collapsed, a few days just before the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, American pilots launched 836 B-29s against Hachiojima, Mito, Nagaoka, and Toyama.2 In accordance with the EMPIRE Plan attack, an average of two incendiary attacks a week was scheduled. Improvements in technology with B-29 that began to be fitted with AN/APQ–7 radar allowed significantly more accurate night bombing. Subsequently, precision attacks on oil refineries achieved notable success at Utsube, Kudamatsu, Minoshima and the Maruzen refinery outside Osaka. Between May and July, American B-29 pilots dropped 60 million propaganda leaflets targeting the Japanese people, “to take action to terminate the war.” Produced by Nimitz’s Psychological Warfare Office, the objective was to encourage the Japanese resistance movements to activate. For example, on July 27–28, leaflets were dropped on eleven cities to warn the inhabitants that they were going to be bombed by incendiaries. This strategy failed because unlike Germany, there were no Japanese citizens who would make a statement or act expressing disapproval of the war. Even Communists volunteered to die as kamikaze pilots.3 In addition to the bombing of the Japanese home islands, the navy had decided since March to mine the Japanese coastline. At the end of March, the 313th Bombardment Wing, which had been specially trained for mine laying, began operations in the Shimonoseki Strait, which divided the largest Japanese island of Honshu from the second-most important island of Kyushu. (Truman warned that if Japan failed to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, it could “expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”4 The operation was timed to prevent the possible disruption of the Okinawa invasion by the Japanese navy.5 Millions of innocent lives could have been saved if the Japanese leaders had accepted without delay the Potsdam Declaration. While Tokyo and many major cities in Japan were being destroyed daily by fire raids from American attacks using hundreds of B-29, the officials in Tokyo rather than decide on the declaration, wanted to clarify the future status of their emperor. Hirohito and his staff preferred to wait instead of replying to the cable in which the Allies issued a last warning to the Japanese empire.6 Tōgō was annoyed at the recommendation of Ambassador Sato in Moscow. On July 20, 1945, Sato wired to Tōgō: “I recommend acceptance of virtually any term.” In response, Tōgō, from a secret channel cable sent this message back to Sato: July 25, 1945 1900hours To: Sato From: Tōgō No. 944 (urgent, ambassador’s code) …Navy Capt. Ellis Mark Zacharias said on the 21st that Japan had two choices: It could either accept a dictated peace after its ruin or surrender unconditionally and enjoy the benefits of the Atlantic Charter. We would be wrong to consider such statements trick propaganda. We must admit that they are partly intended to invite us to come to their cause… We, for our part, are desirous to inform the United States through some feasible method that, although we are unable to accept unconditional surrender under any circumstances, we have no objection to the restoration of peace on the basis of the Atlantic Charter.7 On July 27, in the Imperial Palace with Hirohito, the Japanese cabinet sat down to study the declaration that was being drafted in Potsdam, Germany: Point Six: There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest… Point Seven: …points in Japanese territory to be designated by the Allies shall be occupied to secure the achievement of the basic objectives we are here setting forth. Point Eight: The terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out and Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and such minor islands as we determine. Point Nine: The Japanese military forces, after being completely disarmed, shall be permitted to return to their homes with the opportunity to lead peaceful and productive lives. Point Ten: Stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals, including those who have visited cruelties upon our prisoners… Point Eleven: The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government. The Potsdam Declaration The Potsdam Declaration was signed on July 26, 1945. Written by Harry Truman and Clement Atlee, it was remotely approved by Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek). The Soviet Union de facto accepted the terms when it declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945. On July 26, 1945, President Harry S. Truman, for the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, for United Kingdom, and Chiang Kai-shek, Chairman of China, issued the document, which outlined the terms of surrender for the Empire of Japan, as agreed upon at the Potsdam Conference. The ultimatum stated, “If Japan did not surrender; it would face ‘“prompt and utter destruction.”’ 8 It had been several weeks since the Japanese authorities had been notified of the Potsdam Declaration; Hirohito and his staff instead of recognizing defeat and stopping the casualties from the war, tried to use all political means for avoiding complete defeat or unconditional surrender. The strategy was to persuade the Soviet Union to continue its neutrality, and, at the same time to make every effort to grow discord between the Americans and the British on one side, and the Russians on the other side. As the situation deteriorates still further, Japan may even make a serious attempt to use the Soviets as a mediator in ending the war.” Knowing the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy were objectively defeated, Hirohito was indifferent to the suffering that the war was causing on his own citizens, and on the peoples of Asia, the Pacific, and the West. The leaders of this wartime empire and his war leaders let pass several opportunities to end the war. First, Hirohito and his inner war cabinet, —the Supreme War Leadership Council, — could sue for peace when Prince Konoe and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu, in February 1945, warned the emperor that once the war was ending in Europe, the Soviet Union would not hesitate to eschew the Neutrality Treaty and would decide to intervene military in the Far East to occupy Manchuria and other territories in Japan. According to military intelligence officers, the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan by midsummer. Hirohito, instead of starting the process to end the war, was determined to fight. He supported the position of the far-right extremists in the army who rejected any act of surrender.9 The second opportunity was offered at the beginning of June 1945, when Japanese troops were defeated during the Battle of Okinawa. The invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945, was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II. The battle has been referred to as the “typhoon of steel” because of the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of Japanese kamikaze attacks, and the numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle was one of the bloodiest in the Pacific, with approximately 210,000 casualties: at least 85,000 Allies and 125,000 Japanese. The Americans suffered over 82,000 casualties, including non-battle casualties (psychiatric, injuries, illnesses), of whom over 12,500 were killed or missing. Battle deaths were 4,907 of navy, 4,675 army, and 2,938 Marine Corps personnel. The US military estimates that 110,071 Japanese soldiers were killed during the battle. A total of 7,401 Japanese regulars and 3,400 Okinawan conscripts surrendered or were captured during the battle. Both sides lost considerable numbers of ships and aircraft, including the Japanese battleship Yamato. Of the estimated pre-war population of 300,000, an estimated 150,000 Okinawans were killed, committed suicide or went missing. The eighty-two-day battle lasted from April 1 until June 22, 1945. After the defeat, General Umezu indicated that the war effort could continue no longer, and Umezu unveiled the dramatic situation in China. Foreign Minister Milotov had notified Tokyo on April 5, 1945, that the Japan-Soviet Neutrality Pact would not be extended, and that the Germans had surrendered unconditionally on May 7–8, leaving Japan completely isolated. Hirohito, once again, instead of listening to Umezu’s advice, had refused to surrender in order to allow the imperial structure to survive. The emperor adopted, with his war leaders, two dangerous measures: preparations for a final battle on the homeland, and efforts to gain Soviet assistance in ending the war by offering Stalin limited territorial concessions. Over several weeks, witnessing that the home islands had been bombed on a large scale, and knowing for certain that the bombing of Tokyo and several major cities in Japan would intensify over time, Hirohito approved the decision of the six constituent members of the council who agreed to return to the situation that had existed prior to the Russo-Japanese War, while retaining Korea as a Japanese territory and making southern Manchuria a neutral zone. The third opportunity came on July 27–28, when the Potsdam Declaration was signified to the Suzuki cabinet. The Japanese government obtained the declaration and was informed that if it fulfilled certain unilateral obligations, which the victorious powers would impose after the Japanese government had proclaimed “the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces” and furnished “proper and adequate assurance of their good faith in such action,” Japan would then be allowed to retain its peace industries and resume participation in world trade on the basis of the principle of equal access to raw materials. “The alternative for Japan,” the declaration concluded, “is prompt and utter destruction.” Article 12 stated, “The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government.” Prime Minister Suzuki received the declaration on July 27 and showed no intention of accepting it. On the contrary, the Suzuki cabinet first ordered the press to publish the Dōmei News Service’s edited version and to minimize the significance of the declaration by not commenting on it.10 The next day, on July 28, Hirohito called Prime Minister Suzuki and four other important officials for an audience; among them, Army Minister Korechika Anami, Chief of the Naval General Staff, Toyoda Soemu. The five officials came in their limousines. Arriving at the palace, they assembled in the conference room of the imperial library. Hirohito, in uniform, opened the meeting brusquely, by saying: “We have heard enough of this determination of yours to fight to the last soldier. Now we want action. We want you to consider methods of ending this war. Don’t be bound by anything you have said before. State your real opinions.” In the afternoon of that meeting, in accord with Army Minister Anami Korechika, Chief of the Naval General Staff Toyoda Soemu, Prime Minister Suzuki made Japan’s rejection explicit by formally declaring, that the Potsdam Declaration was no more than a “rehash” (yakinaoshi) of the Cairo Declaration, and that Japan intended to “ignore” it (mokusatsu).11 Navy Minister Adm. Mitsumasa Yonai was very comfortable with this position. When his secretary, Rear Adm. Takeo Takagi, asked him why the prime minister had been allowed to make such an absurd statement, Yonai replied: “If one is first to issue a statement, he is always at a disadvantage. Churchill has fallen; America is beginning to be isolated. The government therefore will ignore it. There is no need to rush.”12 My question here is, why did Japan’s top leaders delay so long before finally accepting to end the war? It was Emperor Hirohito’s tactic to delay the inevitable capitulation in order to cut a deal on the issue of guaranteeing the dynasty. To do so, he requested Soviet mediation. The Hirota Kōki and Jacob Malik talks, and the secret messages that Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō sent to Ambassador Satō Naotake in Moscow, were part of the strategy. The negotiations between Japan and Russia to gain Soviet assistance to end the war went on through June, July, and early August. Those political meetings could be perceived as a tactic to delay the act of surrender. The future of the throne and the allimportant prerogatives of its occupants, by the time of the discussions, would be absolutely guaranteed. On the morning of August 3, 1945, Suzuki had a meeting with his cabinet advisory council, composed of the president of Asano Cement, the founder of the Nissan Consortium, the vice president of the Bank of Japan, and other business leaders who had profited greatly from the war. Those from the zaibatsu recommended acceptance of the Potsdam terms on the grounds that the United States would allow Japan to retain its military industries and participate in world trade. Suzuki replied to them: For the enemy to say something like that means circumstances have arisen that force them also to end the war. That is why they are talking about unconditional surrender. Precisely at a time like this, if we hold firm, then they will yield before we do. Just because they broadcast their declaration, it is not necessary to stop fighting. You advisers may ask me to reconsider, but I don’t think there is any need to stop [the war].13 The Atomic Bomb On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. At precisely eight fifteen and seventeen seconds, Col. Paul Tibbets, commander of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Forces, who piloted the Boeing B-29 Super fortress Enola Gay, pulled the B-29 over a sixty-degree bank and dropped the “Little Boy” on Hiroshima.14 A black and orange shape weighting nearly five tons fell down on the 255,000 people living in the city. At an altitude of 1,870 feet, the 9.5 pounds of cordite drove the uranium chunks into each other, and the equivalent of 13,500 tons of TNT exploded in the sky. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure.15 When the first plutonium device was exploded in New Mexico in July, Admiral Purnell and General Groves had agreed on the strategy of putting a second bomb on target as quickly as possible after the first in order to impress the Japanese with the fact that the United States has more than one atomic bomb, in their arsenal. During a conversation with Groves, Purnell had suggested that it would take two bombs to end the war. President Truman had accepted this proposition. He ordered atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two cities named after the conversation in Potsdam. The first idea was instead of Nagasaki, to choose the city of Kyoto. Kyoto was replaced by Nagasaki because the U.S. officials considered Kyoto to be mainly a historical, religious, and urban center, and its destruction would lead to a massive destruction of historical heritage. Other cities that were on the list were Yokohama, Niigata, and Kokura, which was home to Japan’s largest ammunition plant. Poor visibility had forced the Americans to abandon Kokura in the morning of August 9. “The winds of destiny seemed to favor certain Japanese cities,” wrote the New York Times reporter William Laurence, a passenger on one of the mission’s B-29s. On August 9, at 11:02 a.m. local time, at an altitude of 1,540 feet, the Fat Man, carried by the U.S. military plane nicknamed “Bockscar,” was detonated just over the northeast of the stadium in the Urakami Valley, an area that included industry as well as schools, hospitals and a cathedral. With the equivalent of 22 kilotons of power, the “Fat Man” plutonium bomb was far more powerful than the “Little Boy” used on Hiroshima three days earlier. From 100 miles away, people could hear the explosion of the bomb while an intense bluish-white flash illuminated the sky over Nagasaki. In a few seconds, the city became a graveyard. People by thousands lay on the streets, in the fields, screaming for help. From the east bank of the Urakami River, the entire roof of the Chinzei School had caved in. A few miles away from the school, the roof and masonry of the Catholic cathedral fell on the kneeling worshipers. The blast tore through the church, killing Father Saburo Nishida and about 10 parishioners. Between 8,500 and 10,000 Urakami District Catholics died in the blast. The atomic bomb destroyed the Nagasaki Medical College, and some 900 professors, doctors, nurses, faculty members, and students were killed. A total of between 50,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki were killed in the explosion and its immediate aftermath. The same day of Nagasaki’s bombing, in a nationwide radio report on the Potsdam Conference; President Truman explained the legitimacy of the bombing: Having found the bomb, we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.16 Despite the massive and mounting death toll from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hirohito, who was considered a deity by his subjects, refused to surrender. Knowing that only unconditional surrender would save Japan from complete destruction and knowing that unconditional surrender would mean the end of the 2,600-year-old imperial dynasty, the emperor persisted.17 On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union officially declared war on Japan, flooding 1.6 million troops into Manchuria, an area of 600,000 square miles in the northeast of China.18 As the Russians poured into Manchuria and the Japanese lived in utter fear wondering where the new nuclear bombs would be dropped next, on August 9, 1945, a second atomic bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Between 35,000 to 45,000 Japanese were killed during the first day of the blast. Hirohito, as a witness of the sufferings of his people, had to make a hard decision. Very concerned about the future of the war, he finally convoked his supreme council, and invited former Prime Ministers Hiranuma Hirota, Wakatsuki Okada, Fumimaro Konoe, and Hideki Tōjō to come to the Imperial Palace to gather their views on the war. A few hours later, he met with the six highranking dignitaries of the empire, the so-called “Big Six,” to decide on surrender, namely: Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki, Foreign Minister Shigenori Tōgō, Minister of the Navy, Adm. Mitsumasa Yonai, Minister of War, Gen. Korechika Anami, the Japanese imperial general staff, Gen. Yoshijirō Umezu, and the chief of navy personnel, Adm. Soemu Toyoda. Three agreed with the position to continue the war, and three voted for surrender. Then, Hirohito intervened: Now that the Soviet Union has entered the war against us, to continue… under the present conditions at home and abroad would only recklessly incur even more damage to ourselves and result in endangering the very foundation of the empire’s existence. Therefore, even though enormous fighting spirit still exists in the Imperial Navy and Army, I am going to make peace with the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, as well as with Chungking, in order to maintain our glorious national polity.19 The emperor continued: I have given a lot of thought to the current situation in the country and outside the territory; I have come to the conclusion that continuing the war would lead to more destruction in the nation and an extension of cruelty and barbarism in the world. Those who want to continue the war have taught me that new battalions will arrive from Kujukurihama in June. Now I realize that these promises cannot be fulfilled even in September. To those who are in favor of one last battle on our own soil, I want to remind them of the difference between their plan presented in the past and the one on the agenda. I don’t want to witness any more suffering from my people. Ending the war is the only way to restore peace in the world and lift the country into the distress it is currently facing. Thinking about the world situation and the internal Japanese situation to continue in the world and that the Japanese nation will suffer severe damage. This is the reason why I order the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers.20 In a radio address (known as Gyokuon-hsa), on August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced the acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. The same day, the Japanese government communicated the message to the Allied powers: “Acting by order and on behalf of the emperor, the Japanese government and the Japanese Imperial headquarters, we hereby declare that we accept the conditions set out in the declaration issued by the Heads of Governments of the United States, of China and Great Britain, on July 26, 1945, in Potsdam.” On September 2, 1945, Japan’s acts of surrender were signed by representatives of the Empire of Japan, the United States, the Republic of China, the United Kingdom, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Australia, Canada, the Provisional Government of the French Republic, Kingdom of the Netherlands, and New Zealand, on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. This action ended the war against China as well as the Pacific War linked to World War II. According to Kusayanagi Daizō, author of Nihon Meishoden, in the immediate wake of the defeat, it was estimated that more than 300 army and 50 navy personnel had committed suicide. Among them were: Gen. Korechika Anami, Adm. Takijirō Onishi, Gen. Seiichi Tanaka, Field Marshal Gen. Hajime Sugiyama, Army Chief of Staff at the time of Pearl Harbor, and Mrs. Sugiyama. 21 Yoichi Nakagawa, ex-professor at Kenkoku University in Manchuria during World War II, author of the book, A Moonflower in Heaven, and Kazuko Tsurumi, Japanese scholar, ex-professor at Princeton University, author of the book, Social Change and the Individual: Japan Before and After Defeat in World War II, estimated that between the emperor’s broadcast on August 15, 1945 and October 1948, a total of 527 army and navy men, plus a small number of civilians took their lives as a gesture of responsibility for the defeat. Chapter Three Aftermath As many as 60 million dead, 25 million of them Soviet, hundreds of cities reduced to rubble, World War II caused devastating damages. Much of Europe and Asia lay in ruins. The year 1945 has been called Year Zero. During the war, millions were forced to leave their homes, moving to work in Germany or Japan. In the Soviet Union, there were millions of people displaced or deported as undesirable minorities. In Europe and Asia, there were lots of orphaned children, 300,000 alone in Yugoslavia. In Germany alone some 2 million women had abortions every year between 1945 and 1948.1 The majority of roads and ports in Europe and Asia had been destroyed or badly damaged; bridges had been blown up; railway locomotives and rolling stock had vanished. 2 Big cities such as Warsaw, Kiev, Berlin, Paris, Manila, Dresden, Stalingrad, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Tokyo were piles of rubble and ash. In Germany, it has been estimated, 70 percent of housing had gone, and, in the Soviet Union, 1,700 towns and 70,000 villages. Factories and workshops were in ruins; fields, rests, and vineyards ripped to pieces. Millions of acres in north China were flooded after the Japanese destroyed the dykes.3 The end of the war also brought a series of violent attacks against citizens. Collaborators were beaten, lynched, or shot. Women who had fraternized with German soldiers had their heads shaved.4 In China and Eastern Europe the Communists used the accusation of collaboration with the Japanese or the Nazis to eliminate their political enemies. In the desperate final stages of the war, Japan’s top leaders had chosen to fight a brutal and bloody battle in Okinawa with the hope that it would dissuade the Allies, particularly the Americans, from attempting to invade the mainland.5 More than 10,000 Americans died during the last months of fighting. Over 110,000 Japanese troops and approximately one-third of the civilian population were killed. In the wake of defeat, approximately 6.5 million Japanese were stranded in Asia, Siberia, and the Pacific Ocean area. Some 2.6 million Japanese were in China at war’s end, and another 1.1 million dispersed through Manchuria. In addition, almost 600,000 troops were prisoners in the Kuril Islands and the Darien-Port Arthur enclave in southern Manchuria. Over 500,000 Japanese were in Formosa (modern-day Taiwan) and 900,000 in Korea. Nine hundred thousand were in Southeast Asia and the Philippines. Hundreds of thousands were dispersed across scattered islands in the Pacific.6 American and Japanese authorities estimated that between 1.6 and 1.7 million Japanese were prisoners of the Russians. Of this number, more than 300,000 were killed during the Stalinist purges.7 Scattered in more than a hundred prison camps, the Allied prisoners of war in Japan were malnourished; and some suffered from tuberculosis. A total of 31,617 American POWs were freed and processed through Manila by October 31, 1945. Some 1.35 million Koreans who had been conscripted to perform heavy labor were in Japan at the time of surrender.8 In July 1946, the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare estimated that there were approximately 400,000 war orphans throughout the country.9 A February 1948 report put the number of orphaned and homeless children combined at 123,510. Of this number, 28,248 had lost their parents in air raids; 11,351 were orphaned or lost contact with their parents during the repatriation process; 2,640 were identified as “abandoned;” and a total 81,266 were believed to have lost their parents, or have simply become separated from them during the difficult moments that accompanied the end of the war.10 By war’s end, the Japanese people in the cities and villages perished in huge number from malnutrition and disease. Many of them already were malnourished at the beginning of the war. The most common household diet consisted of barley and potatoes, but even these had fallen into short supply.11 By the government’s own standard, an adult needed to consume approximately 2,200 calories a day in order to be able to carry out a light level of activity. In December 1945, rations supplied only a little better than half of this required amount. 