38
500.A15A5/372
The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to the
Secretary of State
No. 1102. TOKYO, December 27, 1934.
[Received January 16, 1935.]
SIR:
Now that the London Naval Conversations have
terminated, I should like to convey to the Department various thoughts in this
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general connection to which the Department may desire to give
consideration if and when the conversations are renewed or a naval conference
convoked. I shall be contributing little that is new, for most of the facts and
opinions set forth herein have already been brought to the Department's
attention in previous reports. Furthermore the attitude, policy and action of
our delegation in London, as directed by the Government and as revealed in the
various summaries of developments telegraphed to this Embassy on October 25 and
31, November 22 and December 10, and in certain press reports, have indicated a
sound comprehension of the situation in the Far East as it exists today. The
firm stand of our Government and delegation to maintain the present naval
ratios intact in the face of Japanese intransigence, as well as their decision
that the action of the Japanese Government in denouncing the Washington Naval
Treaty automatically created a new situation in which the conversations must be
suspended sine die, leaving
the Japanese to return home empty handed, were especially gratifying to those
of us who have watched the developments in London from this angle. The purpose
of this despatch is therefore mainly to summarize and to place my views in
concise form on record for the future.
The thought which is uppermost in my mind is
that the United States is faced, and will be faced in future, with two main
alternatives. One is to be prepared to withdraw from the Far East, gracefully
and gradually perhaps, but not the less effectively in the long run, permitting
our treaty rights to be nullified, the Open Door to be closed, our vested
economic interests to be dissolved and our commerce to operate unprotected.
There are those who advocate this course, and who have advocated it to me
personally, on the ground that any other policy will entail the risk of
eventual war with Japan. ... In their opinion, "the game is not worth the
candle" because the United States can continue to subsist comfortably even
after relinquishing its varied interests in the Far East, thereby eliminating
the risk of future war.
The other main alternative is to insist, and
to continue to insist, not aggressively yet not the less firmly, on the maintenance
of our legitimate rights and interests in this part of the world and, so far as
practicable, to support the normal development of those interests
constructively and progressively.
There has already been abundant indication
that the present Administration in Washington proposes to follow the second of
these alternatives. For purposes of discussion we may therefore, I assume,
discard the hypothesis of withdrawal and examine the future outlook
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with the assurance that our Government has not the slightest intention of
relinquishing the legitimate rights, vested interests, non-discriminatory
privileges for equal opportunity and healthful commercial development of the
United States in the Far East.
In following this second and logical course,
there should be and need be nothing inconsistent, so far as our own attitude is
concerned, with the policy of the good neighbor. The determination to support
and protect our legitimate interests in the Far East can and should be carried
out in a way which, while sacrificing no point of principle, will aim to
restrict to a minimum the friction between the United States and Japan
inevitably arising from time to time as a result of that determination.
The administration of that policy from day to
day becomes a matter of diplomacy, sometimes delicate, always important, for
much depends on the method and manner of approach to the various problems with
which we have been, are, and will continue to be faced. With the
ultra-sensitiveness of the Japanese, arising out of a marked inferiority
complex which manifests itself in the garb of an equally marked superiority
complex, with all its attendant bluster, chauvinism, xenophobia and organized
national propaganda, the method and manner of dealing with current
controversies assume a significance and importance often out of all proportion
to the nature of the controversy. That the Department fully appreciates this
fact has been amply demonstrated by the instructions issued to this Embassy
since the present Administration took office, and it has been our endeavor to
carry out those instructions, or to act on our own initiative when such action
was called for, with the foregoing considerations constantly in view.
But behind our day to day diplomacy lies a
factor of prime importance, namely national support, demonstrated and
reinforced by national preparedness. I believe that a fundamental element of
that preparedness should be the maintenance of the present naval ratios in
principle and the eventual achievement and maintenance of those ratios, so far
as they apply to Japan, in fact. With such a background, and only with such a
background, can we pursue our diplomacy with any confidence that our
representations will be listened to or that they will lead to favorable
results. General Douglas MacArthur, Chief of Staff of the United States Army,
was recently reported in the press as saying: "Armies and navies, in being
efficient, give weight to the peaceful words of statesmen, but a feverish
effort to create them when once a crisis is imminent simply provokes
attack". We need thorough preparedness not in the interests of war but of
peace.
