JAPAN: Honorable Fire Extinguisher

Fire Extinguisher

(See Cover)

“All over Tokyo are no taxicab.”

When cheerful Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura says this the sparkle goes out of his one good eye. To him it is a sentence full of unhappy foreign policy. It means that Japan is desperately hard up for oil and gasoline; that therefore Japan must for the time being say uncle to Uncle Sam —or else fight for oil.

Admiral Nomura would be most reluctant to have Japan fight for oil. He personally likes peace.

“I am old man, I am most earnest,” he says in his much-better-than-pidgin English. “We maintained ever since opening Japan 87 year ago good relations you and us. Most of time we’re happy hours. Now Japanese and United States policy, they are many divergencies. But human being must be able to make some formulas.” Last week, as he had been ever since his appointment as Ambassador, Admiral Nomura was a man in search of a formula. There was not much chance that he would find anything but a temporary equation.

Ten years of mutual shoving, glowering, apologizing and more shoving had put the U.S. and Japan dangerously close to war. It did not look last week as if Admiral Nomura or anyone else could make either side withdraw cleanly and permanently from the brink. The best formula the Admiral could hope to achieve would be a minor deal which would freeze both sides’ positions for as long as possible.

Toward Coolness. As he set sail last January aboard the Kamakura Maru to take up his appointment in the U.S., Admiral Nomura was tall with hope. At first things went swimmingly. At Honolulu U.S. naval officers, among them Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet Admiral James O. Richardson, greeted him as pretty girls laid leis about his neck. Off California two destroyers met his ship. As he sailed through the Golden Gate a battery at Fort Winfield Scott fired a 19-gun salute. In San Francisco reporters interviewed him and Nisei (U.S.-born Japanese) feted him.

But then the chill set in. He was met at Washington by no one of first importance, and the presence of Counselor of the German Embassy Dr. Hans Thomsen at Union Station did not help. That very day (it was the 2,601st anniversary of the Japanese Empire) President Roosevelt, in a press conference, said that war with Japan would not affect deliveries to Great Britain. Admiral Nomura’s first call on Secretary of State Cordell Hull lasted only four minutes; it was an all-time quickie. President Roosevelt was a little more cordial. The Admiral told reporters that the U.S. atmosphere was worse than he had expected.

Two months later Sumner Welles publicly warned Japan that the U.S. is interested in deeds, not vaguely peaceful words. Admiral Nomura promptly called in 50 reporters and told them that the U.S. atmosphere was worse than when he arrived.

By May he had not seen the President a second time and had seen Cordell Hull only “once or twice.” In June Japanese oil negotiations with The Netherlands East Indies broke down. In July the U.S. froze all Japanese assets, stopping the flow of American oil. In August—final blow—the U.S. announced that it would ship oil to Russia via Vladivostok, right under the Japanese nose.

Toward Politeness. Japan’s bluff was called. Japan’s Army and Navy, like all others today, are huge internal combustion machines, which without oil must inevitably burn out bearings and rattle to a stop. So on Aug. 28 Kichisaburo Nomura carried to Franklin Roosevelt a note from Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye. It contained, by inference, Japan’s declaration of willingness to back down. Its proposition was that the U.S. and Japan ought not to let bad feelings deteriorate into worse, and worse into war.

With that proposition the U.S. State Department was in agreement. The U.S. wanted to devote more attention and more strength to the Battle of the Atlantic. It also happened that, with the oil weapon to brandish, the State Department thought it could get Japan to back down to some extent. In any case valuable time —time that was pro-Russian and anti-Hitler—would be gained by negotiations, which would certainly be delicate, undoubtedly be long. Accordingly, talks were begun both in Washington, where Admiral Nomura and Cordell Hull met several times “outside the State Department,” and in Tokyo, where Foreign Minister Admiral Teijiro Toyoda received the American who has the most savvy about and the most sympathy with Japan, Ambassador Joseph Clark Grew.*

As to a real deal between Japan and the U.S., that is another matter. Last week, after two weeks of careful explorations, it was hard to find a responsible official in Washington who entertained serious thoughts that Japanese-U.S. talks would ever get beyond the stage of polite hopefulness. There were too many impediments.