12 As Prof. John W. Dower related in his book, Embracing Defeat — Japan in the Wake of World War II—, the ravages of war can never be accurately quantified. The number of deaths usually cited for the Japanese Armed Forces was 1.74 million up to the time of surrender. However, we should say that this number is not accurate if we take into consideration civilian deaths in air raids by the Allies. At least 3 million soldiers and civilians died in Japan as a result of the war, roughly 3 to 4 percent of the country’s 1941 population of around 74 million. Approximately 4.5 million servicemen demobilized in 1945 were identified as being injured or ill and eventually, some 300,000 were given disability pensions. 13 It was estimated that the air raids and the bombing campaigns by the Americans against Japan’s homeland destroyed one-quarter of the country’s wealth. General MacArthur’s “SCAP” bureaucracy for the Allied powers placed the overall costs of the war even higher. Early in 1946, Japan had lost one-third of its total wealth and from one-third to one-half of its total potential income. Rural living standards were estimated to have fallen to 65 percent of prewar levels and non-rural living standards to about thirty-five percent.14 Sixty-six major cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had been heavily bombed. The catastrophic bombing had destroyed 40 percent of these rural areas overall and rendered around 30 percent of their population homeless. In Tokyo, the largest metropolis, 65 percent of all residences were destroyed. In Osaka and Nagoya, the country’s second and third largest cities, the figures were 57 and 89 percent. Close to 9 million people in Japan were homeless after the war. In every major city, families were crowded under broken tents, in hallways, on subway platforms, or on sidewalks. Employees slept in their offices; teachers in their schoolrooms. A severe shortage of food continued for several years. People were walking in the streets with demoralized faces, most of them preoccupied with simply staving off hunger.15 Immediately after the war, prices of consumer goods fell suddenly, but within two months prices were on the rise again. The peace brought a brief upsurge in late 1945 and early 1946, but by the end of 1946, it was over. The result of currency confusion, inflation roared out of hand. Japan basically lost all the territory acquired after 1894. In addition, the Kuril Islands were occupied by the Soviet Union, and the Ryukyu Islands, including Okinawa, were controlled by the USA. Japan’s armament industries were dismantled. Over 500 military officers committed suicide in the following weeks after Japan surrendered. Over half a million Japanese soldiers were captured in Manchuria by the Soviet Red Army and taken as slave laborers into the USSR. Between October 1, 1945 and December 31, 1946, over 5.1 million Japanese returned to their homeland on around two hundred Liberty Ships and LSTs loaned by the American military, as well as on the battered remnants of their own once-proud fleet. By October 31, 1945, a total of 31,617 American POWs were freed and processed through Manila, of whom 187 remained hospitalized. By the first week of 1946, 630,000 Koreans had already been repatriated. Repatriation of Asians also involved the return of over 31,000 Chinese POWs and collaborators to China, and roughly the same number of former Formosan colonial subjects to Formosa.16 Morale among Japanese troops after the surrender was very low. Over the next three weeks, it disintegrated almost totally. Reports forwarded to the office of Privy Seal Kido from prefectural governors and police officials told of units demanding immediate discharge. The new Prime Minister Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni had to deal with the problem of the burgeoning black markets. In fact, police report in late August and September 1945 indicated a list of thousands Japanese bureaucrats engaging in black-market activities. Eight years of total war of Japan (1937–1945) against China had destroyed China’s economic development. The process of postwar reconstruction was a difficult task for the Chinese. Millions of acres in the northern part of the country were flooded after the Yellow River flood.17 It is difficult to estimate the total loss due to Japan’s seizure of the richest provinces, the naval and land blockade, and the general disruption of the national economy. However, it is easy to recognize that the war drastically reduced the economic benefits that China had achieved from World War I. The war and the postwar period of 1915–1930 saw the establishment of several modern commercial banks in China. Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation and Chinese commercial banks financed almost all export trade. When World War II broke out in 1941, within months after the outbreak of hostilities, Western businesses and banks were forced to withdraw both personnel and capital from the Chinese market and relocate them to their home countries. British exports to China dropped by around 60 percent in many sectors over the course of the war, and those from France, Belgium, or the United States fared no better. The only exception to this struggle was Japan, which managed to expand its business operations and political influence on the Chinese homeland. Difficult conditions that created high transportation costs hampered the development of industry and commerce during the war and postwar years. China’s transport system was in shambles. The railway system was heavily damaged. Bridges and tracks had been destroyed by Allied bombing towards the end of the war. The war had left China in chaos. Much of the infrastructure was destroyed. The unoccupied cities had been bombed by Japanese planes in the first years of the war. In the last years of the war, American planes bombed the Japanese-occupied parts of north, east, and south China. Tens of millions of people were refugees, and several parts of China were stalked by famine. To restore order and discipline, Naruhiko appointed as his second “cabinet counselor,” Lt. Gen. Kanji Ishiwara, the leader of a new millenarian movement, —the Tō’A Renmei (East Asia League) —.18 Kanji was primarily responsible for the Mukden Incident that took place in Manchuria in 1931. He was retired from active duty in 1941, and, after the defeat, he accepted the difficult position of helping the government to win public support for the Kokutai preservation movement. Like Higashikuni, he blamed the defeat on the degeneration of the Japanese people’s morale. His message was focused on “The gods had willed Japan’s defeat in order to make the nation repent and review its belief in the kokutai.” Sharing the point of view of many Japanese intellectuals, he believed the military, the police, and the bureaucracy, by oppressing the people, bore great responsibility for what had happened; and the nation should surprise the enemy by carrying out reforms before occupation rule even began. Prime Minister Higashikuni shared the same remarks at his first press conference, on August 28: We have come to this ending because the government’s policies were flawed. But another cause [of the defeat] was a decline in the moral behavior of the people. So, at this time I feel the entire nation —the military, the government officials, and the people— must thoroughly reflect and repent. Repentance of the whole nation is the first step in reconstruction, and the first step toward national unity.19 Hirohito’s post-war behavior was the biggest surprise of all. Instead of an arrogant monarch wearing his military uniforms to review his troops, the Japanese discovered the existence of a resolutely civilian emperor, full of middle-class virtues and gauche affability, which they could stare at and even talk to with impunity.20 Hirohito did what he had to do, both to make the occupation acceptable for his people and to ensure the survival of the emperor system in the occupation framework.21 As the symbol of the entire nation, he had no choice. With the total military defeat and the Soviet Union’s obvious desire for conquest, these existential threats placed him in the humiliating position to do what the victors demanded. Kazuo Kawai, an American political scientist, wrote: “The peaceful beginning of the occupation of Japan will always remain something of a mystery. The United States expected resistance and treachery. To their amazement, both sides discovered that the other was not what they had been to believe.” 22 Hirohito, behind closed doors, was the one who coordinated Higashikuni and Kanji’s actions. He received the prime minister in private audiences twice from August 16 to September 2. He recommended that the focus needed to be on the issue that was important for the survival of the empire: controlling the people’s reaction to defeat and keeping them obedient and unconcerned with questions of accountability. Even though the Allies took control of Japan’s administration early after the surrender, the Japanese authorities in concert with the Imperial Palace had enough time to destroy hundreds of thousands of documents related to the war. In the weeks and months following the surrender, vast amounts of secret materials connecting Japanese war crimes to the nation’s highest leaders went up in smoke, in accordance with the August 14 decision of the Suzuki cabinet. Did Hirohito ignore this decision? Three days later, with no sense of decency, the cabinet of Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko, which succeeded Suzuki’s on August 17, presented the emperor to the nation “as the benevolent sage and apolitical ruler who had ended the war.” The surrender-broadcast “ritual” described Hirohito as the emperor who had saved the Japanese people and the rest of the world from further destruction by atomic bombs. On September 14, 1945, in Marioka, Iwate Prefecture, Kanji called on the entire nation to “repent” for having lost the war. He shared with his audience the idea that by the end of the twentieth century, the “final global battle [between the United States and the Soviet Union] will be upon us,” and that the principle of the hakkō ichiu (the “eight corners of the world under one roof”) still lived. Three days later, on September 17, MacArthur finally established his General Headquarters (GHQ) in the Dai Ichi Life Insurance Building in central Tokyo, directly opposite the Imperial Palace. There the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers was able to read the first report on the war with the consequences. About 24.2 percent of Japanese soldiers and 19.7 percent of Japanese sailors died during the Second World War, contrasted with 3.66 percent of U.S. Marines, 2.5 percent of U.S. soldiers, and 1.5 percent of U.S. sailors. Japanese military casualties from 1937 to 1945 have been estimated at 1,834,000, of which 1,740,000 were killed or missing. Some 388,600 of these were incurred in China, another 210,830 in Southeast Asia, and the rest in the Pacific. Of these, some 300,386 were naval fatalities, and some 334 Japanese warships were sunk during the war. The Japanese had suffered over 3 million dead and over 323,700 wounded (including 36,470 permanently disabled). Casualties in China were immense even before war broke out in the Pacific. More than 16 million Chinese people died during the Pacific War. The total dead or missing were 41,592 for all U.S. Army ground troops in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, with another 145,706 wounded. The Marine Corps and attached navy corpsmen suffered total casualties of 23,160 killed or missing and 67,199 wounded.23 On the Asian continent, the war in the Pacific had important and lasting consequences. The first was the destruction of Japan’s military and economic power. In 1945, the defeated Japan fell completely into disrepair. Sixty-eight Japanese cities were bombed, and all were partially or destroyed. Japan became a field of ruins with cities like Nagasaki and Hiroshima completely buried under rubble. Two million dead represented almost 3 percent of its prewar population. The country was militarily occupied and placed under guardianship. Douglas MacArthur became military governor of Japan. The Imperial Japanese Army was dissolved, and a new constitution was established in 1947. Clinton Hartley Grattan, an historian, wrote in 1949, “Of the material costs [of the war], the largest by all odds came from that most appalling innovation in ruthless destruction, air bombardment – especially area raids which were indiscriminate in that no specific target was aimed at. The assault on dwellings ranks as one of the great horrors of the war…Terror and obliteration air raids were considered successful almost in proportion to the number of people who lost their homes.”24 According to another historian, William Henry Chamberlin: About twenty out of every one hundred residences in Germany were destroyed. Two and a quarter million homes were destroyed in Japan and 460,000 in Great Britain. Every fifth Greek was left homeless and 28,000 homes in Rotterdam were obliterated…Ironically, the French suffered more from bombing by their American and British “liberators” than from the air attacks from their German invaders.25 The war’s direct cost in money terms was $4 trillion (in thencurrent dollars). In 1950, Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray said that the ultimate monetary cost of a war is four times the direct cost. In the United States, the fiscal effects were immense. The price tag was $350 billion. All the taxes were raised. Five million people were added to the tax rolls during the war.26 Chapter Four Paying for the War The Potsdam declaration of July 26, 1945, signed by the governments of the United States, China, and the United Kingdom listed the conditions of surrender imposed on Japan. The declaration mentioned the conditions set by the declaration of Cairo which had limited Japanese sovereignty over the islands of Hondo, Hokkaido, Kouilou, Si Kok, and such other small islands that the Allies determined.1 Japan would be completely disarmed and its forces demobilized. The authority of the emperor and the Japanese government would be subordinated to the supreme command of the Allied powers. At first, Japan refused the terms of the ultimatum, but finally accepted after the Soviet Union declared war on August 8, 1945.2 On August 10, 1945, the Japanese government announced that it was ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration issued in Potsdam. On August 14, 1945, Japan accepted the conditions, and Hirohito personally read the surrender order on the radio.3 On September 2, 1945, Japan’s unconditional surrender was signed in Tokyo Bay.4 Gen. Douglas MacArthur accepted the surrender on behalf of the United States, the Republic of China, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, as well as in the interests of other United Nations states at war with Japan. In total, the act of surrender was signed by representatives of the governments of nine states: United States, Republic of China, United Kingdom, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Australia, Canada, Provisional Government of the Republic Netherlands, and New Zealand. At the conference of Foreign Ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia, meeting in Moscow, from December 16 to December 26, 1945, it was decided to create two bodies responsible for Japan’s problems: (1) a “Far East Commission,” including representatives from eleven and then thirteen states (United States, United Kingdom, USSR, China, France, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Philippines, Burma, and Pakistan) sitting in Washington, but able to meet in other locations, including Tokyo, and (2) an “Allied council for Japan” stationed in Tokyo, composed of the supreme Allied commander (S.C.A.P.) or his deputy, as president and representative of the United States, a representative of the USSR, a representative of China, and a fourth member representing the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and India. The Far East Commission was responsible for formulating the policy and principles by which Japan’s obligations under its surrender could be fulfilled. It could make its decisions by a majority of its members, but representatives of the “big four” (the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and the USSR) had a veto. Under a directive dated of October 25, 1945, from the supreme Allied commander, Japan had to suspend diplomatic and consular relations with all other states. During the preparatory work of the San Francisco Peace Treaty on July 11, 1947, the United States proposed to the 11 countries represented in the Far East Commission, a preliminary conference on preparing a peace treaty with Japan. The Soviet government objected that the peace treaty should first be the subject of an agreement of the “big four of the Pacific, i.e., the powers with veto power in the Far East Commission (United States, China, the United Kingdom, and the USSR). The Soviet opposition forced the American authorities to postpone the execution of their project. On September 8, 1950, a Joint Memorandum from the Secretaries of State and Defense concerning the general basis upon which progress should be made looking toward a peace treaty with Japan.5 The Secretaries of State and Defense have now agreed that the time has come to implement paragraph 5 of that memorandum. A United States political representative will go to Japan to discuss with General MacArthur the proposed treaty and by arrangements through and in cooperation with General MacArthur will discuss the proposed treaty with the Japanese government and also seek a procedure for Japanese participation in the treaty-making process which will assure genuine acceptance by the representatives of all important, non-Communist political group in Japan.6 On September 14, 1950, the U.S. government announced its intention to expedite the conclusion of the Japanese treaty, using the diplomatic negotiation procedure, which allowed certain states to be overruled. On October 26, 1950, the State Department issued a brief seven-point memorandum to all member countries of the Far East Commission, laying the groundwork for reconciliation with Japan. John Foster Dulles was quickly appointed President Truman’s special representative with a mission to negotiate the peace treaty.7 After being communicated to states interested in the Japanese regulation from July 2 to 6, and on July 9 to all states at war with Japan, a joint Anglo-American draft presented on May 3, 1951, was published on July 12, 1951.8 Based on the submissions received, the draft was slightly revised and republished on July 20, 1951. On the same day, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom invited fifty governments to meet at a conference on September 4, 1951, in San Francisco to conclude and sign a peace treaty with Japan based on being annexed to the convention. On July 30, 1951, subsequent invitations to the associated states of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia brought the number of states called to participate in the San Francisco conference (including the United States and Japan) to fifty-five. Because of differences of opinion between the United States and Great Britain, under the proposal of France, it was decided not to invite the Chinese governments.9 After discussions and debates between the inviting powers, on August 13, 1951, a revised version of the Anglo-American draft was forwarded to the invited governments except for Burma, India, and Yugoslavia, which had declined the invitation to attend. The new text was published on August 15, 1951, and came into force on April 28, 1952, and officially ended the American-led Allied occupation of Japan. According to Article 11 of the treaty, Japan accepts the judgments of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and of other Allied War Crimes Courts imposed on Japan both within and outside Japan. While negotiated and concluded in the midst of the Korean War, the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed on September 8, 1951, by Japan and forty-eight of its former enemies.10 According to Article 14 of the Treaty of Peace with Japan (1951), Japan should pay reparations to the Allied powers for the damage and suffering caused by it during the war.11 At the base of this treaty, the Japanese empire would sign a set of peace treaties with a set of countries. The resumption of these relations led to the negotiation of reparation agreements with neutral countries that made claims for war damages caused by Japanese forces. Reparation agreements were signed by Japan with Switzerland (Bern, January 21, 1955), Spain (Madrid, January 8, 1957), Sweden (Stockholm, September 20, 1957), and Denmark (Tokyo, May 25, 1959). Neither the Soviet bloc states nor the neutralist states of Asia (India, Burma) wanted to associate with the treaties of San Francisco. These states have sought to restore peace with Japan through bilateral negotiations that have resulted in separate peace treaties or agreements. Several clauses in the San Francisco peace treaty deal with the economic sanctions to be imposed on Japan after the war. These clauses are of two kinds, some aimed at the liquidation of problems arising from the war, including reparations, restitutions, resumption of the Japanese foreign borrowing service, and the renunciation of Japan’s claims arising from the war. The others concern Japan’s future economic relations with its former enemies. Some countries that were victims of Japanese aggression were forcefully demanding full reparation for the war damage. At the beginning of the reparation negotiations, the Philippines, Burma, Indonesia, and Vietnam sought very large compensation, payable not only in services, but mainly in goods and currencies. However, faced with a trade deficit that had reached a record $2 billion since the surrender, Japan was unable to pay full war damages. 