WAR RESPONSIBILITY--delving into the past (2) / 3 mistakes led to war with U.S.

The Yomiuri Shimbun

This is the second installment of a six-part introductory series on the responsibility of the war era's politicians and military leaders' failure to avoid war.

Japan had misread the international situation until and after 1941 when it went to war against the United States.

Its first mistake was the Tripartite Alliance with Germany and Italy that was concluded in September 1940 by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe's second cabinet.

At the time, Germany's invasion into Poland erupted into World War II, and the battle of the United States and Britain against Germany and Italy has become even more fierce.

However, then Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka insisted that if the three Axis nations joined forces with the Soviet Union, the United States would be discouraged from entering the war.

Navy leaders--Mitsumasa Yonai, Isoroku Yamamoto and Shigeyoshi Inoue--initially opposed the alliance, but many other naval officials wanted to advance southward.

This sentiment prompted the navy to work toward concluding an alliance. And therefore some historians argued that it is the wrong concept that the Imperial Japanese Navy had a general principle of cooperating with Britain and the United States.

Later, Matsuoka regretted having concluded the Tripartite Alliance, saying it was the greatest mistake of his life.

The second blunder was the order by Konoe's third cabinet in July 1941 to advance into southern French Indochina.

Japan and the United States were then holding talks to avoid war at the time. Japan proposed halting further advance into Southeast Asian countries and pulling troops out of some areas in China.

But Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union led Japan to decide its southward advancement.

Washington froze Japan's assets in the United States as a warning to Tokyo, but the Konoe Cabinet decided to move south, an action that resulted in the U.S. ban on oil exports to Japan.

The final mistake made in the lead-up to the war was an Imperial Council meeting, attended by Emperor Showa, held on Sept. 6, 1941.

Konoe was exploring how to hold summit talks with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to avert war, but at the meeting, he unilaterally set a deadline for the talks and decided that Japan would go to war against the United States if negotiations failed.

Konoe was at the center of power for four years, during the Sino-Japanese War and briefly before the Pacific War.

He was popular among the public, but he did not have a firm support base and was subsequently criticized for opportunism and populism.

Konoe, Hideki Tojo, who succeeded Konoe as prime minister, and other top government leaders have to be held accountable for their responsibilities during the war.

Tojo, the war minister in the Konoe Cabinet, kept refusing U.S. demands to pull out troops from China.

After Konoe stepped down, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo continued negotiations with the United States in the Tojo Cabinet.

The Hull Note, a Nov. 26, 1941, proposal made by then U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull in the form of a memoranda, demanding that Japan withdraw from French Indochina and China, also was a significant factor as Japan regarded the document as an ultimatum and decided to go to war against the United States.

In addition to holding the posts of war and internal affairs ministers, Tojo later also served as the army chief of staff, wielding tremendous power in mobilizing the public for Japan's war efforts.