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It is
difficult for those who do not live in Japan to appraise the present temper of
the country. An American Senator, according to reports, has recently
recommended that we should accord parity to Japan in order to avoid future war.
Whatever the Senator's views may be concerning the general policy that we
should follow in the Far East, he probably does not realize what harm that sort
of public statement does in strengthening the Japanese stand and in reinforcing
the aggressive ambitions of the expansionists. The Japanese press of course
picks out such statements by prominent Americans and publishes them far and
wide, thus confirming the general belief in Japan that the pacifist element in
the United States is preponderantly strong and in the last analysis will
control the policy and action of our Government. Under such circumstances there
is a general tendency to characterize our diplomatic representations as bluff
and to believe that they can safely be disregarded without fear of
implementation. It would be helpful if those who share the Senator's views
could hear and read some of the things that are constantly being said and
written in Japan, to the effect that Japan's destiny is to subjugate and rule
the world (sic), and could realize the expansionist ambitions which lie not far
from the surface in the minds of certain elements in the Army and Navy, the patriotic
societies and the intense nationalists throughout the country. Their aim is to
obtain trade control and eventually predominant political influence in China,
the Philippines, the Straits Settlements, Siam and the Dutch East Indies, the
Maritime Provinces and Vladivostok, one step at a time, as in Korea and
Manchuria, pausing intermittently to consolidate and then continuing as soon as
the intervening obstacles can be overcome by diplomacy or force. With such
dreams of empire cherished by many, and with an army and navy capable of taking
the bit in their own teeth and running away with it regardless of the
restraining influence of the saner heads of the Government in Tokyo (a risk
which unquestionably exists and of which we have already had ample evidence in
the Manchurian affair), we would be reprehensibly somnolent if we were to trust
to the security of treaty restraints or international comity to safeguard our
own interests or, indeed, our own property.
I may refer here to my despatch No. 608 of
December 12, 1933, a re-reading of which is respectfully invited because it
applies directly to the present situation. That despatch reported a
confidential conversation with the Netherlands Minister, General Pabst, a
shrewd and rational colleague with long experience in Japan, in which the
Minister said that in his opinion the Japanese Navy, imbued as it is with
patriotic and chauvinistic fervor and with a desire to emulate
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the deeds of the Army in order not to lose caste with the public, would
be perfectly capable of descending upon and occupying Guam at a moment of
crisis or, indeed, at any other moment, regardless of the ulterior
consequences. I do not think that such an insane step is likely, yet the action
of the Army in Manchuria, judged from the point of view of treaty rights and
international comity, might also have been judged as insensate. The important
fact is that under present circumstances, and indeed under circumstances which
may continue in future (although the pendulum of chauvinism throughout Japanese
history has swung to and fro in periodic cycles of intensity and temporary
relaxation) the armed forces of the country are perfectly capable of
over-riding the restraining control of the Government and of committing what might
well amount to national "hara-kiri" in a mistaken conception of
patriotism.
When Japanese speak of Japan's being the
"stabilizing factor" and the "guardian of peace" of East
Asia, what they have in mind is a Pax Japonica with eventual complete commercial
control, and, in the minds of some, eventual complete political control of East
Asia. While Ambassador Saito may have been misquoted in a recent issue of the
Philadelphia Bulletin as saying that Japan will be prepared to fight to
maintain that conception of peace, nevertheless that is precisely what is in
the minds of many Japanese today. There is a swashbuckling temper in the
country, largely developed by military propaganda, which can lead Japan during
the next few years, or in the next few generations, to any extremes unless the
saner minds in the Government prove able to cope with it and to restrain the
country from national suicide.