12 The intervention of the U.S. government finally made it possible to find a compromise to this situation. This compromise is enshrined in Article 14 (a) of the treaty, which recognized that Japan should certainly pay the Allied powers compensation for the damage it caused during the war. Nevertheless, it is also recognized that Japan, facing a catastrophic trade deficit, did not have enough resources in the immediate future to ensure the complete repair of all this damage and to meet its other obligations. As a result, Japan agreed to open conciliatory talks with countries whose territories had been occupied by Japanese forces, in order to compensate them for the damage caused during the war. To this end, Japan committed itself to making the services of the Japanese people, in the field of production and recovery, available to the Allied powers that wanted them, in return, these countries had to supply Japan with raw materials. Another form of reparation has been provided for in Article 14 (a) 2 of the treaty which grants each Allied power the right to seize, retain, liquidate, or use all property, rights and interests of Japan and its nationals who, upon entry into the treaty, are under its jurisdiction. The provisions of Article 14 (a) of the San Francisco Treaty, which provided for only repairs in the form of services and limited Japan’s ability to pay, greatly displeased the Asian states that had been subject to the Japanese occupation. Burma refused to sign the peace treaty. Indonesia, after signing it, refused to ratify it, concluding a bilateral peace treaty in 1958, with the reparations’ agreement with Japan. The Philippines postponed ratification of the San Francisco Treaty until an agreement on reparations was reached, which was not signed until May 9, 1956. A peace treaty and reparations agreement between Japan and Burma were signed on November 5, 1954, in Rangoon. In the case of Burma, peace with Japan was closely subordinated to the solution of the reparations problem. Also, the most developed of the ten articles that make up the peace treaty between Japan and Burma is the one relating to reparations (Art. V). This Article stated that Burma, which unilaterally ended the state of war with Japan in a declaration on April 30, 1952, will receive compensation: (1) Japan will provide Burma with services and products worth a total of 7,200 equivalent to US $200 million over ten years, and (2) Japan will make Japanese products or services available to Burma in the form of loans or participation in joint-ventures.13 Between Japan and the Philippines, there was a reparation agreement. This agreement signed in Manila on May 9, 1956, came into force on July 23, 1956. Under the reparation’s agreement, Japan paid the Philippines US $550 million in compensation in twenty annuities. Of the US $550 million, US $500 million was in capital goods and US $50 million in services. Capital goods and services have been allocated to specific Philippine projects. However, US $20 million worth of services have been used to manufacture products that Japan exports to the Philippines. The government of Japan facilitated the granting of long-term loans or similar development loans to the Philippines, up to a maximum of US $250 million, over twenty years. The terms of the loans and credits were agreed to for each transaction.14 With Vietnam, Japan signed two agreements, on May 13, 1959. These agreements, signed in Saigon, include a reparation agreement and an agreement on loans, written in Japanese, Vietnamese, and French, with the French text valid in case of differences of interpretation. Under the reparation agreement, Japan has committed to provide Vietnam with US $39 million worth of Japanese goods and services over a five-year period from the day the agreement enters into force. An exchange of notes stated that the total value of the products delivered as repairs should not exceed US $7.5 million. The products to be supplied by Japan were to be, as a rule, capital goods. The agreement also stipulated that Japan would provide the Republic of Vietnam with intergovernmental loans of up to US $7.5 million over a three-year period for the completion of one or more projects to be determined by an agreement signed by the two governments. In addition, an exchange of notes provided that long-term commercial loans or credits of up to US $9.1 million would be granted over a five-year period by Japanese private companies to the Vietnamese government or corporations dependent on the latter.15 In résumé, Japan signed the peace treaty with forty-nine nations in 1952 and concluded fifty-four bilateral agreements that included Burma (US $20 million, 1954, 1963), Thailand ¥ (5.4 billion, 1955), Switzerland, Netherlands (US $10 million, 1956), Spain (US $5.5 million, 1957), Indonesia (US $223.08 million, 1958), the Republic of Korea (US $300 million, 1965), the Philippines (US $525 million/¥ 52.94 billion, 1967), and Malaysia (Malaysian US $25 million/¥ 2.94 billion, 1967). Countries such as Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Pakistan, Laos, India, Cambodia, and other parties to the San Francisco Treaty, have given up on seeking reparations from Japan. Following India’s example, Pakistan even agreed on March 31, 1953, to return all Japanese assets seized on its territory. Cambodia and Laos informed the Japanese government that they were waiving their rights to reparations. As a sign of its recognition, Japan entered into agreements with these two states, on October 15, 1958, and March 2, 1959, respectively, under which it granted, free of charge, ¥ 1,500 million to the first and ¥ 1 billion to the second. The signing of these various peace treaties and the acceptance of paying damages to its former enemies constituted an admission by the Japanese government that crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity were committed by Japanese troops in the Pacific and Southeast Asia during World War II. In the Cairo Declaration, issued on December 1, 1945, the heads of government of the United States, China, and the United Kingdom had made known their determination “to remove from Japan all the Pacific Islands it has taken or occupied since the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.”16 On November 6, 1946, the President of the United States announced that his country was ready to place the Pacific Islands under Japanese mandate under the tutelage of the United Nations, with the United States as an administering power. These are the Marshall, Carolina, and Mariana archipelagos, comprising about ninety-eight islands and groups of islets, with a total area of about 2,160 square kilometers and a population of about 48,000 inhabitants. These islands had been placed under Japanese mandate in a decision dated on December 17, 1920, by the NDS Council, taken under Article 22 of the covenant. By the secret agreement on the entry into the war of the USSR against Japan, signed in Yalta on February 11, 1945, the heads of government of the United States and the United Kingdom recognized that the following claims of Russia must be met after Japan’s defeat: maintaining the status quo in Outer Mongolia, restoring Russia’s rights violated by the 1904 Japanese attack, including the return of the southern part of Sakhalin and the adjacent transfer of the Kuril Islands to the Soviet Union. A draft guardianship agreement addressed to the Secretary-General of the organization was submitted to the council for approval in a letter dated on February 17, 1947. On April 2, 1947, the Security Council unanimously approved the text of a guardianship agreement proposed by the United States, after rejecting several amendments proposed by the United Kingdom, the USSR, and Poland. The guardianship agreement, approved on April 2, 1947, found in its preamble that: Following the Second World War, Japan had ceased to exercise any authority over the formerly German islands north of Ecuador, attributing its administration, as a guardianship, to the United States. These islands are designated as a strategic area under Article 83 of the United Nations Charter. The agreement authorizes the United States, as an administering power to establish naval, military, and air bases to build fortifications, to post and employ armed forces in the territory under tutelage. The administration authority will have full powers of administration, legislation, and jurisdiction over the territory, and, subject to the provisions of the agreement, may apply all The Laws of the United States that it deems appropriate for the territory’s situation. 17 In the joint communiqué of the government of Japan and the government of the People’s Republic of China (1972), China renounced its demand for war reparations from Japan. In the Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, the Soviet Union waived its rights to reparations from Japan, and both Japan and the Soviet Union waived all reparations claims arising from the war. The unanimous approval of the draft guardianship agreement dated on April 2, 1947, by the United Nations Council is clear evidence that, under the international community, Japan was guilty of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity during World War II, and, to this end, Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese commanders deserved to be severely punished. Chapter Five Apologizing for the War The political issue that roiled the Japanese political scene during the middle and end of the 1950s was to renew amicable relations with China, Korea, and other countries in the Pacific that Japan had invaded during World War II. Starting in the early and mid-1950s, several efforts had been made to maintain strong diplomatic relations between Japan and its neighboring countries affected by the war. The first major decision came out when Hirohito had stopped visiting Yasukuni after 1975, and the museum removed all Shōwa-era exhibits.1 All objects connected to the wars of the late 1930s and early 1940s were taken away. Visitors could come and depart the museum without ever seeing a trace that Hirohito had been the leader of the war.2 Following that decision, officials in Japan continued more and more to apologize for the war. This is a list of war apology statements issued by Japan regarding the war crimes committed by its troops during World War II. Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke said to the people of Burma: We view with deep regret the vexation we caused to the people of Burma in the war just passed. In a desire to atone, if only partially, for the pain suffered, Japan is prepared to meet fully and with goodwill its obligation for war reparations. The Japan of today is not the Japan of the past, but, as its Constitution indicates, is a peace-loving nation. 3 The same year, Kishi said to the people of Australia: “It is my official duty, and my personal desire, to express to you and through you to the people of Australia, our heartfelt sorrow for what occurred in the war.”4 Kishi made those statements in 1957 during a visit in Burma (now Myanmar), and Australia. Within a year of becoming prime minister in 1957, Kishi made two trips to fifteen Asian and Pacific countries to bring messages of reconciliation, thereby making it possible for Japan to secure a revision of Japan’s security treaty with America. The first journey included Burma, India, Pakistan, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Thailand, and Taiwan. The second one included South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaya, Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, and the Philippines. During these visits, Kishi presented a plan for a Japanese-dominated Asian Development Fund (ADF), which was to operate under the slogan “Economic Development for Asia by Asia,” calling for Japan to invest millions of yen in Southeast Asia. During the signing of the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and South Korea, Minister of Foreign Affairs Shiina Etsusaburō, a career bureaucrat, said to the people of South Korea: “In our two countries’ long history there have been unfortunate times, it is truly regrettable, and we are deeply remorseful.”5 Etsusaburō was foreign minister of Japan from 1964 to 1966. He played a pivotal role in diplomatic relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea. As Japanese minister of Foreign Affairs, he made this statement on June 22, 1965. In a joint communiqué of the government of Japan and the government of the People’s Republic of China, Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka said to the people of China: The Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself. Further, the Japanese side reaffirms its position that it intends to realize the normalization of relations between the two countries from the stand of fully understanding ‘the three principles for the restoration of relations’ put forward by the Government of the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese side expresses its welcome for this. 6 This declaration was made on September 29, 1972, when Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka met with Zhou Enlai of the People’s Republic of China to discuss the normalization of relations between the two countries. The two Governments confirm that, in conformity with the foregoing principles and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, Japan and China shall in their mutual relations settle all disputes by peaceful means and shall refrain from the use or threat of force. Accompanying Prime Minister Tanaka were Minister for Foreign Affairs Masayoshi Ohira, Chief Cabinet Secretary Susumu Nikaido and other government officials. Just two months after taking office, Tanaka met Mao Zedong. During a press conference regarding the use of school textbooks, Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki said: I am painfully aware of Japan’s responsibility for inflicting serious damages [on Asian nations] during the past war. We need to recognize that there are criticisms that condemn [Japan’s occupation] as invasion. 7 Suzuki held this conference on August 24, 1982. Two days later, the chief cabinet secretary, Kiichi Miyazawa, said to the people of the Republic of Korea: The Japanese government and the Japanese people are deeply aware of the fact that acts by our country in the past caused tremendous suffering and damage to the peoples of Asian countries, including the Republic of Korea (ROK) and China, and have followed the path of a pacifist state with remorse and determination that such acts must never be 8 repeated. Kiichi Miyazawa, who was a member of the National Diet of Japan for over fifty years, made this statement in South Korea on August 26, 1982. His government passed a law allowing Japan to send its forces overseas for peacekeeping missions as well as negotiating a trade agreement with the United States. On September 6, 1984, during a meeting with Pres. Chun Doo-hwan, Emperor Hirohito said: “It is indeed regrettable that there was an unfortunate past between us for a period in this century and I believe that it should not be repeated.”9 The emperor made the statement at a banquet for South Korean President Chun who arrived for a historic state visit in Japan. The visit by Chun, a fifty-three-year-old former army general who seized power in 1980, was opposed by both Japanese leftists and ultra-rightists, as well as by dissidents in Korea and pro-North Korea residents in Japan. It was the first visit by a South Korean head of state since the country’s liberation from Japanese rule in 1945 at the end of World War II. In 1982, Yasuhiro Nakasone became prime minister. Known for having a nationalist attitude, he was an adherent to the nihonjinron theory that claims Japan is incomparably different from the rest of the world. Along with Minister of Foreign Affairs Shintaro Abe, he improved Japanese relations with the USSR and the People’s Republic of China. On September 7, 1984, Nakasone visited China on the twelfth anniversary of Japan’s diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic, and said: There was a period in this century when Japan brought to bear great sufferings upon your country and its people. I would like to state here that the government and people of Japan feel a deep regret for this error. 10 On October 23, 1985, in another speech to the United Nations, he said: On June 6, 1945, when the UN Charter was signed in San Francisco, Japan was still fighting a senseless war with 40 nations. Since the end of the war, Japan has profoundly regretted the unleashing of rampant ultra-nationalism and militarism and the war that brought great devastation to the people of many countries around the world and to our country as 11 well. On November 6, 1987, Noboru Takeshita was appointed prime minister. Replacing Yasuhiro Nakasone, Noboru led the largest faction at the time in the Liberal Democratic Party. He was one of the first officials in Japan to acknowledge that his country had been an aggressor during World War II. This statement was part of a speech he made in 1989 in the Japanese Diet: As we have made clear previously at repeated opportunities, the Japanese government and the Japanese people are deeply conscious of the fact that the actions of our country in the past caused suffering and loss to many people in neighboring countries. Starting from our regret and resolve not to repeat such things a second time, we have followed a course as a “Peace Nation” since then. This awareness and regret should be emphasized especially in the relationship between our countries and the Korean Peninsula, our nearest neighbors both geographically and historically. At this opportunity as we face a new situation in the Korean Peninsula, again, to all peoples of the globe, concerning the relationship of the past, we want to express our deep regret and sorrow. 12 During the 188th National Diet Session Lower House Committee of Foreign Affairs, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Taro Nakayama, said to the people of South Korea: “Japan is deeply sorry for the tragedy in which these (Korean) people were moved to Sakhalin not of their own free will but by the design of the Japanese government and had to remain there after the conclusion of the war.”13 On May 24, 1990, during a meeting with Korean President Roh Tae Woo, Emperor Akihito said: “Reflecting upon the suffering that your people underwent during this unfortunate period, which was brought about by our nation, I cannot but feel the deepest remorse.”14 In response to Akihito’s apology, Roh said South Koreans should put past problems behind them and build friendly relations. The visit was the first by a Korean chief of state to Japan since 1984. The following morning Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu during a summit meeting with Roh Tae Woo, said: I would like to take the opportunity here to humbly reflect upon how the people of the Korean Peninsula went through unbearable pain and sorrow as a result of our country’s actions during a certain period in the past and to express that we are sorry. 15 Prime Minister Kaifu was too young at the time of the war to have been involved. However, on behalf of the Japanese people, he apologized on behalf of the throne to the Chinese and the Koreans and others who had been mistreated by Japan during 1932–45. In 1991 the North Koreans demanded apologies and reparations from Japan for the treatment of their half of Korea during the Japanese occupation that began in 1910 and lasted until 1945. The Japanese gave the apologies but refused the reparations.16 On August 11, 1993, Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa, at the first press conference after his inauguration, said: “I myself believe it was a war of aggression, a war that was wrong.”17 Hosokawa made several unprecedented statements during his term as prime minister. In his first news conference in office, he made an unprecedented statement acknowledging that Japan waged a war of aggression in World War II. A few days later, on August 23, 1993, he said in a speech at the 127th National Diet Session: After 48 years from then, our nation has become one of nations that enjoy prosperity, and peace. We must not forget that it is founded on the ultimate sacrifices in the last war, and a product of the achievements of the people of the previous generations. We would like to take this opportunity to clearly express our remorse for the past and a new determination to the world. Firstly, at this occasion, we would like to express our deep remorse and apology for the fact that invasion and colonial rule by our nation in the past brought to bear great sufferings and sorrow upon many people. 18 On September 21, 1993, Morihiro said at the 128th National Diet Session: I used the expression war of aggression and act of aggression which is the same as the one that the act of our nation in the past brought to bear unbearable sufferings and sorrow upon many people, and to express once again deep remorse and apology. 19 On June 9, 1995, the House of Representatives, National Diet of Japan, passed a resolution to renew the determination for peace based on lessons learned from history. The resolution said: On the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, this House offers its sincere condolences to those who fell in action and victims of wars and similar actions all over the world. Solemnly reflecting upon many instances of colonial rule and acts of aggression in the modern history of the world and recognizing that Japan carried out those acts in the past, inflicting pain and suffering upon the people of other countries, especially in Asia. The Members of this House express a sense of deep remorse. 20 The same year, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama issued a formal apology. He announced that Japan has paid more than $27 billion in compensation to about 27 other governments. “It was a war of invasion and I believe an apology was right,” said Murayama.21 On September 6, 1997, during a press conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto said to the People’s Republic of China: In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, the Government of Japan expressed its resolution through the statement by the prime minister, which states that during a certain period in the past, Japan’s conduct caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, including China, and the prime minister expressed his feeling of deep remorse and stated his heartfelt apology, while giving his word to make efforts for peace. I myself was one of the ministers who were involved in drafting this statement. I would like to repeat that this is the official position of the Government of Japan. 22 On October 8, 1998, during the Japan-South Korea Joint Declaration on —a New Japan-South Korea Partnership towards the Twenty-First Century— Prime Minister Keizō Obuchi said: Looking back on the relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea during this century, I regarded in a spirit of humility the fact of history that Japan caused, during a certain period in the past, tremendous damage and suffering to the people of the Republic of Korea through its colonial rule, and expressed his deep remorse and heartfelt apology for this fact. 23 One month later, on November 26 during the Japan-China Joint Declaration on Building a Partnership of Friendship and Cooperation for Peace and Development, Prime Minister Keizō in an apologizing statement to President Jiang Zemin of China for Japan’s World War II conduct, said: Both sides believe that squarely facing the past and correctly understanding history are the important foundation for further developing relations between Japan and China. The Japanese side observes the 1972 Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China a nd the August 15, 1995, Statement by former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama. The Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious distress and damage that Japan caused to the Chinese people through its aggression against China during a certain period in the past and expressed deep remorse for this. The Chinese side hopes that the Japanese side will learn lessons from the history and adhere to the path of peace and development Based on this, both sides will develop long-standing relations of friendship. 24 This statement had been judged insufficient for Mr. Jiang who wanted two concessions from Mr. Obuchi: a clear-cut written apology to the Chinese people for World War II behavior by Japan, and a pledge about relations with Taiwan. Japan rebuffed Mr. Jiang on both accounts, instead offering an oral apology for the war. “For the Japan-China relationship to develop further in the future, it is necessary to face up to the past squarely,” Mr. Obuchi told Mr. Jiang. Mr. Jiang was the first Chinese head of state to visit Japan in a move to discuss the Asian economic crisis and the risks of war on the Korean Peninsula. Despite the divergences, after the summit, both leaders agreed on a wide range of important issues ranging from environmental cooperation to youth exchanges. When Prime Minister Higashikuni Naruhiko, on August 28, 1945, called for a repentance of one hundred million individuals, he was not referring to the countries attacked, but to the fact that he had not had enough morality to defeat. Higashikuni told foreign correspondents on September 18, 1945, that his cabinet intended to investigate and punish those who had committed atrocities against POWs and other war crimes.25 Between September 1945 and March 1946, the government only brought eight low-ranking individuals to trial for conventional war crimes in four separate trials, be fore SCAP decided to abolish such proceedings. The presumption apparently was that once tried and sentenced, such individuals could not be subjected to double jeopardy and retried by the Allies.26 Abroad, particularly in China and Korea, the two governments severely criticized Hirohito for his annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. The question is, why, after the defeat of 1945, even when Yasukuni Shrine was forced to adopt the status of private religious association, independent of the state, Hirohito, as a symbol of the nation, had continued to visit this shrine where the souls of some two million five hundred thousand soldiers killed in the war are honored, among them Tōjō and the thirteen other principals, such as Iwane Matsui, who organized the Rape of Nanking, and Heitaro Kimura, who brutalized Allied prisoners of war. All those Japanese dignitaries were executed in the context of the Tokyo trial. Of around 2,500,000 people contained in the shrine’s book of souls, 1,068 were convicted of war crimes, 14 are convicted Class A war criminals. Several members of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan such as former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and current Prime Minister Shinzō Abe have visited the Yasukuni Shrine. Koizumi made annual personal (non-governmental) visits from 2001 to 2006. (It was only in 1975, at the end of his life, after an eighth and last visit to Yasukuni, that Hirohito stopped going there. The notes of Tomita Tomohiko, director of the Imperial Affairs Office, informed that Hirohito had stopped his visits to Yasukuni because he felt uncomfortable with the idea that Class “A” criminals are worshipped there. On February 2, 1973, Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was asked by a Communist Diet member “whether he taught the Japan-China war had been a war of aggression.” Tanaka replied without hesitation: It is true that Japan once sent troops to the Chinese continent; this is a historical fact. But when you ask me whether that constituted, as you say, a war of aggression, it is very hard for me to answer. This is a question for future historians to evaluate. 