So Sorry, Impossible. It would take a whopping Japanese backdown, all wrapped up and delivered, to rouse any U.S. interest in a deal which might turn out to be raw. Where could the Japanese back down? Certainly not from Indo-China. The occupation of French Indo-China was the only big Japanese success in nearly two years and was immensely popular in Japan. Last week the Japanese were busy entrenching themselves in their new conquests. The Foreign Office named sage, sharp-faced, experienced Kenkichi Yoshi-zawa Special Ambassador-at-Large (i.e., Gauleiter} to Hanoi. Said he, of Japan and Indo-China: “At present the two countries are connected with inseverable bonds.”

Certainly not from China. The Japanese intention about remaining in China permanently is as clear as Yellow River mud. Prince Konoye said in March 1938: “We will never give up an inch of the territories already occupied.” Prince Konoye said in July 1938: “Japan does not want an inch of Chinese territory.” But clear as the Inland Sea is the Japanese position on withdrawing now: it is out of the question. Last week, to lend credence to Japan’s apparent good intentions, Tokyo put out a palpably false story that Free China in Chungking and Puppet China in Nanking were on the .point of making peace. Chungking slapped the story down.

Certainly not from the Axis. Japan would not dare make a clean break with Berlin as long as there was a chance of Russia’s folding up, with pickings for Japan in Siberia.

Not So Sorry, Just as Impossible. Conversely, the U.S. could not make big enough concessions even to save Japanese face in case of a deal.

After ten years of frowning at Japan and 150 years of defending freedom, the U.S. State Department cannot just turn a handspring and recognize Manchukuo, condone territorial aggression in China, legalize brigandage in Indo-China. The U.S. has military commitments to the Chinese, the Dutch, the Australians and the British which it cannot scrap, though last week all those friends were scared pink that it would.

As to letting Japan have oil again, the U.S. is not likely to give up such a good bargaining point except for a concession much bigger than any Japan is willing to make. For the U.S. has no morally valid answer to Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s quiet statement: “One drop of Oil to Tokyo means gallons of blood in Chungking.”

Between Two Fires. In the face of this apparent futility, Admiral Nomura is cheerful, hopeful and seemingly quite sincere in his desire for peace.

“I am old man,” he says. “I know old proverb: If three-fourths of body burned, rest cannot be saved no more. This is time of war crisis. Almost three-fourths of world burned, and there must be statesmen who play to be the fire extinguisher.” Kichisaburo Nomura’s difficulty is that he stands between two fires; between a tough Army at home and a tough President in Washington.

The case of Mr. Roosevelt is very simple. He is committed to destroying aggressors. Japan is an aggressor. Therefore he is committed to destroying Japan—unless Japan changes her ways. The President may be somewhat influenced by a school of advisers, led by Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter, who urge “going after the seat of infection first”—i.e., destroying the worst aggressor first. But that, like so much else in Washington these days, is just a matter of priorities. The aim remains constant.

The case of the Japanese Army is much more complicated. The Japanese Army is like a motorcycle: it must keep going or fall. But at the moment it has no place to go and very little gas and oil to go on. Furthermore this lumbering machine has only one brake, which has never yet grabbed; the person of Hirohito, the Emperor.

Last week U.S. newspapers were misled, perhaps with Japanese approval if not inspiration, into the impression that Emperor Hirohito had taken personal control over the Army. He had not.

The Emperor approved an Army order setting up a new Headquarters concerned with the defense of Japan proper, Korea, Formosa and Sakhalin, and the appointment of General Otozo Yamada as commander of it. The impression that Hirohito had taken personal control was due to a phrase in the order saying that General Yamada was responsible to the Emperor. But all Japanese generals are responsible to the Emperor. The order had nothing to do with the bulk of the Japanese Army in China, Indo-China and Manchukuo. It merely showed that the Japanese High Command had finally realized that Japan itself might be attacked.