The efficacy of such restraint is always
problematical. Plots against the Government are constantly being hatched. We
hear, for instance, that a number of young officers of the 3rd Infantry
Regiment and students from the Military Academy in Tokyo were found on November
22 to have planned to assassinate various high members of the Government,
including Count Makino, and that students of the Military Academy were confined
to the school area for a few days after the discovery of that plot, which had
for its object the placing in effect at once of the provisions of the now
celebrated "Army pamphlet" (see despatch No. 1031 of November 1,
1934). A similar alleged plot to attack the politicians at the opening of the
extraordinary session of the Diet—another May 15th incident—is also said to
have been discovered and nipped in the bud. Such plots aim to form a military
dictatorship. It is of course impossible to substantiate these rumors, but they
are much talked about and it is unlikely
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that so much smoke would materialize without some fire. I wish that more
Americans could come out here and live here and gradually come to sense the
real potential risks and dangers of the situation instead of speaking and
writing academically on a subject which they know nothing whatever about,
thereby contributing ammunition to the Japanese military and extremists who are
stronger than they have been for many a day. The idea that a great body of
liberal thought lying just beneath the surface since 1931 would be sufficiently
strong to emerge and assume control with a little foreign encouragement is
thoroughly mistaken. The, liberal thought is there, but it is inarticulate and
largely impotent, and in all probability will remain so for some time to come.
At this point I should like to make the
following observation. From reading this despatch, and perhaps from other reports
periodically submitted by the Embassy, one might readily get the impression
that we are developing something of an "anti-Japanese" complex. This
is not the case. One can dislike and disagree with certain members of a family
without necessarily feeling hostility to the family itself. For me there are no
finer people in the world than the type of Japanese exemplified by such men as
. . . and a host of others. I am rather inclined to place . . . in the same
general category; if he could have his way unhampered by the military I believe
that he would steer the country into safer and saner channels. One of these
friends once sadly remarked to us: "We Japanese are always putting our
worst foot foremost, and we are too proud to explain ourselves." This is
profoundly true. Theirs has been and is a "bungling diplomacy". They
habitually play their cards badly. Amau's statement of April 17 was a case in
point. The declaration of the oil monopoly in Manchuria at this particular
juncture, thereby tending to drive Great Britain into the other camp at a
moment when closer Anglo-Japanese cooperation was very much in view, was
another. While it is true that the military and the extremists are primarily
responsible for the "bungling diplomacy" of Japan, the Japanese as a
race tend to be inarticulate, more at home in action than with words. The
recent negotiations in Batavia amply illustrated the fact that Japanese
diplomats, well removed from home influences and at liberty to choose their own
method and manner of approach, are peculiarly insensitive to the unhappy
effects of arbitrary pronouncements. They have learned little from the sad
experience of Hanihara. But the military and the extremists know little and
care little about Japan's relations with other countries, and it is the desire
of people like Shiratori, Amau and other Government officials to enhance their
own
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prestige at home and to safeguard their future careers by standing in
well with the military that brings about much of the trouble. Perhaps we should
be grateful that they so often give their hand away in advance.
But all this does not make us less
sympathetic to the better elements in Japanese life or in any sense
"anti-Japanese". Japan is a country of paradoxes and extremes, of great
wisdom and of great stupidity, an apt illustration of which may be found in
connection with the naval conversations; while the naval authorities and the
press have been stoutly maintaining that Japan cannot adequately defend her
shores with less than parity, the press and the public, in articles, speeches
and interviews, have at the same time been valiantly boasting that the Japanese
Navy is today stronger than the American Navy and could easily defeat us in
case of war. In such an atmosphere it is difficult, very difficult, for a
foreigner to keep a detached and balanced point of view. We in the Embassy are
making that effort, I hope with success, and in the meantime about all we can
do is to keep the boat from rocking dangerously. Constructive work is at
present impossible. Our efforts. are concentrated on the thwarting of
destructive influences.
Having placed the foregoing considerations on
record, I have less hesitation in reiterating and emphasizing with all
conviction the potential dangers of the situation and the prime importance of
American national preparedness to meet it. As a nation we have taken the lead
in international efforts towards the restriction and reduction of armaments. We
have had hopes that the movement would be progressive, but the condition of
world affairs as they have developed during the past twelve years since the
Washington Conference has not afforded fruitful ground for such progress.