27 In 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of World War II in Asia provoked highly political and ideological debates. The issue of Japanese “war responsibility,” a subject that has been quite widely debated in Japan as in the United States for many years, was at the center of the discussion. Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, who led the Japanese Socialist Party and was responsible for changing its name to the Social Democratic Party of Japan in 1996, delivered a statement on August 15, 1945, in which he expressed his “heartfelt apology” for the damage and suffering caused by Japan during the war in the Pacific and East Asia. The statement before it has been accepted as an official document was drastically challenged by the members of the Liberal Democratic Party that governed Japan from 1955 to 1993. The way the resolution has been voted in the lower house in Tokyo illustrates the political tumult that has accompanied this issue. Of 502 representatives, only 251 participated in the vote, of who 230 supported the resolution. Opposition votes included fourteen members of the Japan Communist Party, who desired a much stronger statement of Japan’s war responsibility. Some 241 members of the House abstained from voting, including seventy representatives who were affiliated with one of the three parties that sponsored the resolution. Over fifty of these dissenting coalition members belonged to the conservative Liberal Democratic Party who said that the resolution still went too far. Fourteen Socialists abstained to vote on the grounds that the resolution did not go far enough. One hundred forty-one members of the Shin Shinto (New Frontier Party) did not vote because they desired a stronger statement. The final resolution as passed contains many changes from the initial document that has been submitted in the House of Representatives by Murayama’s cabinet. Japanese colonialism and aggression are placed in the larger context of “modern” colonialism and aggression by other powers (implicitly “the West”). The word “apology” (shazi or owabi) is absent from the final statement. And the “deep remorse” (fukai hansei) expressed for the suffering Imperial Japan caused other people is explicitly identified as referring primarily to Japan’s Asian neighbors. An editorial from the Sankei newspaper on June 10, 1945, condemned the resolution. Sankei’s editorial attacked the Socialists and other Japanese who condemn Japan’s war behavior without qualification. According to the newspaper those who supported the resolution generally trace Japanese aggression back to the First Sino-Japanese War in the mid1890s, by embracing an “anti-national” or “anti-Japanese” (hankokumin) ideology. Two days before the Sankei published this editorial, on June 8, 1945, a critique of the Diet resolution from Akahata (Red Flag), the newspaper of the Japan Communist Party, condemned the resolution for not being strong enough when it addressed Japan’s war responsibility during World War II. The petition conveys two different sentiments in Japan. From the conservative group, there is a resistance to any statement suggesting that Japan has been an aggressive country during the long period from the colonization of Korea in 1910 to the end of World War II in 1945. There is also a deep patriotic concern that condemning Japan for launching the war in the Pacific and Southeast Asia would blaspheme the memory of approximately two million Japanese “heroes” (eiri) who bravely and loyally gave their lives for their country. The position of Abe Shinzō, who became Prime Minister in 2006, after his maternal grandfather Kishi Nobusuke, former prime minister (1957–1960), was convicted as a “Class A” war criminal, represented a clear example of how the officials in Japan chose the position of denial instead of recognizing the responsibility of their country in starting the war. As his grandfather’s political view, Abe is openly on the side of amnesia and denial. On March 1, 2007, he stated that there was no evidence that the Japanese government had kept sex slaves. On October 18, 2013, he added: “Japan inflicted tremendous damage and suffering on people in many countries, especially in Asia. The Abe cabinet will take the same stance as that of past cabinets.”28 Although we encourage those apology statements issued by Japanese officials with regard to the war crimes committed by the empire of Japan during World War II, it is right to say that amnesia and denial have always been the position of most post-war Japanese governments that have so far refused to acknowledge the war crimes perpetrated by Japan during World War II. That Japan had nothing to be ashamed of during the war is the message of several prominent rulingparty Liberal Democratic politicians. On April 22, 1988, Land Agency Minister Seisuko Okuno told assembled veterans’ representatives at a ceremony at the Yasukuni Shrine that Japan’s war with China was not “a war of aggression. Japan fought in order to secure its safety.” He went on, saying that “the white races had turned Asia into a colony…Japan was by no means the aggressor nation.” Apart from rare mentions of the 1945 atrocities in Manila, the Japanese do not appear to have been particularly sensitive to the victimization of peoples of Southeast Asia. 29 The two most serious crimes of war in which Japanese troops were involved during the Pacific War, the Nanking Massacre and the crimes committed by Unit 731, were relatively rarely mentioned in Japan. Most of the members of the Liberal Democratic Party have denied some of the atrocities such as government involvement in abducting women to serve as “comfort women” (sex slaves). The Mainichi Shimbun, Japan’s oldest newspaper with an archive that stretches back over 100 years through the Meiji, Shōwa and Taisei eras, has in its archives a rich documentation on the Nanking Massacre. The question is why it took so long for one of the most blatant “hidden war crimes” —the sexual enslavement of non-Japanese “comfort women”— to be recognized by Japanese officials who sometimes denied the facts. Why did it take so long for Japanese women to call attention to these crimes? Why does most of Japanese history textbooks only offer brief references to the various war crimes committed by Japanese troops during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II? Any Japanese textbook attempting to tell the unvarnished truth about Japan from the thirties onward is liable to heavy rewriting, and since the Textbook Certification Commission vets all textbooks for middle schools, headmasters have no real choice. Some of the Education Ministry alterations imposed on history-book writers were exposed in the Japan Law Review.30 Despite the efforts of the nationalist textbook reformers, by the late 1990s, the most common Japanese schoolbooks contained limited references to the Nanking Massacre, Unit 731 and the comfort women of World War II. In 1953, the Japanese Ministry of Education published a textbook by Japanese historian Saburō lenaga but censored several parts related to Japanese war crimes. Saburō undertook a series of lawsuits against the ministry for violation of his freedom of speech. At the first trial filed by the historian on January 1, 1984, at Tokyo District Court, Judge Kato ruled on October 3, 1989, that “while the authorization system itself was constitutional, there was a certain abuse of discretion on the part of the Ministry regarding the unconstitutional censoring of the description of sōmōtai,” and ordered the state to compensate Saburō ¥ 100,000. At the second trial filed by the state on October 13, 1989, at Tokyo High Court, Judge Kawakami ruled on October 20, 1993, “There was a certain abuse of discretion on the part of the Ministry regarding the unconstitutional censoring of the descriptions of Nanking Massacre and sexual assaults by the military in addition to sōmōtai,” and ordered the state to compensate the defendant ¥ 300,000. At the third trial filed on October 25, 1993, at Tokyo Supreme Court, Judge Ono ruled on August 29, 1997, that “while the authorization system itself was constitutional, there was a certain abuse of discretion on the part of the Ministry regarding the unconstitutional censoring of the descriptions of Unit 731, sexual assaults at Nanking in addition to sōmōtai,” and ordered the state to pay Saburō ¥ 400,000 as compensation. The postwar progressive scholars and activists in Japan are certainly committed to exposing more and more the extent of Japan’s World War II atrocities. But the primary focus of this group has tended to be on, first, Japan’s Chinese victims, and second, its Korean victims. These two peoples, Chinese and Koreans, had unquestionably suffered most at Japanese hands. Nearly two million Koreans were serving in factories and mines in Japan during the war. The war crimes involved the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy in China was responsible for the deaths of millions. Historical documents estimate the number of deaths that resulted from Japanese war crimes in China range from 5 to 6 million through massacre, human experimentation, starvation, and forced labor. The Imperial Japanese Army air service took part in conducting chemical and biological attacks during the Second Sino-Japanese War, knowing the use of such weapons in warfare was generally prohibited by international agreements signed by Japan, including the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907), which banned the use of “poison or poisoned weapons” in warfare. Although those efforts need to be appreciated, we must recognize that the postwar progressive scholars and activists in Japan did not focus too much on the suffering of peoples from Formosa, Burma, Philippines, Malaysia, Indochina, Indonesia, and other countries in Asia under Japan’s rules. It is a fact that Japanese people are hardworking, courageous, intelligent, and highly disciplined. However, it must be admitted that Japanese wealth was the basis of looting in the territories occupied by Japan during World War II. This wealth also comes from the fruits of the work of millions of Chinese, Koreans, Malaysians, Filipinos, Indochinese, and other nations enslaved by the Japanese between 1910 and 1945. On November 1, 2008, Gen. Tomogami Toshio was removed from his position as chief of the Aeronautical Forces Staff, the highest rank in the Japanese Self-Defense Forces Air Force. The general was accused of taking the opposite view of the opinion officially supported by the current government, which legitimized the armed conflicts led by Japan, as well as the undertaking of colonization of the countries of the Asian region. Until the present time, Japan had continued to deny its responsibility in the war in the Pacific and East Asia. The Japanese educational system is intent on perpetuating a version of events that not only absolves Japan from any blame for the horrors of World War II but also promotes the concept of Japan as victim. 31 Despite this denial we must say that revenge is not the solution. Revenge is not the Solution When the war ended there were those among us, who advocate slaughter of all Japanese, a virtual extermination of the race because the Asiatic War has brought so much suffering and taken so many lives. But it is right to say that the more Japanese who would be killed by revenge, the more the bad feeling of those who survive. After Japan was defeated, international justice was the way and light for the peace to be restored. Therefore, I would say, justice must prevail to avoid revenge. The only question is simple: Was Hirohito not responsible for war crimes as those from the gangster militarists who provoked the conflict? Fellers at one point acknowledged that “as Emperor and acknowledged head of State, Hirohito cannot sidestep war guilt. He is a part of and must be considered an instigator of the Pacific War.” However, in the memorandum to his “Answer to Japan,” Fellers indicated: That the emperor would be indispensable not only for effecting a surrender of the enemy’s fighting forces but also as the spiritual core of a peacefully inclined postwar government that, it was assumed, would be made up of the new elderly conservative elites including titled actions of the high mobility, who had controlled the country before the militarists gained ascendancy. 32 In March 1946, Shigeru Nambara, a Christian educator who became president of Tokyo Imperial University, had been chosen to conduct a memorial service for students and staff killed in the war. The text of the service was published by the popular newspaper Bungei Shunjū under the title “A Report to Students Who Fell in Battle.” In this memorial’s speech, Nanbara recognized that “Japan had been led into war by ignorant, reckless militarists and ultranationalists; that people, including those from the university, had followed along believing that they were fighting for truth and justice; that unfortunately, truth and justice had been on the side of the United States and Britain.” At the end of his speech, Nanbara said, “The dead had been spared from witnessing the day of defeat and the hardship and spiritual pain that had followed. They should know, however, that the grievances the Japanese now felt were not against the wartime enemy, but against themselves.33 One year after Shigeru’s memorial service, as the Cold War intensified, after the Truman Doctrine of March 12, 1947, that marked the formal start of the Cold War in Europe, U.S.Japan policy shifted emphasis from reformation and democratization to reconstruction and economic development. MacArthur told Conservative Diet members and local politicians that the United States had no intention of destroying Japan’s industrial capability. Following the second postwar election on April 25, 1947, MacArthur sent a letter to Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida ordering him to prepare a comprehensive plan to restart the economy. He said in this letter “Japan must become economically selfsufficient, able to take its place in a reconstructed world.”34 On May 6, 1947, three days after the promulgation of the new constitution, in the Dai-Ichi Seimei Sogo Building, in which Douglas MacArthur had his headquarters during the occupation of Japan following World War II, Hirohito again met with the supreme commander for the Allied powers. With the help of former diplomat Matsui Akira, who was his interpreter, Hirohito asked MacArthur, “After the United States leaves, who is going to protect Japan?” MacArthur, through the translator answered, “Just as the United States protects California, so shall we protect Japan.”35 Under the United States’ leadership and with a new constitution enacted on May 3, 1947, Japan at the beginning of the 1950s became a real democracy. The 1946 constitution redefined the Japanese people as citizens, rather than “eternally loyal subjects.” The constitution’s greatest merit was to have renounced war totally, without reservation, and also strengthened the position of the prime minister, stipulated that he and other ministers of state “must be civilians,” guaranteed civil liberties, and enfranchised women.36 Thought not without flaws, it at least upheld the 37 values of democracy and peace. On April 28, 1952, the end of the occupation came into effect, formally ending all occupation powers of the Allied troops and restoring full sovereignty to Japan, except for the island chains of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, which the United States continued to occupy. The San Francisco Peace Treaty, the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, and the administrative agreement granting American military forces in Japan special privileges all ended simultaneously. Chapter Six Empire’s Disaster At the end of the 1800s, the internal fight for political and economic power in Japan took an ugly turn, including riots and tax revolts, and even plots to assassinate high government officials. 1 From 1881 to 1888, corporate moguls quarreled among themselves, jockeyed for personal gain, and maneuvered to achieve their political and moral goals. On February 11, 1889, at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Emperor Meiji proclaimed the new Constitution called the Meiji Constitution. It was a despotic charter that vested absolute power in the emperor.2 The people’s right to vote was limited to property owners, approximately 500,000 men, thus only slightly more than 1 percent of the population at the time. The legislature limited personal freedom by voting special laws. For example, the courts considered a man guilty if arrested, unless he could prove his innocence.3 From the adoption of the Meiji Constitution in 1889 and the first period of the Shōwa era (1927–1945), the military controlled the new Japanese constitutional government. The result was years of political instability, more internal conflicts, violence, murders, assassinations, overseas aggression, and war crimes in occupied territories. In 1900, in one of those internal quarrels with Prince Itō Hirobumi, Gen. Aritomo Yamagata persuaded the emperor to order that only generals and admirals on active duty could hold office in Japan as ministers of war and navy.4 By this ruling, the army and navy obtained more and more power to decide on the future of the nation. In October 1903, Admiral Seiichi Itō, chief of the Naval General Staff, informed Vice-Adm. Tōgō Heihachirō that he would command the Imperial Navy Fleet as soon as war would break out between Japan and Russia.5 Four months later, on February 8, 1904, the Japanese launched a sudden, surprise attack on the Russian naval base of Port Arthur, on the coast of Manchuria, without the formality of declaring war. They fired their torpedoes and hit two Russian battleships, The Tsarevich and The Retvizan, and the cruiser Pallada. On the same day, the Japanese army took control of Seoul, the capital of Korea, and on the 10th, Japan officially declared war against Russia. Port Arthur surrendered in January 1905. Not till February 1905, Japanese and Russian’s troops fought the war. Finally, Tōgō defeated the Russian Baltic Fleet in the Battle of Tsushima Straits on 27–28 May 1905. Under Field Marshall Iwao Oyama, the Japanese destroyed Gen. Aleksey Kuropatkin’s forces, inflicting 70,000 casualties including 20,000 killed or missing at a cost of 16,000 Japanese killed and 60,000 wounded.6 A peace treaty was signed on September 5, 1905, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, United States. 7 Despite Japan’s victory over Russia, the “Treaty of Portsmouth” was so unpopular that it immediately set off violent anti-American reactions among Japanese who wanted more generous terms from Russia. The Hibiya Incendiary Incident in Tokyo (September 5–7, 1905) was one of the protests against the treaty. 8 Many Japanese believed that Japan’s gains were far less than what public opinion had expected.9 The rioting killed seventeen people. The police arrested more than two thousand rioters with one hundred and four being tried, eighty-seven judged guilty, and sentenced to prison. This violent episode contributed to the government led by Katsura Tarō to collapse.10 At the beginning of 1905, Japan’s total population was approximately 46 million. Due to the decline of agricultural productivity, many farmers abandoned their regions, and moved to cities and towns. In 1907, Japan signed two important treaties. The Franco-Japanese Treaty of June 10, 1907, and the Japan-Korea Treaty of July 24, 1907. The Franco-Japanese Treaty (Nichi-futsu, Kyotei) was signed in Paris by Japanese Ambassador Baron Shin’ichiro Kurino and French Foreign Minister Stephen Pichon. The treaty denoted respective spheres of influence in Asia. In the treaty, France and Japan stated their commitments to the territorial integrity of China, as well as their support of the Open-Door Policy. It also stated that both governments have a “special interest” in maintaining peace and order in areas of China adjacent to territories where both parties have rights of sovereignty, protection, or occupation. The non-public supplement of the agreement defined these areas as Manchuria, Mongolia, the province of Fukien for Japan; and the provinces of Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guangdong for France. The treaty implicitly recognized France’s position in French Indochina.11 Meanwhile, the negotiations of the Japan-Korea Treaty were concluded on July 24, 1907. The treaty noted that Korea should act under the guidance of a Japanese Resident General. The administration of internal affairs in Korea was turned over to Japan.12 Provisions in the treaty gave the Japanese resident-general the right to appoint and dismiss high-ranking officials (Article 4). The treaty stipulated that all high-ranking officials appointed to the Korean government must be Japanese (Article 5). The treaty placed the Korean army under Japanese leadership and handed over judicial and policing powers. Driving to disaster, on August 22, 1910, Japan annexed Korea. The Japan-Korea Treaty of annexation was signed by Ye Wanyong, Prime Minister of Korea, and Terauchi Masatake, who became the first Japanese Governor-General of Korea. Two years later, on July 30, 1912, Emperor Meiji died. The Taishō Period began with the ascension of Yoshihito who became Emperor Taishō. The Taishō Period The ascension of Crown Prince Yoshihito on the throne after the death of his father, Emperor Meiji, drove Japan with full speed into disaster. The new emperor, having suffered from various neurological problems throughout his life, was kept out of view of the public as much as possible. His disabilities led to an increase in incidents of lèse majesté. As his condition deteriorated, Emperor Yoshihito had less and less interest in daily political affairs. The ability of the genrō, keeper of the privy seal and imperial household minister to manipulate the imperial decisions, came to be a matter of common knowledge.13 In December 1912, Adm. Yamamoto Gonbei told genrō Matsukata Masayoshi that when it came to recommending a successor prime minister, Emperor Yoshihito “is not [of the same caliber] as the previous emperor. In my view it is loyal not to obey the [Taishō] emperor’s word if we deem it to be disadvantageous to the state.”14 When World War I broke in Europe in the summer of 1914, Japan was constrained by its alliance with Britain to take the side of the Triple Entente.15 The Japanese took the opportunity to seize the German colony of Kiaochaow in China’s Shandong Province. 