The Army eats fire, and is always hungry. The Navy, on the other hand, is given to caution. “I am old man,” says Admiral Nomura. “I know how bad naval battle in Pacific will be shape. There are no precedent in history in such vast area.” The Japanese Navy, lacking an assured source of oil, does not want to contemplate taking on the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Japan was taut last week with its longstanding Army-Navy tug of war and peace.

“Around Washington, Very Nice.” Japan’s conscientious fire extinguisher has overcome many personal difficulties in his 63 years; hence his continuing optimism.

Kichisaburo was the son of a samurai—a warrior knight. But the father was a sickly samurai, and after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, which abolished the samurai, the family went broke. Little Kichisaburo had to be satisfied with lowly sweet potatoes instead of more expensive rice in his school lunchbox, and he earned a few coppers as a fishmonger’s delivery boy.

Kichisaburo’s first fight, it happens, was in defense of the West. The day he wore his first pair of Occidental shoes the school bully razzed him. Nomura pulled off one shoe, beat the bully with it until the shoe was unwearable. But his thrifty mother had declared that the shoes must last six months, so for six months Kichisaburo clumped around in one western shoe, one Japanese clog.

At 19 he entered Edajima Naval Academy. He worked hard enough to graduate second in his class, for which the Emperor gave him a pair of binoculars. His first cruise was to the U.S. His first gaff was in the Russo-Japanese War, when he joined the cruiser Saiyen as navigating officer and a few days later navigated her, despite the Imperial spyglasses, onto a mine. She sank, and most of the officers and crew with her. Nomura says of his survival: “Ship she go down; me I come up.” The Navy made Navigator Nomura a diplomat. He served in Vienna and Berlin for a time, and during World War I was stationed in Washington as Naval Attache. There he made the acquaintance of Under Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt and many a naval comer; it is this period which gave him his reputation as a man of good will.

His most exciting active duty was in the Shanghai hostilities of 1932, in which he commanded the Japanese forces. Here he lost his right eye, but not in battle. At a review in celebration of the Emperor’s birthday a Korean patriot tossed a bomb into the grandstand. The grandstand blew up. Admiral Nomura was pocked but still alive. His first glass eye was presented to him by the Empress.

Five years later he retired to a quietude as head of the Peers’ School in Tokyo. “I am old man,” he says of this happy period, “I am enjoy my retire life in Japan.” But he was called back to work—as Foreign Minister in the brief Abe Cabinet of 1939, and as Ambassador to Washington this year.

Washington was hostile, but he made himself like the life. In the summer Washington was hot, but he made light of it. “Here house built of bricks,” he would say. “In such place where I was born, inside very hot.” He kept himself working hard, allowed himself no vacation.

Every morning Ambassador Nomura gets up at seven and washes the glass eye he plans to wear that day. Then he reads the papers, studies reports, receives guests, often goes out to lunch, makes any necessary diplomatic calls, then indulges in his favorite pastime: “I am old man. I enjoy only driving. Around Washington, very nice. I think everywhere park. I went several times to Gettysburg. I go often to Mount Vernon, not only number one road, but here, there, and suburbs also.”

The Admiral is a naval man and so not very literary. But once in a while he reads a book in the evening. His favorite is the military strategy of Sun Tzu, the Chinese Clausewitz. Sun Tzu’s first precept is one that Kichisaburo Nomura especially relishes. Ironically, it is also often on the lips of China’s Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. Also—and this is why Admiral Nomura’s hopeful mission seems doomed to failure—it is the unspoken precept of the U.S. State Department. The Admiral’s translation: “

Hundred battles and hundred victories, not so good. To win without fight, that is the good.”

*In his now famous speech to the America-Japan Society in Tokyo in October 1939, Ambassador Grew told the Japanese bluntly that the U.S. people understand all too well what the New Order in East Asia means. But he said then, and was trying to prove last week: “We believe that real security and stability in the Far East could be attained without running counter to any American rights whatsoever.”