Unless we are prepared to subscribe to a "Pax Japonica" in the Far
East, with all that this movement, as conceived and interpreted by Japan, is
bound to entail, we should rapidly build up our navy to treaty strength, and if
and when the Washington Naval Treaty expires we should continue to maintain the
present ratio with Japan regardless of cost, a peace-time insurance both to
cover and to reduce the risk of war. In the meantime every proper step should
be taken to avoid or to offset the belligerent utterances of jingoes no less
than the defeatist statements of pacifists in the United States, many of which
find their way into the Japanese press, because the utterances of the former
tend to enflame public sentiment against our country, while the statements of
the latter convey an impression of American weakness, irresolution and bluff.
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My own opinion, although it can be but
guesswork, is that Japan will under no circumstances invite a race in naval
armaments, and that having found our position on the ratios to be adamant,
further propositions will be forthcoming within the next two years before the
Washington Treaty expires, or before our present building program is fully
completed. When the United States has actually completed its naval building
program to treaty limits, then, it is believed, and probably not before then,
Japan will realize that we are in earnest and will seek a compromise. We
believe that Japan's naval policy has been formulated on the premise that the
United States would never build up to treaty strength, a premise which has been
strengthened in the past by the naval policy of the past two Administrations,
by the apparent strength of the pacifist element in the United States, and more
recently by the effects of the depression.
While it is true that Japan, by sedulously
forming and stimulating public opinion to demand parity with the United States
in principle if not in fact, has burned her bridges behind her, nevertheless
the Japanese leaders are past-masters at remoulding public opinion in the
country by skillful propaganda to suit new conditions. Once convinced that
parity is impossible, it is difficult to believe that she will allow matters to
come to a point where competitive building becomes unavoidable. With a national
budget for 1935-1936 totalling 2,193,414,289 yen, of which about 47% is for the
Army and Navy, and with an estimated national debt in 1936 of 9,880,000,000
yen, nearly equal to the Cabinet Bureau of Statistics estimate of the national
income for 1930, namely 10,635,000,000 yen; with her vast outlay in Manchuria,
her already heavily taxed population and the crying need of large sections of
her people for relief funds, it is difficult to see how Japan could afford to
embark upon a program of maintaining naval parity with the United States and
Great Britain.
Having registered our position firmly and
unequivocally, we can now afford to await the next move on the part of Japan. I
believe that it will come.
So far as we can evaluate here the
proceedings of the recent preliminary naval conversations in London, I am of
the opinion that the most important and the most valuable result issuing
therefrom has been the apparent tendency towards closer Anglo-American
cooperation in the Far East. If we can count in future—again as a direct result
of Japan's "bungling diplomacy"—on a solid and united front between
the United States and Great Britain in meeting Japan's flaunting of treaty
rights and her unrestrained ambitions to control East Asia, the future may well
assume a brighter aspect for all of us.
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Theodore Roosevelt enunciated the policy
"Speak softly but carry a big stick". If our diplomacy in the Far
East is to achieve favorable results, and if we are to reduce the risk of an
eventual war with Japan to a minimum, that is the only way to proceed. Such a
war may be unthinkable, and so it is, but the spectre of it is always present
and will be present for some time to come. It would be criminally short-sighted
to discard it from our calculations, and the best possible way to avoid it is
to be adequately prepared, for preparedness is a cold fact which even the
chauvinists, the military, the patriots and the ultra-nationalists in Japan,
for all their bluster concerning "provocative measures" in the United
States, can grasp and understand. The Soviet Ambassador recently told me that a
prominent Japanese had said to him that the most important factor in avoiding a
Japanese attack on the Maritime Provinces was the intensive Soviet military
preparations in Siberia and Vladivostok. I believe this to be true, and again,
and yet again, I urge that our own country be adequately prepared to meet all
eventualities in the Far East.
The Counselor, the Naval Attaché and the
Military Attaché of this Embassy, having separately read this despatch, have
expressed to me their full concurrence with its contents both in essence and
detail.
Respectfully yours,
JOSEPH C. GREW