16 They invaded Germany’s Pacific colonies, the Mariana Islands, the Marshalls Islands, and the Caroline Islands. Having achieved that, Japanese expansionists began to cultivate a taste for China. In 1915, Japanese officials presented an outrageous set of “Twenty-One Demands” to the Chinese government. Among the demands were a ninety-nine-year lease of southern Manchuria railroads, economic control of Manchuria, economic control of bauxite mines at Hankow, and the hiring of Japanese in China’s civil service and other agencies. Together, the demands would have made China a colony of Japan.17 The Chinese refused. Japanese troops invaded Manchuria and Outer Mongolia. Japan now had Korea, Manchuria, Taiwan, the Kuriles, Ryukyus, Shanghai, several islands in the Central and South Pacific that its navy could use as naval bases. The Japanese plan to expand Japan’s territories in the Pacific and Southeast Asia became a reality. Being allied with the victors of WWI gave Japan additional prestige and power, and it wanted the West (Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and the United States) to treat it as an equal superpower. Further, America’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles offered Japan an open door to get what it asked.18 More on disaster… Concentrating as it did on war production, Japanese agriculture after World War I lost its pride of place in the national economy. The number of farm workers declined due to the recruitment and conscription of hundreds of thousands of young peasants into the army. Already, by the end of the first war against China (18941895), the Japanese could not feed themselves without imports. Thus, it became a net importer of rice soon after 1895. By 1914, Japan was importing as much as ten million koku a year in addition to other food stuffs. With the years passed, this dependency worsened. At the end of the First World War in 1918, rice cost the Japanese consumer four times as much as it had at the beginning of the century. Despite direct government intervention and support, many farmers were in difficulties. Farmers used to account for more than 40 percent of the working population of Japan; but they have dropped to less than 30 percent after World War I. In November 1918, after four years of war between the Central Powers and the Allied Powers, the ceasefire came. The same year, Japan was dealing with the Spanish influenza.19 Of the 1.8 to 2 billion persons in the world, 600 million were affected and 30 to 40 million died from the pandemic. In Japan, 23 million persons were affected, and between 390,000 and 400,000 died. The first wave of the epidemic occurred in the country in August 1918, and many cases were reported in Tokyo in mid-October (10, 11). The second wave came in January 1920. Most of the patients first affected were soldiers in the Japanese army. Given those facts, after millions of people died in Japan, it is obvious to ask: How could Japanese expansionism and conquest be justified by arguments of overpopulation and growing need for resources that could simply be acquired from trade in regard with several trade agreements that Japan signed with several countries in the region and outside Asia?20 Following World War I, more violent protests occurred across Japan. Rural Japanese were infuriated at the government’s failure to control inflation. Urban Japanese joined the protests opposing increases in rent. People also denounced the high prices of consumer goods including Japan’s essential grain, the rice. The “Rice Riots of 1918” caused the government led by Terauchi Masatake to collapse.21 Early 1920s Japan was still facing the reality of a bad economic crisis. Japanese officers who came from the farms, for the most part, discovered through the stories of their parents the conditions of misery of those living in the countryside. Those officers began to rebel against political rule. 22 The request for social changes became more violent after the Great Kantō Earthquake, which was considered the worst natural disaster ever to strike Japan. The tsunami that struck Yokohama and Tokyo traumatized the nation and unleashed historic consequences. The death toll was about one hundred forty thousand including forty-four thousand who had sought refuge near Tokyo’s Sumida River. Those, in the first few hours, were immolated by a freak pillar of fire known as a “dragon twist.” 23 Japan in 1923 was dealing with more political and economic crises. Despite a hard time in the history of the nation, the army and navy continued to spend huge sums of money in the process of building divisions and ships. The Kwantung Army by 1920 to 1923 became the strongest and most powerful military forces of Japan. 24 The withdrawal of Japanese troops from Siberia in 1922 became another problem to manage by Japanese officials. Japan had more troops than could be profitably employed, and with the necessary evacuation of northern Sakhalin, the problem had increased. The whole situation worried many generals and admirals who had no intention of allowing the army building to be reversed.25 On May 10, 1924, there was general election in Japan. No party won a majority of seats. The Kenseikai, the Rikken Seiyuūkai, and the Kakushin Party under the leadership of Katō Takaaki, formed the first coalition government in Japan. Seven months later, on December 27, 1924, dynamite exploded during logistic handling work in Temiya Station, Otaru, Hokkaido. The death toll was 94 persons. The following year, on March 7, 1925, the Public Security Preservation Law of 1925 (Chian Iji Hō) was passed in the Diet. This law had been in effect since 1887 and had been revised several times. The Japanese used the law to quell riots, put down demonstrations, and control labor union activity and radical political activity.26 The local police were everywhere. The koban (police box) was visible in every district. The government could throw anyone into jail and keep this person there indefinitely without explanation. The police were part of the Ministry of Home Affairs that also enforced censorship. Any materials the ministry deemed subversive were censored.27 The Public Security Preservation Law of 1925 forbade conspiracy and revolt, and criminalized socialism and communism. In application of the law, several members of the Japan Communist Party were arrested during the March 15 Incident in 1928. These arrests occurred throughout Japan. A total of 1,652 people were apprehended. Five hundred of those arrested were prosecuted by the Tokyo District Court. The defendants in the trials were all found guilty and sentenced to several years of jail terms. Because of these trials, Prime Minister Tanaka was able to pass legislation that added the provision for the death penalty to the authoritarian Peace Preservation Law. Japan’s economy suffered a lot when American stock market crashed in October 1929. WPI fell about 30 percent, agricultural prices fell 40 percent, and textile prices fell nearly 50 percent. Around 1930, rural poverty became severe. The countryside was hit by famine. In some provinces such as Tohoku (northeastern) region of Japan, there was a big increase in numbers of undernourished children, and some farmers were forced to sell their daughters into prostitution. This economic crisis resulted in imports exceeding exports by ¥1 billion. Making things worse, the war production effort had a direct repercussion on several sectors of the Japanese economy. When Ishiwara Kanji and Miyazaki Masayoshi came in the early twentieth century with the Five-Year Plans; this program created in Manchuria and north China an industrial complex, which was a large contributor to Japan’s military industry.28 Thus, began the creation of a range of “‘special’” and “‘semi-special’” companies each dominating one field of industrial activity under the overall supervision of the South Manchuria Railway Company, in which the Japanese government held half the stock. More than that Japan brought from Russia the Chinese Eastern Railway in order to ensure fuller control movement of supplies.29 By the beginning of 1931, the military still dominated the Japanese government. The officers in the army became more and more authoritarian. Japan’s political environment was polluted with murders, assassinations, violence, coup attempts, political instability, and war crimes.30 The Planning Board (kikakuin) was created. The military in command pushed the country further to disaster. The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931. They declared war on China in 1937.31 Starting in 1937, following its second invasion of China, a large part of Japan national budget was allocated to war. The consequences were that, in many parts of the country, the population became extremely impoverished and unemployed. In desperation, farmers became soldiers, and millions of rural Japanese fled to the cities. The trend was unsustainable. Human overpopulation in dozens of major cities became a huge problem for the Japanese government. For example, at the beginning of 1905, Japan’s total population was approximately 46 million; in 1920, it had risen another 10 million; by the first national census in 1940, it was more than 73 million. Due to the decline of agricultural productivity, many farmers abandoned their regions and moved to cities and towns. By 1920, a little over 30 percent of Japanese people lived in communities of at least 100,000 inhabitants. In 1940, the largest cities in Japan held almost one quarter of the Japanese population. Tokyo in 1930 had a population of 2.2 million in its central districts, and 1.2 million in its suburbs. By 1940, it had almost 7 million people (+227.33 percent). Osaka had 3 million and half residents (+32.53 percent), second only to Tokyo. Most other important cities such as Nagoya, Kyoto, Yokohama, Kobe, had each of them almost one million people. While other small cities like Hiroshima, Kawasaki, Fukuoka, Yahata, and Nagasaki had between 400,000 to 300,000 people. Life within these cities was difficult for the poorest who found themselves condemned to industrial slums, “unless they stayed in the narrow, dark shop-dwellings of the old commercial districts.”32 For those poor men and women in the cities, conditions at work were harsh, often because harmful exploitation and abuses in the workplaces. Back in the countryside, mining had an especially bad record for brutality and low safety standards, contributing to thousand deaths a year in the 1940s. During this period of time, Japan had a workforce of approximately 27 million people, of who a little over one-sixth were engaged in manufacturing. About 1.6 million worked in factories (740,000 men and 870,000 women), another 400,000 in mining. Wages were very low on the grounds that only in this way could Japan compete with the technologically advanced and capital-intensive industries of the West.33 Male factory workers received an average 190 sen a day (100 sen = 1 yen). Women received about half as much. In occupied territories things were also bleak. Records of an imperial Japanese workforce survey before 1940, and made public in 2017, showed a total of 1.16 million Koreans were “eligible” for forced labor. Among them, 80,000 to 290,000 Koreans annually were forced to work for Japan. Korean women workers were primarily those in their teens drafting as forced prostitutes for Japanese soldiers. Altogether, the Governor-General of Korea’s “Regarding the Labor Resource Survey” revealed on October 31, 2017, the number of Korean male workers aged 20 to 45 tallied for Japanese war mobilization in 1940 was calculated at 927,536, while the number of female workers aged 12 to 19 was listed at 232,641 for a total of 1,160,177. This number represented approximately 5 percent of Korean population of 23,547,465 at the time. The National Archives of Korea (NAK) explained that the survey was conducted by imperial Japan between the time of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the beginning of World War II to meet its perceived need for foreign forced labor, in this case Koreans.34 In 1938, the Planning Board issued the Resource Mobilization Plan (first economic plan). Separately, the National Mobilization Law was approved.35 The Military Needs Company was adopted. For economic planners, the primary objective was to maximize military production under limited domestic resources and availability of imports. Key military products were ships and warplanes. Toward the end of the war, airplane production became the only priority. With considerable resources coming from the “Yen Bloc” (Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, and the rest of occupied China), Japan was quickly building a powerful army that allowed it from 1937 to 1942 to invade a wide area in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. In December 1941, the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy invaded Thailand and attacked the United States military and naval bases in Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines. Before invading those territories, Japan’s empire consisted of the Japanese home islands, Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan. In addition, by 1942, Japan had seized Singapore and Malaysia, the Philippines, Burma, the Netherlands’ Indonesian colonies. In just over ten years, Japan had achieved a remarkable expansion of its empire from 243,500 square miles to 2.9 million square miles. Five years of war with China had drained Japan and required a standing army of 120 divisions (1.5 million troops) just to maintain its hold over half of the country. With its sweeping victories over America, Great Britain, Holland, and Australia, Japan had additional 1.25 million square miles to administer and garrison. Japan’s empire at its peak in June 1942 stretched from the Russian borders in the north, the barren wastes of Kamchatka, and the islands of Alaska in the northeast, to Jakarta in the southwest and Timor in the south, and from the borders of Burma/India in the west to the Marshall Islands in the east and Guadalcanal in the southeast.36 Japan had possession of roughly 25 percent of China’s enormous territory and more than a third of its entire population. From this large territory, Japanese companies gained a colossal fortune in trade and commercial activities. They fully exploited those countries that Japan forcibly occupied in north and central China.37 Despite the economic benefits in north China, Korea, Burma, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Malaya, the achievements in building schools, hospitals, and infrastructures by the Japanese government in order to improve the quality of people’s life from the occupied territories were not considerable. In Guam, for example, during the occupation period, Chamorros were forced to endure the hardships of the military occupation. All the schools were closed for the first four months of the occupation. The island was controlled by the Japanese troops who were housed in schools and government buildings. As at other places under control of Japanese forces, Chamorros were required to learn the Japanese custom of bowing, Japanese yen became the island’s currency, and civilian affairs were handled by a branch of the army called the Minseibu. Cars, houses, were confiscated and food was rationed until supplies became exhausted. Social activities other than Japanese movies and sports competitions were not allowed. In occupied territories, children at schools were required to learn Japanese language and customs. English was forbidden. Adults and children were taught reading, writing, playing Japanese games and songs. Before their occupation by Japan, most of the territories in the Pacific and East Asia were if not self-sufficient but semi-selfenough. Guam’s economy was semi-self-enough through the exportation of copra. The economy of several islands, such as Burma, Malaya, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, was deeply impacted by the war. The occupation caused further damage through setting a low exchange rate of U.S. dollars to the Japanese yen. Japanese forces committed all sorts of exactions such as illegal seizure of assets, destruction of homes, shortage of food, and other necessities for the locals. They also occupied land that was essential to the agriculture and the economy of those overseas territories. The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) caused an estimate of between 15 million and 20 million dead. More than 90 million Chinese became refugees in their own country. In the north and east China, Japanese forces conquered large areas, where they installed puppet regimes. Puyi (the last emperor of China) became from 1934 to 1945 a puppet emperor of the Japanese-controlled state of Manchukuo. In Nanjing, Chiang’s former colleague Wang Jingwei set up a rival nationalist government under Japanese supervision in 1940. Following the Manchurian incident of 1931, the curriculum of the national educational system became increasingly nationalistic. Beginning in 1937, the school curriculum became increasingly militaristic and was influenced by ultranationalist Education Minister Sadao Araki. In 1941, elementary schools in Japan were renamed National People’s Schools (Kokumin Gakkō) and students were required to attend Youth Schools (Seinen Gakkō) vocational training schools on graduation, which mixed vocational and basic military training (for boys) and home economics (for girls). Normal schools were renamed Specialized Schools (Sennon Gakkō). The goal of the Sennon Gakkō was to produce a professional class rather than intellectual elite. In the pre-war period, nationalistic and militaristic indoctrination were further strengthened. Textbooks such as Kokutai no Hongi became required reading.38 The principal educational objective was teaching to the Japanese students the traditional political values, religion, and morality that had prevailed from the Meiji period. The education department of the Japanese government by force imposed the same curriculum to the children who lived in the territories that Japan occupied. In addition to getting by force resources such as oil, gold, bauxite, coal, nephrite, and phosphate; the political discrimination based on race, religion, and sex weighed a lot in Japan’s arsenal of building an empire.39 The Japanese disregard for the Chinese as racial inferiors is well-known.40 Belief in their own racial and cultural superiority, and the influence of the Bushido code of conduct, allowed Japanese to justify their treatment of Chinese people.”41 The early and mid-1930s witnessed not only Japan formal withdrawal from the League of Nations and preparations for war; but also characterized Japanese’s attempts elites to reconstruct the national identity. The desire for geographical expansion came from the Japanese who believed in the superiority of their civilization over all others. Japanese believed they were superior to the Chinese from whom they borrowed literature, art, and a written language, and from Western society, particularly the Americans, from whom they borrowed technology.42 They believed that Japan had a special mission to dominate the world. They also believed they were descended from gods, their emperor was divine, and they had a heaven-inspired mission to rule the world. For more than 2,600 years, their society consumed and believed the propaganda supposedly originated by their first emperors —Jimmu, Suizei, Annei, Itoku, Kōshō, Kōan, Kōrei— and propagated by those who came after, namely, “Eight corners of the world under one roof.” 43 The Japanese believed in their mind they must dominate about a billion people in Asia and eventually the world. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a preeminent daimyō, warrior, general, samurai, and politician of the Sengoku period, was regarded as Japan’s second “great unifier.” Toyotomi made the same prediction as Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte, when he said: “All military leaders who shall render successful vanguard service in the coming campaign in China will be liberally rewarded with grants of extensive states near India, with the privilege of conquering India and extending their domains in that vast empire.” Annexing Korea in 1910, invading Manchuria in 1931, and occupying from 1942 to 1945 several territories in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, allowed Japan to rival Britain as an Asian colonial power. However, the whole concept acquiring an empire by warring with neighbors was faulty and costly. Many decades of this had brought Japan to the verge of bankruptcy. The country’s daily life was completely deteriorated during the years of the war. Everything was in short supply: food, booze, fuel, medicine, cloth, and metal. Life was still better in the countryside than in the cities, but hunger was everywhere. Government-enforced daily food rations were reduced during the war until they declined to barely 1,680 calories per adult per day. This is very significant when we know an average man needs 2500 calories to maintain functions, at 2000 calories, a person loses one pound of weight per week. 44 The majority of the men aged 18 were drafted to go to the war. Secret police were everywhere. Every city block had a warden who was monitoring behavior and reporting to the secret police. Beginning in the summer of 1944, Japan was intensively bombed. Forty-one Japanese cities were destroyed by bombing prior to Hiroshima. Military training has caused more disaster. Beginning in March 1945, most schools were closed. Students 12 years old and older were given military training to fight the upcoming invasion. Japan mainland’s invasion resulted in immense loss of human life. On the Japanese side, over 100,000 soldiers and 300,000 civilians died. Between soldiers and civilians, during the invasion the Allies lost more than 20,000 people. Of the 120,000 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima at the beginning of the battle, only 216 were taken prisoner. Most of the remainder was killed in action. Hundreds of raids by the United States on several Japanese cities caused devastating material damage. On April 18, 1942, the Doolittle Raid had major psychological effects on the citizens in Tokyo. Starting in 1943, Japan began to retreat under allied counterattacks. Japanese ships and planes were massively lost while Americans built more and more of them. From late 1944, U.S. aerial bombing (mainly incendiary bombs) destroyed virtually all cities in Japan (except Kyoto). The Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9–10 March 1945 claimed an estimated one hundred thousand lives. This was the single deadliest air raid in history with a greater area of fire damage and loss of life than either of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.45 On June 22, 1945, the Allied personnel and military killed during the Battle of Okinawa exceeded 60,000. The count of Japanese military and civilian deaths had ranged from 100,000 to 250,000. As the Allies approached victory, Japan’s leaders ordered their soldiers and sailors to continue fighting. It was an inhumane and immoral sacrifice of all combatants, far beyond the conventions of war, the common sense of survival, and the risks and rewards of empirebuilding. The Battle of Okinawa killed more than 30,000 Americans, approximately one-third of Japan’s forces of 100,000 there, and possibly as many as 150,000 Okinawan civilian men, women and children.46 In the aftermath, the Japanese military discipline collapsed. Their soldiers at home and abroad began deserting their posts. In Manchuria alone, following Japanese surrender, an estimated 60,000 Japanese soldiers and 100,000 Japanese civilians perished in the confusion of defeat or in the harsh winter that followed capitulation.47 Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in Manchuria and elsewhere in Northern China had to abandon the places where they lived bringing with them only some clothes and personal documents. Many of these Japanese refugees left their youngest children with poor Chinese peasant families in the desperate hope that at least the children might survive.48 The Japanese government has subjected its population to decades’ propaganda about racial superiority, the destiny and rewards of foreign conquest and occupation. On August 6, 1945, a total of 90,000 to 120,000 Japanese were killed after the first U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, the second U.S. atomic bomb on Nagasaki caused 150,000 to 200,000 Japanese deaths. The Japanese were shocked when Hirohito had announced Japan’s capitulation to the Allies. In his speech accepting the Terms of Surrender, 14 August 1945, Hirohito began: To our good and loyal subjects, after pondering deeply, the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in our Empire today, we have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure. We have ordered our Government to communicate to the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union that our Empire accepts the provision of their Joint Declaration…49 Japanese listeners were shocked. Hirohito and his adherents had “lost the reins” after twenty-six centuries. In Japan, the fighting made hundreds of thousands of Japanese homeless, including thousands of orphaned children. Abroad, huge numbers of Japanese troops perished from malnutrition and disease. Starvation became a major cause of death.50 Until 1949, with a government burdened by reparations, political and economic reconstruction, Japanese civilians were hard-pressed to obtain the essentials. “Simply putting food on the table became an obsessive undertaking. Hunger and scarcity defined each passing day.” 51 By the end of the war the food shortage was already so acute that even bombed-out areas in downtown Tokyo had been turned into vegetable gardens.52 In Japan itself, following the capitulation, thousands of Japanese were killed themselves rather than live with surrender. As Professor Herbert P. Bix said: Morale among troops stationed on the home islands was low before August 15; over the next three weeks it disintegrated. Reports forwarded to the office of Privy Seal Kido from prefectural governors and police officials told of units demanding immediate discharge, of kamikaze pilots loading their planes with food and other supplies and flying off to their home villages; of army doctors and nurses in a hospital in Kagoshima competing with one another to flee their posts, leaving their patients behind. As scenes of military disorder, theft of military stocks and general unruliness within the armed forces multiplied, civilian respect for the military collapsed. Men in uniform quickly found themselves objects of widespread civilian contempt.53 Most Japanese already were malnourished from the war years with their government’s emphasis on military spending rather than on domestic needs. Almost half of the national budget in Japan was allocated to the army and navy.54 The country’s industrial giants such as Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Manshū, Kawanishi, Yokosuka, Tachikawa, etc. received large sums to weaponize the armed forces. Germany also provided weapons technology and samples for massmanufacture. Additionally, Japan had its own special weapons development agency, called “Japanese Secret and Special Weapons,” whose mission included making and testing weapons of mass destruction. Beginning in 1937, during the Second SinoJapanese War, a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army, under the name “Unit 731,” conducted lethal experimentation on humans. Under the command of Gen. Shirō Ishii, this unit committed some of the most heinous war crimes of the era, if not in all history. These included biological warfare on Chinese cities and towns. Such programs caused an estimated 500,000 deaths and were fully approved and supported by Hirohito.55 Having mobilized several millions of troops from different nations, and killed an estimated 25 million people, the Pacific War remained one of the deadliest armed conflicts in the history. About 24.5 percent of Japanese soldiers and 19.8 percent of Japanese sailors died during the war. In total, Japanese military casualties from 1937–1945 have been estimated at 3,390,000, of which 3,240,000 were killed or missing. According to a report compiled by the Relief Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare 800,000 Japanese civilians and over 2 million Japanese soldiers died during the war. In China, soldier and civilian casualties are difficult to quantify. An estimate 10 million Chinese died. The war in China also produced an estimated 95 million refugees. In the American army, the total dead or missing were 41,592 for all U.S. ground troops in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, with another 145,706 wounded. The U.S. Navy lost 31,157 killed in action out of a total of 62,858 combat casualties. The U.S. Army Air Forces lost 15,694 dead and missing out of a total of 24,230 casualties. In the Pacific, the United Kingdom had 600,000 dead or missing and 12,840 wounded, Dutch Indies 4,000,000 dead, the Soviet Union 800,000, the Australians 9,470 dead or missing and 13,997 wounded, and India 3,070,000 dead with several thousands wounded.56 The IJN lost over 341 warships, including 11 battleships, 25 aircraft carriers, 39 cruisers, 135 destroyers, and 131 submarines. The IJN and IJA together lost some 45,125 aircraft. Japan’s ally Germany lost 10 submarines and 4 auxiliary cruisers (Thor, Michel, Pinguin, and Kormoran). The Pacific War led to the signing of the Potsdam Proclamation of July 26, 1945, establishing the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, with the task of trying Japanese officials (civilians and military) for war crimes. Total casualties in Asia and the Pacific by nation and type Nation Killed or missing Wounded Prisoners of war China 10,000,000 3,000,000 4,000,000 3,000,000 3,240,000 94,000 41,440 3, 070,000 24,200 68,890 Dutch Indies Japan India French Indochina 2,000,000 Soviet Union 800,000 37,000 United States 960,000 253,142 21,580 United Kingdom 600,000 12,840 50,016 British Commonwealth 500,000 DESTABILIZING THE PACIFIC Being responsible for causing war-ravaged in the Pacific during the period from 1937 to 1945, Japan’s empire was a disaster because its army and navy had opened the road to more instability through armed conflicts in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. On June 25, 1950, five years after Japan’s surrender by accepting its defeat in World War II, the Soviet-backed North Korean People’s Army invaded South Korea following clashes along the border and insurrection in the south. The United Nations Security Council condemned the move as an invasion, and authorized the formation of the United Nations Command and the dispatch of forces to Korea to repel it.57 Twenty-one countries of the United Nations contributed to the UN force with the United States taking the lead of the coalition. On the other side, North Korea with the support of China and Russia fought the war. The Korean War was among the most destructive conflicts of the modern era.58 As many as 4 million people died in the three-year conflict, including the mass killing of tens of thousands of suspected communists by the South Korean government and the torture and starvation of thousands of prisoners of war by the North Korean command. Almost all of Korea’s major cities were destroyed. The fighting ended on July 27, 1953. The Korean Armistice Agreement was signed between the United Nations, China, and North Korea. One year later, the First Taiwan Strait Crisis started. President Dwight Eisenhower facilitated Chiang Kai-shek to deploy thousands of troops to the Quemoy and Matsu Islands in the Taiwan Straits. Mainland China’s People Liberation Army decided to attack the islands. Washington signed a mutual defense treaty with Chiang’s Nationalists. To avoid a direct armed conflict with the U.S., which in the spring of 1955 threatened a nuclear attack on China, the Chinese government agreed to negotiate. However, its position on Taiwan until now has never changed. China views Taiwan as a “breakaway province which will one day be reunited with the mainland.” On November 1, 1955, the Vietnam War was officially started between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was heavily backed by the USSR and the People’s Republic of China. China’s support for North Vietnam included both financial aid and the deployment of hundreds of thousands of military personnel in support roles. By the spring of 1965, China sent 320,000 troops and annual arms shipments with $180 million.59 China claimed that its military and economic aid to North Vietnam and the Viet Cong totaled $20 billion during the Vietnam War. On the other side, South Vietnam forces were supported by the United States under the supervision of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. American forces rose from 16,000 during 1964 to more than 553,000 by 1969. Under the ANZUS Pact troops from Australia, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines joined the U.S. forces on the ground. On November 27, 1965, the Pentagon declared that if the United States and its allies wanted to neutralize North Vietnamese and NLF forces, U.S. troop levels in South Vietnam would have to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000.60 On April 30, 1975, NVA tanks entered in Saigon, effectively ending the war. Approximately 1 million to 3.8 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed. Some 300,000 Cambodians, 60,000 Laotians, and 60,000 U.S. service members also died in the conflict. Millions of refugees left Indochina (mainly Southern Vietnam), with an estimated 250,000 of whom perished at sea. NOTES Introduction 1. Granvorka, Charley, Japan’s Empire Disaster, (Lambert Academic Publishing, 2021), p. 352 2. Ibid, 353. 3. Edwin Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), Preface, viii. 4. “Eight corners of the World under one roof” was a Japanese political slogan that became popular from the Second-Japanese War to World War II and was popularized in a speech by Prime Minister of Japan Fumimaro Konoe on January 8, 1940. In AD 660, Emperor Jimmu decreed that he would: …extend the line of Imperial descendants and foster right mindedness. Thereafter, the Capital may be extended so as to embrace all of the six cardinal points and the eight cords may be covered so as to form a roof. 5. As Professor Herbert P. Bix said in his book Hirohito: The Making of Modern Japan, “Many Japanese people were naturally deeply offended at being considered racially, biologically inferior. Some even felt that the proponents of anti-Japanese immigration had declared war on Japan. The problem was that not only did Japan lack the power to do anything about it, its own national ideology was fixated on the purity of forgivable; this at a time when people and nations should be focused on their immediate emergencies and disasters.” Bix continued to say: “This Western eugenics concepts, public health measures, and colonialism were considered parts of the modernization process and adopted together.” See Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), XIX. 6. Paul Ham, Hiroshima Nagasaki, (Sydney: HarperCollins, 2011). See also Laura Hein, and Selden Mark, Living 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age, (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997). The bomb was known as “Little Boy”: a uranium guntype bomb that exploded with about thirteen kilotons of force. The Hiroshima bombing was the second man-made nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity test. On “Atomic bomb”, see Bernstein, Jeremy, Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know, Cambridge University Press, 2007. Also see CosterMullen, Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man, (Waukesha, Wisconsin: J. CosterMullen, 2012). John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, (W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 54. On Hirohito’s decision to surrender read this article by Robert Trumbull, “A Leader, Who Took Japan to War, to Surrender, and finally to Peace”, (the New York Times, Jan. 7, 1989). Potsdam Declaration. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 1966. Morris, Jr., Seymour: Supreme Commander: McArthur’s Triumph in Japan, p. 169. Inoue, Kyoko (1991), MacArthur’s Japanese Constitution. University of Chicago, pp. 29-30. Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations. United States Department of State, office of the Historian. United States Department of State, office of the Historian. On the Meiji constitution see W.G. Beasley, The Rise of Modern Japan, (St Martin’s Press, 2000), 77–80. In the Meiji constitution of 1889, many powers were reserved to the emperor, including declaration and end of war, conclusion of treaties, and supreme command of the armed forces. In addition, the emperor had exclusive ordinance rights and could freely adjourn or prorogue the national assembly, the Diet. More than a symbol, the emperor could take a full part in the decisions of the Executive Council or cabinet. The first chapter of the constitution described the emperor as “sacred and inviolable.” It also asserted that his sovereignty rested, not on a personal divinity, but on the fact that he belonged to ‘a line of Emperors unbroken for age’s eternal.’ In other words, he came before his people, not principally as ruler, but as a symbol of the imperial lineage, stretching back beyond the state itself to the time of the world’s creation. 16. In contrast with the Meiji Constitution, the Emperor’s role is entirely ceremonial, as he does not have powers related to government. 17. The constitution establishes a parliamentary system of government in which legislative authority is vested in a bicameral National Diet. Although a bicameral Diet existed under the existing constitution, the new constitution abolished the upper House of Peers, which consisted of members of the nobility. Chapter One Confronting Defeat 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. At the starting of the Pacific War in 1941, the Pacific Fleet Combat Intelligence Unit (HYPO) in Pearl Harbor, under Capt. Joseph Rochefort, had developed sophisticated decrypting techniques. Rochefort and his team worked largely on the FLAG OFFICERS Code while other code breaking teams in Washington and the Philippines worked on the Navy’s man code known as JN-25 (JAPAN NAVY). See Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War (1941–1945), (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 368. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 386, “As the pre-eminent postwar American naval historian, Samuel Eliot Morison concluded, the Battle of the Coral Sea was a “tactical victory for the Japanese but a strategic victory for the United States. The overwhelming importance of the battle to the Allied cause was not the insignificant matter of the sinking of the light carrier Shōhō or the putting out of action of the Shōkaku, but the saving of Port Moresby that was then weakly defended by inexperienced Australian troops.” Adm. Sankichi Takahashi, retired former commander in chief of the combined fleet, told a correspondent from the Asahi Shimbun that the smashing of the American fleet at the Battle of the Coral Sea, unlike the static attack at Pearl Harbor, proved that the British and American navies could not live with the matchless Japanese Navy. The fleet carrier Shōkaku was badly damaged and was lucky to survive sinking when damaged plates sprang loose on the journey home. Moreover, the Shōkaku was fortunate to avoid American submarines and get back to Japan for major repairs. Although the Zuikaku escaped any hits, it was also forced to return to Japan to pick-up replacement aircraft and pilots, Bix, 387. Chester W. Nimitz was a fleet admiral of the United States Navy. He played a major role in the Pacific War 6. 7. 8. 9. as Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet and Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, commanding Allied air, land, and sea forces during World War II. Nimitz was the leading U.S. Navy authority on submarines. On Chester Nimitz see Potter, E.B., Nimitz, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press), 45. Also see Edwin Hoyt, How they won the war in the Pacific: Nimitz and his admirals, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011); James C. Bradford, “Nimitz, Admiral Chester (1885–1966), Gordon Martel, ed., (The Encyclopedia of War, 2011). See H. P. Willmott, Empires in the Balance: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies to April 1942, (US Naval Institute Press, 2008). “Japan’s human losses from the battle at Midway were significant. Out of 2,000 naval airmen available to Japan in total, 110 airmen were lost from the four carriers at Midway, Kaga (21), Soryu (10), Akagi (7) and Hiryu (72). Moreover 721 aircraft technicians were killed, which represented 40 percent of those who embarked. More significant in terms of the balance of naval power was the loss of four of Japan’s six fleet carriers; the weapon that above all, after Pearl Harbor and until the development of the atom bomb just four years later, defined the ability of the maritime nations to design their war strategies and project their power.” Cited by Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War (1941–1945), (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 418. Operation Forager was an offensive launched by the United States forces against imperial Japanese forces in the Mariana Islands and Palau in the Pacific Ocean between June and November 1944 during the Pacific War. See D. Colt Denfelt, Hold the Marianas: The Japanese Defense of the Mariana Islands, (White Mane Pub, 1997). Hellcats were credited with destroying a total of 5,223 enemy aircraft while in service with the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, and Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm. This can be broken down as 5,163 in the Pacific and 8 more during the invasion of Southern France, plus 52 with the FAA during World War II. 10. Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War (1941– 1945), (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 1022. 11. This vast armada of ships, all in all some 1,439 ships, was the largest fleet ever assembled. At the Normandy D-day landings there were 1,213 ships. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. See Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War (1941– 1945), 1023. Ibid., 1024. The Japanese troops on the island commanded by Ushijima had been ordered to hold onto the island at all costs. See Bill Sloan: The Ultimate Battle, p. 18; SSgt Rudy R. Frame, Jr., Okinawa: The Final Great Battle of World War II. Marine Corps Gazette, Archived from the original on December 14, 2013. Also see “Okinawa: The Typhoon of Steel,” (American Veterans Center, April 1, 1945). Weighing 72,800 tons and outfitted with nine 18.1 guns, struck by 19 American aerial torpedoes, the battleship Yamato was sunk, drowning 2,498 of its crew. See Sarah Pruitt, Remembering the Battle of Okinawa, June 19, 2015. According to Francis Pike in Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War (1941–1945), overall navy losses in personnel were more than 4,900 sailors killed and 4,800 wounded. Overall navy losses in personnel were not insignificant. During a campaign planned for three-weeks that lasted three months, more than 4,900 sailors were killed and 4,800 were wounded. Spruance tried multiple strategies to obviate the damage of the attacks including trying to persuade the army to seize several islands to the north of Okinawa, on which radar stations and fighter directors could have been placed. Similarly, Spruance wanted to seize the large island of Kumei to the west to help pick up the approach of kamikaze from Formosa. Spruance later lamented, “The Army always had some reason why they could not do this.” (Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War (1941–1945), 1026. 17. Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 395. 18. Louis Allen, Burma: The longest War, (Dent Publishing, 2005). See also Frank McLynn, The Burma Campaign: Disaster into Triumph, 1942–45, (Yale Library of Military History, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). 19. “Okinawa: The Last Battle of World War II,” (Military History, 24). 20. Ibid., 1057. 21. See Yasuyuki Kitawaki, (former mayor of Hamamatsu, director of the Center for Multilingual Multicultural Education and Research, (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies), (CEMMER), “A Japanese approach to municipal diversity management: The case of Hamamatsu City, 2015, 8– 13. 22. Ibid., 8–13. 23. William Craig, The Fall of Japan: The Final Weeks of World War II in the Pacific, (Open Road Integrated Media, 2017), 34. 24. National Diet Library, Japan, 2013 . 25. In spite of the ban on bombing the Imperial Palace, either because of inaccuracy or the willful disobedience of the B-29 aircrews, a raid on Tokyo on May 25, 1945, saw the twenty-seven buildings in the Imperial Palace grounds burned to the ground, with just one reception chamber surviving. Twenty-eight members of the imperial staff were killed. See Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War 1941–1945, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), 1056. 26. See Hisashi Yamanaka, Kodomotachi no taiheiyō sensō [Children at National Schools and the Age of the Pacific War], 1986. Iwanami Shinsho (Ki 356) (in Japanese). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. See also Ben-Ami Shillony, Universities and Students in Wartime Japan, (The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 45, no. 4, August 1986), 769–787. Chapter Two Fight to the Death 1. During the crucial interval between the Potsdam Declaration and the August 6 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hirohito himself said and did nothing about accepting the Potsdam terms. Twice, however, on July 25 and 31, he had made clear to Kido that the imperial regalia had to be defended at all costs. (Nakao, “Dai Tō’A sensō ni okeru bōsei teni chien no yōin,” 119, citing Senshi sōsho: Minami Taiheiyō rikugun sakusen (2) (1969), 444. Also cited by Bix, in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2016), 502. 2. On the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, see William Craig, The Fall of Japan: The Final Weeks of World War II in the Pacific, (Open Road Integrated Media, 1976), 76–113. 3. Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War 1941–1945, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016) 1058. 4. Foreign Relations of the United States, U.S. Government Printing Office: 1376–1377. 5. Francis, Pike, 1059. 6. Blinded by their preoccupation with the fate of the imperial house and committed to an optimistic diplomacy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, those leaders let pass several opportunities to end their lost war. Citing by Bix, in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 521. 7. See Ellis Zacharias, Secret Missions: The Story of an Intelligence Officer, (New York: US Naval Institute Press, 2003). 8. See Mokusatsu, “Japan’s Response to the Potsdam Declaration,” Kazuo Kawai, Pacific Historical Review, vol. 19, No. 4 (November 1950), 409-414. 9. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 500. 10. Yamada, Daigensu Shōwa tennō, 203; Grace P. Hayes, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World War II: The War Against Japan (Naval Institute Press, 1982), 190. 11. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 501. 12. Ugaki Matome, Senmoroku (Hara Shobō, 1968), 224. Cited by Bix, 501. 13. Yamada, Daigensui Shŏwa tennŏ, 205. Cited by Bix, 503. 14. The bomb was known as “Little Boy”: a uranium guntype bomb that exploded with about thirteen kilotons of force. The Hiroshima bombing was the second man-made nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity test. On “Atomic bomb”, see Bernstein, Jeremy, Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know, Cambridge University Press, 2007. Also see CosterMullen, Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man, (Waukesha, Wisconsin: J. CosterMullen, 2012). 15. See William Craig, The Fall of Japan: The Final Weeks of World War II in the Pacific, (Open Road Integrated Media Inc., 2017), 78. 16. Yamada, Daigensui Shōwa tennō, 202. Cited by Bix, 502. 17. Even as the invasion of Manchuria by the Soviets made surrender inevitable, Hirohito continued to consider capitulation as an unacceptable option. Instead of surrendering, he supported the military and civilian leaders who welcomed a final battle on Japanese soil. War Minister Korechika Anami believed, “Japan could at least for a time repulse the enemy and might thereafter somehow find life out of death.” Telling the truth, it is right to say that, after Midway, Japanese naval leaders secretly concluded that Japan’s outlook for victory was poor. The fall of Saipan on July 9, 1944 brought U.S. bombers into Japan homeland’s airspace. At that time, inside the Imperial Palace, it had been decided that a new strategy with a new leadership was necessary to fight the war. The Tōjō cabinet was replaced by that of Koiso Kuniaki. Koiso formed a supreme war-direction council 18. 19. 20. 21. designed to link the cabinet and the high command. It was clear that the war was lost, but declaring defeat was not acceptable to a large group of officers in the Japanese army and navy, who had been dreaming only of victories. Great firebombing raids in 1945 brought destruction to every major city in Japan. Despite that reality, the Generals were bent on continuing the war, confident that a major victory would help gain more concessions from the Allies during the process of capitulation. On April 1, 1945, 50,000 U.S. combat troops, under the command of Lt. Gen. Simon B. Buckner Jr., landed on the southwest coast of the Japanese island of Okinawa, 350 miles south of Kyushu, the southern mainland of Japan. The Koiso government fell and was replaced by a Cabinet led by Adm. Suzuki Kantarō. The first action of the new government was to ask the Soviet Union, which was still at peace with Japan, to intercede with the Allies. The Soviet government had agreed, but its reply was delayed while Soviet leaders participated in the Potsdam Conference in July. The Potsdam Declaration was issued on July 26. Eleven days later, on August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy,” was dropped onto the city of Hiroshima. The bomb detonated some 1,800 feet above the city center of Hiroshima. It took a few seconds for a massive fireball to erupt and instantly vaporize everything in an immediate one-mile radius. Nearly 80,000 Japanese had been killed. Senda Kakō, Tennō to chokugo to Shōwa shi (Sekibunsha, 1983), 394. Cited by Bix, 530. On Hirohito’s decision to surrender read this article by Robert Trumbull, “A Leader, Who Took Japan to War, to Surrender, and Finally to Peace”, (the New York Times, Jan. 7, 1989). In the immediate wake of the defeat, it was estimated that more than three hundred army and fifty navy personnel committed suicide; Kusayanagi Daizō, Naimushō tai Senryōgun (Tokyo: Asaki Bunko, 1987), 16. By another calculation, between the emperor’s broadcast and October 1948, a total of 527 army and navy men, plus a small number of civilians, took their lives as a gesture of responsibility for the defeat; Tsurumi and Nakagawa, 1:714–16. Quoted Dower, Embracing Defeat, Notes, 569. Chapter Three Aftermath 1. Margaret MacMillan, Rebuilding the World after the Second World, 2009, (The Guardian, September 11, 2009), 1. 2. Ibid., 2. 3. Ibid., 2. 4. Ibid., 4. 5. The battle has been referred to as the “typhoon of steel” in English, and tetsu no ame (“rain of steel”) or tetsu no bōfū (“violent wind of steel”) in Japanese. 6. “All of these individuals naturally looked forward to returning home quickly. For many, however, repatriation would take years not months, and hundreds and thousands were destined to die without seeing their homeland again. For these millions of individuals, surrender merely marked the beginning of a new stage in lives of escalating uncertainty and brutalization. They became victims of the chaos that reigned in war-torn “liberated” Asia, of epidemic diseases, and of maltreatment by the victorious Allies. In September 1946, more than a year after the emperor’s broadcast, over 2 million Japanese still remained unrepatriated and the government acknowledged that the where-about of 540,000 others were unknown.” This information is cited in John W. Dower’s book, Embracing Defeat, 50. 7. On the Great Purge in Russia, see Christopher Andrew; Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB, (New York: Basic Books, 2000). Also see Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties, (revised ed.) (London: Macmillan, 1968). 8. “As many as 7.8 million Koreans were conscripted as forced labor or soldiers during Japan’s imperial expansion before and during World War II, 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. according to South Korean estimates. They toiled in mines and munitions factories across Asia and fought alongside Japanese troops. Women were sent to military-run brothels.” Hulbert, H. B., History of Korea, (Routledge 1999). “Hundreds of the abandoned children, invariably poor and speaking only Chinese, began to come to Japan on officially sponsored trips in the 1980s to try to reestablish contact with their families. Even where reunions did occur, they were excruciatingly painful.” John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat, note (23), 570. See Margaret MacMillan, Rebuilding the world after the Second World War, 2009 (The Guardian, September 11, 2009), 2–6. John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan In the Wake of World War II, (W.W. Norton & Company/The New Press, 1999), 90–91. The basic minimum standard of 2,200 calories was established in the Japanese government’s first “economic white paper,” published in 1947. See Rekishi Kagaku Kenkyūkai, Nihon Dōjidai Shi, p. 196; SNNZ 7:191, 323; Yomiuri Shimbun Shūsen Zengo, 122–23. Also see Dower, 96. John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, (W.W. Norton & Company/The New Press, 1999), 45. The basic cumulative set of data on war damages in Japan was issue by the Economic Stabilization Board (Keizai Antei Honbu) in April 1949 and has been widely reproduced. See, for example, the official Ōkurashō (Ministry of Finance) history of the occupation period, Sengo Zaisei Shi (Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shimbun, 1978), vol. 11, 15–19. Cited by Dower, chapter 1, note (14), 570. Ibid., 45–46. Reports of General MacArthur on the Kyushu vivisections. The reports describe the treatment some POWs received from lower-level camp attendants. By one count, a total of 32,624 Allied 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. POWs were released within Japan, from a total of 127 camps, 102–4, 169–70, 173). See also John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, (W.W. Norton & Company/ The New Press, 2000), 54. “The wartime floods turned almost four million people —over 20 percent of the total population— in Henan, Anhui, and Jiangsu into refugees. In Henan, the province for which the most detailed statistics are available, the Yellow River floods displaced more than 1,172,000. Refugees displaced by the foods came to 67.7 percent of the total population in Xihua, 55.1 percent in Henan’s Fuguou County, 52.2 percent in Weishi County, 32.2 percent in Taikang County, and more than 10 percent in Zhongmu County.” On the Yellow River flood see Micah Muscolino, The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond, 1938-1950, (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 30, 1945, cited in Yoshida, Nihonjin no sensōkan, 26–27. Also cited by Bix, in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 557. Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 30, 1945, cited in Yoshida, Nihonjin no sensōkan, 26–27. Also cited by Bix, in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 557. Edward Behr, Hirohito: Behind the Myth, (Villard Books, New York, 1989), 361. Ibid., 363. Kazuo Kawai, Japan’s American Interlude, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). See History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II (5 volumes; accessed 2011–10–30). Clinton Hartley Grattan is the author of A Preface to Chaos: War in the Making (New York: Dodge, 1936), The United States and the Southwest Pacific, (Harvard University Press, 2014), (1961). William Henry Chamberlin was the author of several books about the Cold War, Communism, and US foreign policy, including the Russian Revolution of 1917–1921―(1935), which was written in Russia between 1922 and 1934 while he was the Moscow correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor. 26. Sheldon Richman, The Consequences of World War II, (The Future of Freedom Foundation, November 1, 1991). Chapter Four Paying for the War 1. The Cairo Declaration was the outcome of the Cairo Conference in Cairo, Egypt, on November 27, 1943. Pres. Franklin Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom, and Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek of the Republic of China were present. The declaration developed ideas from the 1941 Atlantic Charter, which was issued by the Allies of World War II to set goals for the post-war order. The Cairo Declaration is cited in Clause Eight (8) of the Potsdam Declaration, which is referred to by Japanese Instrument of Surrender. See “Cairo Communiqué, December 1, 1943,” (Japan National Diet Library, December 1, 1943). 2. On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union officially declared war on Japan, flooding 1.6 million troops into Manchuria, an area of 600,000 square miles in the North-East of China. “Despite a strong Japanese army of a million men awaiting them, the Soviet force, under command of Marshal Alexander Vasilevsky, swept into China, Korea and the Kuril Islands, forcing a rapid retreat. By the end of the engagement, the Soviets had only lost around 8,000 troops compared to the 80,000 lost by Japan”. (The Moscow Times, August 8, 2019). 3. The Jewel Voice Broadcast (Gyokuon-hōsō) was the radio broadcast in which Japanese Emperor Hirohito read out the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the Greater East Asia War, (Daitōa-sensō-shūketsu-no-shōsho), announcing to the Japanese people that the Japanese government had accepted the Potsdam Declaration demanding the unconditional surrender of the Japanese military at the end of World War II. This speech was broadcast at noon Japan Standard Time on August 4. 5. 6. 7. 15, 1945. The speech was the first time that an emperor of Japan had spoken to the common people. A digitally remastered version of the broadcast was released on June 30, 2015. On September 2, 1945, representatives from the Japanese government and Allied forces assembled aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay to sign the Japanese instrument of Surrender, which effectively ended World War II. The Document was prepared by the U.S. War Department and approved by Pres. Harry S. Truman. The Japanese signatories of the surrender were Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu, Chief of the Army General Staff; acting as supreme commander of the Allied Forces, Gen. Douglas MacArthur accepted their surrender. The formal ceremony was witnessed by delegates from the other Allied nations, including China, the United Kingdom, the USSR, France, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. George Catlett Marshall, “The Papers of George Catlett, “The Man of the Age,” (JHU Press, October 1, 1949), 205. See FRUS, 1951, 6: 1293―96. The quote is from 1295. “There is enclosed a draft letter to Mr. Dulles informing him of his designation and setting forth the terms of reference of his mission.” See George Catlett Marshall, “The Papers of George Catlett, “The Man of the Age,” 29, 325, 427. The letter included a statement that Dulles should keep in mind during his negotiations that the United States intended to commit troops to assist in the defense of Japan, that it desired that Japan should eventually be able to defend itself, and that the US would enter into mutual assistance agreements with Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and perhaps Indonesia to “resist aggression from without” and from within should Japan “again become aggressive.” (Acheson and Marshall to 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Truman, memorandum and enclosure, January 9, 1951, NA/RG 330, CD 387 [Japan]. This draft was not formally circulated to other interested powers. China was not invited, the latter due to disagreements on whether the Republic of China or the People’s Republic of China represented the Chinese people. Korea was also not invited due to a similar disagreement on whether South Korea or North Korea represented the Korean people. On the Treaty of San Francisco, see Treaty of Peace with Japan (including transcript with signatories: Source attributed: United Nations Treaty Series 1952 (reg. no. 1832), vol. 136, 45–164. See also on the issue, John Price, Cold War Relic: The 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty and The Politics of Memory, (Asian Perspective, vol. 25, no. 3 (2001), 31–60. Treaty of Peace with Japan (with two declarations). The Treaty was signed at San Francisco, on September 8, 1951. In accordance with Article 14 of the Treaty, Allied forces confiscated all assets owned by the Japanese government, firms, organization and private citizens, in all colonized or occupied countries except China, which were dealt with under Article 21. China repossessed all Japanese assets in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia. Moreover, Article 4 of the treaty stated that “the disposition of property of Japan and of its authorities presently administering such areas and the residents… shall be the subject of special arrangements between Japan and such authorities.” Although Korea was not a signatory state of the treaty, it was also entitled to the benefits of Article 4 by the provisions of Article 21. According to Article 14 of the Treaty of Peace with Japan (1951): “Japan should pay reparations to the Allied Powers for the damage and suffering caused by it during the war…Payments of reparations started in 1955, lasted for 23 years and ended in 1977. On War reparations see F. Occhino, K. Oosterlinck, K. and E. White (2008), “How much can a victor force the vanquished to pay”? (Journal of Economic History, 68), 1–45. 13. Article V: “Japan is prepared to pay reparations to the Union of Burma in order to compensate the damage and suffering caused by Japan during the war and also is willing to render co-operation in order to contribute towards the economic rehabilitation and development and the advancement of social welfare in the Union of Burma. Nevertheless it is recognized that the resources of Japan are not sufficient, if it is to maintain a viable economy, to make complete reparation for all the damage and suffering of the Union of Burma and other countries caused by Japan during the war and at the same time meet its other obligations…” On Japan’s assistance to Burma see David I. Steinberg, Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 5, no. 2 (1990), 51–107. 14. “The Japanese occupation of the Philippines occurred between 1942 and 1945, when Imperial Japan occupied the Commonwealth of the Philippines during World War II. The invasion of the Philippines started on December 8, 1941, ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Lacking air cover, the American Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines withdrew to Java on December 12, 1941. General MacArthur was ordered out by President Truman, leaving his men at Corregidor on the night of March 11, 1942 for Australia. The 76,000 starving and sick American and Filipino defenders in Bataan surrendered on April 9, 1942 and were forced to endure the infamous Bataan Death March. Japan occupied the Philippines for over three years, until the surrender. The puppet republic was headed by President José P. Laurel. The only political party allowed during the occupation was the Japanese-organized KALIBAPI. More than a thousand women, some being under the age of 18, were imprisoned as “comfort women,” kept in sexual slavery for Japanese military personnel during the occupation. One such place where these women were imprisoned is Bahay na Pula.” On the occupation of the Philippines by Japan, see Daniel B. Schirmer, Stephen Rosskamm, Shalom, “War Collaboration and Resistance. The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, and Resistance, (International Studies: South End Press. See also William J. Pomeroy, The Philippines: Colonialism, Collaboration, and Resistance, (International Publishers, 1992). 15. “The Japanese military entered Vietnam in September 1940 and remained there until the end of World War II (August 1945). By occupying Vietnam, Japan hoped to close off China’s southern border and halt its supply of weapons and materials. Vietnam’s occupation also fit into Japan’s long-term imperial plans. For most of their occupation, the Japanese left the French colonial government in place. The Japanese troops during the Pacific War had used Vietnam for the conquest of Thailand and Burma, and a staging point for attacks further south.” On Japan’s occupation of Vietnam see Jennifer Llewellyn, Jim Southey, and Steve Thompson, “The Japanese Occupation of Vietnam,” (Alpha History, January 10, 2018). 16. “On July 26, 1945, the United States, Great Britain, and China issued the Potsdam Proclamation, which stipulated, “The terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out and Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine.” The status of “minor islands” such as Dokdo would be subject, therefore, to the decision by Allied Powers based on historical facts.” On Resolution of Territorial Disputes over Islands in East Asia after the end of World War II, see Seokwoo Lee, “International Law and the Resolution of Territorial Disputes over Islands in East Asia,” (unpublished doctoral Thesis, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, July 2001), 244–245. 17. The Charter of the United Nations was signed on 26 June 1945, in San Francisco, at the conclusion of the United Nations Conference on International Organization, and came into force on 24 October 1945. Chapter Five Apologizing for the War 1. The New York Times, “Hirohito quit Yasukuni Shrine over concerns about war criminals,” April 26, 2007. 2. In a July 31, 2001, entry of his diary, published by the Asahi newspaper, the chamberlain, Ryogo Urabe, wrote that “the direct cause” was that the emperor was “displeased about the inclusion of “Class A” war criminals.” 3. Fujita Yukihisa, (August 2006), “Prime Minister Kishi’s Diplomacy of Reconciliation,” (Japan Echo, archived from the original on July 18, 2011.) 4. “Kishi had been the economic czar of the puppet state of Manchukuo and was accused, among other things, of being responsible for the enslavement of untold thousands of Chinese as forced labores. After the Japanese surrender to the Allies in August 1945, Kishi was imprisoned at Sugamo Prison for three years as a “Class A” crime suspect. He was released in 1948 by MacArthur who considered him to be the best man to lead a post-war Japan in a pro-American direction. He went on to consolidate the Japanese conservative camp against perceived threats from the Japan Socialist Party in the 1950s, and is credited with being a key player in the initiation of the “1955 System”, the extended period during which the Liberal Democratic Party was the overwhelmingly dominant political party in Japan. He served as Japan’s official representative at the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965.” See John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat, (W.W. Norton & Company 2000), 454. See also “Kishi and Corruption: An Anatomy of the 1955 System, Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper No. 83, December 2001; Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (New York: Perennial, 2001), 660. 5. See Lee Tong Wong, The Secret Story of the Japan-ROK Treaty: The Fated Encounter of Two Diplomats, (PHP, 1997). 6. See James Sterngold, “Kakuei Tanaka, 75, Ex-Premier and Political Force in Japan, Dies,” New York Times, 17 December 1993. See also Sam Jameson, “Conviction of Former Japanese Leader Tanaka Upheld”, (Los Angeles Times, 29 July 1987). 7. Cited by Dario Lisiero, Papal Apology, (Lulu Publisher), 49. 8. See Kent E. Calder, Japan in 1991: Uncertain Quest for a Global Role, (Asian Survey, 32–41). 9. This declaration was one of the strongest statements on Japanese aggression before and during World War II, Hirohito said, he regretted his country’s 35-year colonial domination of Korea. See Todd R. Eastham, Emperor Hirohito, in one of his strongest statements on… (UPI Archives, Sept. 6, 1984). 10. Karel van Wolferen, “The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation,” (New York: Vintage, 1990), 264. 11. On Nakasone’s speech to the United Nations, see Ivan Zverina, “Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone today warned against protectionism…” (UPI Archives, Oct. 23, 1985). 12. David E. Sanger, “Takeshita Now Admits World War II Aggression,” (NewYork Times, 7 March 1989). 13. After serving in the assembly of Osaka Prefecture, Nakayama was elected to the Diet for the first time in 1968 as a member of the House of Councilors and to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1986. On April 18, 1990, Nakayama made that statement during the 188th National Diet Session Lower House Committee of Foreign Affairs. 14. David Butts, “Japanese emperor apologizes to South Korean president,” (UPI Archives, May 24, 1990). See also Steven R. Weisman, “Japanese Express Remorse to Korea,” (New York Times, May 25, 1990). 15. Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu made this statement on May 25, 1990. 16. Edwin P. Hoyt, Hirohito: The Emperor and the Man, (Praeger Publishers, 1992), 4. 17. Margot S. Strom, Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior, (Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, 1994), 488. 18. Morihiro Hosokawa, “Speech at 127th National Diet Session,” The World and Japan Database Project. Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo. Archived from the original on April 20, 2015. Retrieved September 24, 2004. 19. At the 128th National Diet Session on September 21, 1993, Hosokawa repeated the terms in his speech on August 15, 1993 at the annual war memorial services. He publicly acknowledged that World War II was a “war of aggression, a mistaken war” and expressed responsibility and condoleances to the war victims and survivors, in Japan, its Asian neighbors, and the rest of the world. 20. Cited on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan’s website. 21. For the first time since the end of the war, a Japanese Prime Minister expressed his apology and admitted that Japan had, “through its colonial rule and invasion, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations.” 22. On Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Conference on: Visit of Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto to the People’s Republic of China, September 6, 1997). 23. MOFA: Japan-Republic of Korea Joint Declaration A New Japan-Republic of Korea Partnership towards the Twentyfirst Century,” www.mofa.go.jp. Retrieved May 31, 2020. 24. The Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China was signed on September 27, 1972 in Beijing. The document has nine articles among them, Art 1) peace treaty between Japan and China, 2) the status of Taiwan, 3) the question of hegemony in East Asia, and 4) Japan’s reversed relations with China and Taiwan. See Ryosei Kokubun, “1972 System” to “Strategic Mutual Benefits” — Japan’s Foreign Policy toward China,” (PDF). Nihon No Gaiko Dai 4 Kan. 4:111–142. 25. The treatment of American and allied prisoners by the Japanese is one of the most horrific crimes of World War II. Of the 27,000 Americans taken prisoner by the Japanese, 40 percent died in captivity, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service. According to a directive on 5 August 1937 by Emperor Hirohito, the constraints of the Hague Conventions were explicitly removed from prisoners of war from China, the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the Philippines held by the Japanese armed forces and these POWs were subject to murder, beatings, brutal treatment, forced labor, medical experimentation, starvation rations and poor medical treatment. See Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of survival, resilience, and redemption, (New York, NY: Random House, 2010). 26. Cited in Dower, Embracing Defeat, 477, 478, 479: “A revealing example of official thinking on such matters can be found in the draft of an “Urgent Imperial Decree” composed sometimes during these early months. This secret order never saw the light of day, but it is as vivid an example as we are likely to find of the lengths to which the ruling groups were willing to go, on their town, on the issue of responsibility – so long as such an inquiry could be coupled with reaffirmation of the emperor’s virtue and innocence. Its full, baroque title was “Urgent Imperial Decree to Stabilize the People’s Mind and Establish the Independent Popular Morality Necessary to Maintain National Order,” and its royalist logic was elemental: the disastrous war constituted a betrayal of the emperor’s trust, a tragic perversion of his abiding commitment to peace. Just as the victor nations assumed that historically and culturally, they embodied the “civilized” ideals of respect for peace and humanity, so these authors depicted the same ideals as lying at the heart of their imperial tradition. “The core of the draft decree’s indictment was laid out, in cumbersome fashion, in the first of its twelve provisions: 1. The aim of this decree is to stabilize the people’s mind and establish the independent popular morality which is necessary to the maintenance of national order, and to this end to punish, remove, or dissolve those persons, institutions, or social organizations who or which, by going against the national polity, abusing their assistance to the emperor, and failing to follow his great spirit in leading government policies and popular trends, thus violating the instructions of the Meiji emperor and inviting military-clique politics, with political parties knowingly aiding and abetting this, thereby instigating the Manchurian Incident, China Incident, and Great Asia War, which destroyed the lives and assets of our people and various other peoples and endangered the national polity. 2. The following persons shall be sentenced to death or lifetime restraint for the crime of treason: a. Persons who without the emperor’s order moved troops, needlessly initiated military activities, and commanded aggressive activities, making the Manchurian Incident, China Incident, and Great East Asia War unavoidable; b. Persons, who violated the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors of Meiji 15 [1882] and invited the situation of military-clique politics, going against the emperor’s great spirit of peace by discarding the true essence of the national polity and engaging in despotic behavior or the like, thereby make the Great Asia East Asia War inevitable. 3. The following persons shall receive sentences ranging under 10 years restraint to life for collaboration in the crime of treason: a. Persons directly involved in plans under provision 2a above; b. Persons who agreed to the military-clique politics of provision 2b above, conspiring to strengthen or knowingly supporting this; c. Persons who knowingly supported and cooperated with prewar plots and propaganda by military politicians and others or created prewar public opinion contrary to the emperor’s great spirit of peace, thus making the initiation of war inevitable.” The draft went on to indicate that in certain cases such punishments might be commuted to what amounted to a purge from public office and loss of the rights ordinarily accruing to subjects. Investigations, indictments, and trials would be handled under the Attorney General’s office, which would take up cases against individuals on receipt of petitions containing one hundred signatures. This fascinating document was discovered by Professor Awaya Kentarō among the Makino Shinken Papers in the National Diet Library, and is reproduced in his Tokyo Saiban Ron, 160–62; the translation here is from that work. A full English translation is appended to Awaya’s contribution in Hosaya, 87–88. The authorship and date of origin of the draft decree are unclear, but Awaya concludes from internal evidence that it probably was prepared under the Shidehara government, which was in office from October 1945 to April 1946. 27. MOFA: Prime Minister’s Address to the Diet.” www.mofa.go.jp. Retrieved May 31, 2020. 28. “Shinzo Abe Echoes Japan’s Past World War II Apologies but Adds None, by Jonathan Soble, The New York Times, August 14, 2015. 29. Cited in John W. Dower’s note (51) Embracing Defeat, 640, “…In general, apart from the strong initial response to the revelation of the 1945 atrocities in 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. Manila, the Japanese do not appear to have been particularly sensitive to the victimization of peoples of Southeast Asia. This hierarchy of Asian victims had tended to persist even in the postwar literature of progressive scholars and activists deeply committed to exposing the extent of Japan’s World War II atrocities, where primary focus had tended to be on first, Japan’s Chinese victims, and second, its Korean victims. Although it can be argued that these two peoples suffered most at Japanese hands, such emphasis cannot be explained in quantitative terms alone. Considerations of geographical, historical, cultural, racial, and psychological distancing also are involved.” The School Education Law enacted in 1974 created the current system of textbook approval. Until the end of World War II, the government generally authored textbooks. The publishers create textbooks and submit them for official examination and approval by the Ministry of Education. These books must meet the requirements of the Curriculum Guideline, a set of curriculum standards for Japanese schools. Having two of their cities hit with nuclear bombs, the Japanese consider themselves as victims of World War II. The Japanese school curriculum doesn’t teach the detail of the war in the Pacific and South East Asia. The Japanese educational system promotes the concept of Japan as victim. See “How Japan Teaches Its Own History,” by James Reston Jr., The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 27, 1985. Fellers memorandum to commander in chief, October 2, 1945, in box 3 of the Fellers papers in the Hoover Institution. This also is reproduced in William P. Woodard, The Allied Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952, and Japanese Religions (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), 360–61. One of Japan’s most important intellectuals, Nambara Shigeru defended Tokyo Imperial University against its rightist critics and opposed Japan’s war. He is the author of War and Conscience in Japan published in 2010. On December 1, 1948, National Security Council document 13/2 was transmitted to MacArthur. It formally approved the shift in U.S. occupation policy from political democratization to economic reconstruction and remilitarization. The United States decided to strengthen Japan not only economically and politically but military. Following instructions from Washington, on December 18, MacArthur ordered the second Yoshida cabinet to carry out “nine principles” designed to ensure wage and price control and maximize production for export. See Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, HarperCollins, 2016), 635. 35. Matsui was Hirohito’s interpreter for his eighth through eleventh meetings with MacArthur, and for his two meetings with Dulles on February 10 and April 22, 1951. During the first meeting between the emperor and MacArthur, on September 27, 1945, the two leaders communicated via the imperial translator, Okumura Katsuzo. 36. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), xiv. 37. A prime example of political expediency was of course the U.S. decision to retain Hirohito on the throne. Hebert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 690. Chapter Six Empire’s Disaster 1. Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 19–20. 2. On the Meiji constitution see W.G. Beasley, The Rise of Modern Japan, (St Martin’s Press, 2000), 77– 80. In the Meiji constitution of 1889, many powers were reserved to the emperor, including declaration of war, conclusion of treaties, and supreme command of the armed forces. In addition, the emperor had exclusive ordinance rights and could freely adjourn or prorogue the national assembly, the Diet. More than a symbol, the emperor could take a full part in the decisions of the Executive Council or cabinet. The first chapter of the constitution described the emperor as “sacred and inviolable.” It also asserted that his sovereignty rested, not on a personal divinity, but on the fact that he belonged to ‘a line of Emperors unbroken for age’s eternal.’ In other words, he came before his people, not principally as ruler, but as a symbol of the imperial lineage, stretching back beyond the state itself to the time of the world’s creation. 3. Ibid., 21. 4. Ibid., 43. See also Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016) note (20), 696, “Itō removed the top of the military chain of command from the prime minister’s jurisdiction and deliberately weakened the prime minister’s powers in order to enhance the emperor’s. He also strengthened the independent advisory authority of ministers of state and made cabinet decisions depend on unanimous consent 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. rather than on simple majority vote. In the final stage of his constitution making, Itō established a privy council to deliberate on the constitution. Although Emperor Meiji actively participated in virtually all its meetings, it is doubtful if he really understood the enormous political and military obligations, he was foisting on himself – obligations that would fall with even greater weight on the shoulders of Hirohito. For details see Minobe Tatsukichi, Chikujō kenpō seigi zen (Yūhikaku, 1931), 523; Sakano Junji, “Naikaku,” in Nihonshi daijiten, dai gokan (Heibonsha, 1993), 289– 90; Masuda Tomoko, “Meiji rikken kunshusei ni okeru Sūmitsuin,” in Rekishi to chiri 355 (March 1985), 1–14; and Tanaka, Tennō no kenkyū, 168. Edwin Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, McGraw-Hill, 1986), 35). In 1906, following the end of the Russo-Japanese War, Kropotkin served as member of the State Council of Imperial Russia. In 1907, he wrote his own version of the Russo-Japanese War, which was published in several books in several languages. The Russian government reportedly confiscated the history he wrote. On the RussoJapanese War, see Geoffrey Reagan, Military Anecdotes, (Guinness Publishing, 1992). See also Robert W. Tolf, The Russian Rockefellers, (Hoover Press, 1976). U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in the negotiations and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediating efforts. The Hibiya incendiary incident, also known as the Hibiya riots, occurred in Tokyo, Japan, from 5 to 7 September 1905. See Courtney Browne, Tojo The Last Banzai, (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1998), 24. Ibid., 50–51. 11. See John Albert White, Transition to Global Rivalry: Alliance Diplomacy and the Quadruple Entente, 1895– 1907, (Cambridge University Press, June 27, 2002), 334. 12. China and Japan were intensely competitive over who would rule Korea. Both countries frequently interfered with Korean political development, including arresting and executing Korean leaders, and seeking to undermine any government that Tokyo or Beijing believed conflicted with their national interests. Both countries stationed everlarger numbers of troops in the country. Finally, war broke out in 1894, and Japan’s modern military easily beat China’s antiquated forces. In the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki that ended what was to be only the first Sino-Japanese War, Korea was transferred from Chinese suzerainty to become a protectorate of Japan. China also ceded Formosa (Taiwan) and Port Arthur to Japan. Cited by Dana R. Dillon, The China Challenge: Standing Strong against the Military, Economic, and Political Threats that Imperil America, (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007), 9. 13. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, HarperCollins, 2016), 129. 14. Ibid., 40. 15. The Triple Entente describes the informal alliance between the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic and the United Kingdom. It built upon the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894, the Entente Cordiale of 1904 between Paris and London, and the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907. It was created for the purpose of mutual protection against the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. See Fiona K. Tomaszewski, A Great Russia: Russia and the Triple Entente, 1905–1914, (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002). 16. Hoyt, Fall of Tsingtao, (hereafter Fall of Tsingtao), 100–130. 17. Hiroyuki Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy, Translated by John Bester, (Kodansha USA Inc., 1982), 30. 18. “One of the reasons for this refusal was the American feeling that Japan had mistreated China in her drive for empire. Another was the racism that played into the hands of the isolationists and took America on a solo course in foreign policy that meant isolationism for the next twenty years. The Versailles Treaty, rejected by the United States, gave Japan virtually all she had asked for in China and the Pacific. Her troops remained in Siberia until 1922, the last to leave Soviet Russia. She occupied northern Sakhalin and remained there until 1926.” Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 48. 19. For the numbers on Japan’s influenza pandemic see Siddharth Chandra, “Deaths Associated with influenza Pandemic of 1918–19, Japan, (Emerging Infectious Diseases [internet], April 2013),” “The influenza pandemic of 1918–19 caused unprecedented devastation; worldwide it is estimated to have taken 25–100 million lives, exceeding the combined death toll of both world wars. One of the strangest aspects of the currently held wisdom about the pandemic is the curiously low death rate attributed to Japan compared with other countries in Asia. Official records for Japan put the death toll at 257,363 persons, which resulted in a crude influenza-attributable death rate of 0.47 percent. Patterson and Pyle reported 350,000 deaths. Given Japan’s population of >54 million at the time, the influenza-attributable mortality rates (0.64 percent to 0.71 percent) are remarkably low by Asian standards, although they are similar to the rates calculated for the United States, Canada, and western Europe (0.65 percent, 0,61 percent, and ≈ 0.48 percent, respectively). Patterson and Pyle’s conservative estimate of a global rate of 1.66 percent and Johnson and Mueller’s substantial upward revision of that percentage to 2.77 percent suggest that the estimates for Japan, which are less that one quarter of the latter estimate, merit closer scrutiny. Although the epidemiologic approach used by Richard et al., which also uses death statistics reported by the Japanese health authorities, raises the estimate to 481,000 (or 0.88 percent of the population at the time), even this estimate is extraordinarily lower than estimates from other parts of Asia.” See also SA Richard, N Sugaya, L. Simonsen, A comparative study of the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic in Japan, USA and UK: mortality impact and implications for pandemic planning, (Epidemiology infectious, 2009); I. Taeuber, The population of Japan, Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press, 1959; A Kawana, Naka G, Fujikura Y, Kato Y, Mizuno Y, Kondo T, et al. Spanish influenza in Japanese Armed Forces, 1918–1920, (Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2007); S. Tōkeikyoku, Summary statistics of the Empire of Japan [in Japanese], Tokyo: Tōkyō Tōkei Kyōkai, 1910. 20. “It was argued that the rapid growth of Japan’s population –which stood at close to 65 million in 1930– necessitated large food imports. To sustain such imports, Japan had to be able to export. Western tariffs limited exports, while discriminatory legislation in many countries and anti-Japanese racism served as barriers to emigration. Chinese and Japanese efforts to secure racial equality in the League of Nations had been 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. rejected by Western statesmen. Thus, it was argued, Japan had no recourse but to use force.” Britannica, “The rise of the militarists.” Thus, internal violent discontent against Japanese war-making, diplomacy and economic management caused the fall of two national governments within less than twenty years at the turn of the 20th century. By any measure, there were not good indicators of empire-building success. Edwin Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 51. Joshua Hammer, The Great Japan Earthquake of 1923, (Smithsonian Magazine, May 2011). Edwin Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 51. Ibid., 51–52. Ibid., 50. Ibid., 50–51. W. G. Beasley, The Rise of Modern Japan, St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 197. Edwin Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), 197–198. On the matters of violence and political instability see the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877; Assassination of Prime Minister Hara Takashi in the evening of November 4, 1921; Daisuke Namba attempted to assassinate Hirohito in 1923; Fumiko Kaneko and Pak Yol plotted to assassinate the emperor in 1925; The issues of the Osaka brothel scandal in early 1927; The 1928 assassination of Chiang Kaishek; The attempted assassination of Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi on November 14, 1930; Col. Hashimoto Kingorō’s plans to overthrow the government in March 1931; Lee Bong-chang attempted to assassinate Hirohito in 1932 (the Sakuradamon Incident); The May 15 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. Incident and the assassination of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi in 1932; The February 26 Incident in 1936; USS Panay Incident in 1937; The Nanking Massacre in 1937; The Bataan Death March in 1942. The victory of the Control faction in the army, committed to a program of military modernization, together with the outbreak of fullscale hostilities in China in 1937, resulted in further economic problems and opportunities for Japan. Military spending rose from just over 9 per cent of gross national expenditure in 1933–37 to 38 percent in 1938–42, that is, to 11,900 million yen out of a total of 31,000 million. See W.G. Beasley, The Rise of Modern Japan, (St. Martin Press, 2000), 189. W.G. Beasley, The Rise of Modern Japan, (St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 122. Ibid., 125. See Kim Kyu-won, staff reporter at Hankyoreh, “Records of Imperial Japanese Workforce survey in 1940 revealed to public for the first time,” posted on Nov. 1, 2019; “On October 31, the National Archives of Korea (NAK, affiliated with the Ministry of the Interior and Safety) unveiled the original version of a March 1940 titled “Regarding the Labor Resource Survey,” produced by the office of the Governor-General of Korea. Also revealed were originals from among 2,337 records donated to the NAK in 2017 by the late Zainichi Korean researcher Kim Gwang-ryeol, including documents, photographs, diagrams, and other materials related to the forced mobilization of Koreans.” National Mobilization Law (Kokka Sōdōin Hō) was brought in the Diet of Japan by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe on March 24, 1938, to put the national economy of the Empire of Japan on wartime footing after the start of the Second SinoJapanese War. The National Mobilization Law had fifty clauses, which provided for government controls over civilian organizations (including labor unions), nationalization of strategic industries, price controls and rationing, and nationalized the news media. The laws gave the government the authority to use unlimited budgets to subsidize war production, and to compensate manufacturers for losses caused by war-time mobilization. See Eric Pauer, Japan’s War Economy, (Routledge, 1999). See also Richard Sims, Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Renovation 1868–2000, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). 36. Francis Pike, Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War 1941– 1942, Bloomsbury, 2016, 334, 335. 37. See James Graham, Japan’s Economic Expansion into Manchuria and China in World War Two (historyorg.com, May, 2004). Together with Inner Mongolia, China produced nearly 23 million tons of coal and 5 million tons of iron ore in 1941–42. Manchukuo alone was responsible for 20 percent of Japan’s total production of pig iron and 8 percent of its steel. Later, Japan’s invasion conquest and occupation of South East Asia added more resources and strategic locations. In Burma, in the Irrawaddy river zone, there were the Yenangyaung and Chauk oil fields, 300 miles (500 km) north of Rangoon. These sources and others in Singu extracted 260,000,000 gallons in 1938, and there was an unexploited coal deposit. Burma had other strategic and valuable minerals that were exploited by the Japanese forces during the occupation such as amber and jade (nephrite stone), lapis lazuli, lazurite, rubies, and sapphires. There was a major mine in Bawdwin, producing silver, lead, zinc, nickel and copper. In Mergui and Tavoy (Tenasserim area) mines produced tungsten and tin from 1910. Tin extraction rose to 6,623 tons in 1937. In Thailand, the Japanese forces extracted an important quantity of tin. On the south coast guano, they opened factories for fertilizer production. In French Indochina, in Honggay (near Haiphong) the Japanese extracted 2,308,000 tons of coal in 1937. Minerals included Tungsten, chromium, tin, antimony and manganese in the northern area and phosphate rock in the southern area. In Dutch Indies, the Japanese took over the oil refineries in the Palembang (Sumatra), Djambi, Medan and Borneo fields in Balikpapan and Tarakan. Additionally, there was coal in Sumatra and Borneo, Sulphur and manganese in Java, and nickel in Celebes. The Japanese mining business in the Bintang Island tin deposits produced 275,000 tons in 1943, supposedly one sixth of world production. In the Philippines, when the Japanese forces invaded the country the iron reserves were estimated as 500 million tons. In the Pacific Sea lands Japanese forces seized a large quantity of Gold deposits in Bulolo (East New Guinea) with other minerals in these islands. In Solomon Islands they captured sources of gold, copper and phosphates. In Palau Islands they exploited bauxite. 38. Kokutai is a concept in the Japanese language that means “system of government,” “sovereignty,” “national identity,” “essence and character,” national polity, body politic; national entity; basis for the Emperor’s sovereignty; Japanese constitution. 39. As Professor Herbert P. Bix said in his book Hirohito: The Making of Modern Japan, “Many Japanese people were naturally deeply offended at 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. being considered racially, biologically inferior. Some even felt that the proponents of antiJapanese immigration had declared war on Japan. The problem was that not only did Japan lack the power to do anything about it, its own national ideology was fixated on the purity of forgivable; this at a time when people and nations should be focused on their immediate emergencies and disasters.” Bix continued to say: “This Western eugenics concepts, public health measures, and colonialism were considered parts of the modernization process and adopted together.” See Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), XIX. Rana Mitter, China’s War with Japan, 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival, (London: Allen Lane, 2013), Review by Richard Overy, June 6, 2013. The Qing Dynasty’s cession of Taiwan to Japan in April 1895 at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War. See Hungdah Chiu, China and the Taiwan Issue, (London: Praeger, 1979). Edwin Hoyt, Japan’s War: The Great Pacific Conflict, (McGraw-Hill, 1986), Preface, viii. “Eight corners of the World under one roof” was a Japanese political slogan that became popular from the Second-Japanese War to World War II and was popularized in a speech by Prime Minister of Japan Fumimaro Konoe on January 8, 1940. In AD 660, Emperor Jimmu decreed that he would: …extend the line of Imperial descendants and foster right mindedness. Thereafter, the Capital may be extended so as to embrace all of the six cardinal points and the eight cords may be covered so as to form a roof. Ibid., 52–53. See Samuel Hideo Yamashita, Daily life in Wartime Japan, 1940–1945, (University Press of 46. 47. 48. 49. Kansas, 2016), “Here is the family struggling to feed her family while supporting the war effort; the eager conscript from snow country enduring the harshest most abusive training imaginable in order to learn how to fly; the Tokyo teenagers made to work in wartime factories the children taken from cities to live in the countryside away from their families and with little food and no privacy; the Kyshu farmers pressured to grow ever more rice and wheat with fewer hands and less fertilizer; and the Kyoto octogenarian driven to thoughts of suicide by his inability to contribute to the war…” Paul Ham, Hiroshima Nagasaki, (Sydney: HarperCollins, 2011). See also Laura Hein, and Selden Mark, Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age, (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997). John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, (W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 54. Cited by John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat, 50– 51, note (23), 570, “Hundreds of these abandoned children, invariably poor and speaking only Chinese, began to come to Japan on officially sponsored trips in the 1980s to try to reestablished contact with their families. Even where reunions did occur, they were extremely painful. Throughout Japanese history, the emperor had been viewed as a demi-god, remote from the populace. In 1945 when Emperor Hirohito made a 673-word radio broadcast accepting the terms of the July 26th Potsdam Declaration, his announcement marked the first time commoners in Japan, with a few exceptions, had heard the emperor’s voice. See Andrew Glass, “Hirohito 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. accepts Japan’s surrender terms, Aug. 14, 1945, in Politico, 08/14/2018. John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, (W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 91. Ibid., 90. Ibid., 95. Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (HarperCollins, 2016), 539. The Imperial Japanese Navy (Dai-Nippon Teikoku Kaigun) was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 until 1945. It was the third largest Navy in the world by 1920, behind the Royal Navy and the United States Navy (USN). It was supported by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service for aircraft and air strike operation from the fleet. It was the primary opponent of the Western Allies during the Pacific War. See Mark Stille, The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War, (Osprey Publishing, 2014). See also J. Charles Schencking, Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, And the Emergence of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1868–1922, (Stanford University Press, 2005). See Jonathan Watts, “Japan guilty of germ warfare against thousands of Chinese,” (The Guardian, 28 August 2002). See also Peter Williams and Wallace David, Unit 731, (Grafton Books, 1989), 44; Sheldon H. Harris, Factories of Death, (Routledge, 2002), 29; Barenblat Daniel, A Plague upon Humanity, 2004, 37. The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia. See also John William Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, (Pantheon, 1987). On the Korean War see William W. Stueck, Rethinking, The Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); see also from the author, The Korean War: An International History, (NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 58. On Korean War crimes and damages see David Rees, Korea: The Limited War, (New York: St Martin’s, 1964); see also Jerry Ravino and Carthy Jack, Flame Dragons of the Korea War, (Paducah, KY: Turner, 2003). 59. See Zhai Qiang, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950– 1975, (University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 60. See Louis B. Zimmer, The Vietnam War Debate, (Lexington Books, 2011), 44–45. AUTHOR A former judge with a passion for history, Jean Sénat Fleury was born in Haiti and currently lives in Boston. He wrote several historical books. Japan: The Rise and Fall of an Empire describes Japan’s opening to modernization with the 1853 arrival of commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry in the country. The first part of the book details the history of the wars launched by Emperor Meiji and Emperor Hirohito to build Japan’s Empire in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. The second part describes what happened to Japan after WW2. A period of occupation by the Allies followed. Also, with the American involvement, in 1947 a new constitution was enacted, officially bringing the Empire of Japan to an end.