A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (62 page)

Regardless of Japan’s failure to give formal notification, the question of whether American leaders were actually caught by surprise is a matter of much greater controversy. At one extreme there are those who believe Pearl Harbor was a conspiracy by Roosevelt and colleagues, who knew all about the impending attack but allowed it – or even encouraged it – to happen, sacrificing American lives in order to bring America into the war against Japan’s allies Germany. At the other extreme are those who simply feel America was caught napping through complacency. Evidence can be produced for and against both views, and a definitive picture may never emerge.
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Certainly, it is beyond dispute that there were many warning signs of the attack, including code intercepts, radar signals, sightings, and intelligence given to America not only by its own agents but also by other nations such as the Dutch. The key question is how much these warnings were actually recognised as such at the time. These were the days when a naval attaché at the US Embassy in T
ky
, who might be expected to know a thing or two about Japan and its military capacity, was talking of ‘licking the Japs in 24 hours’.
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Many in the navy were talking of wanting to ‘knock off the little brown brother any time’ before getting down to the Battle of the Atlantic.
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Such attitudes were not conducive to taking the Japanese military threat seriously enough to pay close attention to all the incoming signs. There was undoubtedly complacency.

On the other hand, it was also a certainty that those who were spoiling for a fight, which included some of America’s leaders, had their wishes granted by Pearl Harbor. The Japanese might have thrown a harder punch than anyone ever imagined, but at least the fight had started. Whatever the background, the fact remains that it was effective in over-coming non-interventionist sentiment and presently bringing America into the war against Germany, thereby helping Britain, as Churchill very much wanted.
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Roosevelt himself later told Churchill and Stalin that if it had not been for the Japanese attack he would have had great difficulty in getting the American people into the war.
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But was this an expression of satisfaction at a goal accomplished, or merely a statement of fact? This is typical of the ambivalent nature of much of the material involved in the unending and labyrinthine controversy of Pearl Harbor – a controversy that, though fascinating and relevant to those interested in Japan, must remain primarily a concern for historians of American policy.

However, there is also a large question mark hanging over Japan’s decision to bomb Pearl Harbor, or more exactly, to attack America or Britain at all. The Tripartite Pact, signed 27 September 1940, had the following critical condition, as expressed in Article Three:

Japan, Germany and Italy agree to cooperate in their efforts on aforesaid lines [to respect each other’s leadership in their particular geographical areas]. They further undertake to assist one another with all political, economic and military means if one of the Contracting Powers is attacked by a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Japanese-Chinese conflict [i.e. America].

That is to say, because Japan had not been the attacked party but rather the attacker, of both British and American territory, Hitler had no obligation to support Japan. In fact, he was not even told of the plan to attack Pearl Harbor, and even Japan’s ambassador to Germany (and friend of Hitler), Baron
shima, had not been told. Instead, Hitler learned of the attack through the British Broadcasting Corporation. It was three days before he finally declared war on America. His probable reason for doing so was that at the time, in the first week of December 1941, he was in serious retreat in Russia, and perhaps hoped that he could persuade the Japanese to harry Russia from the east and ease the pressure on his own forces. This would be a remarkable hope, given the beating the Japanese took from Russia just two years earlier in Manchuria, which had left them reluctant to try their luck against the Russians again. Hitler might also have felt war with America was inevitable at some stage soon, and it would be helpful to get Japan’s support. As it was, he got very little help from Japan, except in the matter of tying up many of America’s troops in the Pacific arena.

Some Japanese high-school textbooks refer to Hitler declaring war on America in line with the Tripartite Pact. This is not the case. He did it despite the Tripartite Pact. It is surely one of the most pivotal decisions in world history – some might say one of the greatest blunders ever.

From the Japanese point of view, the fact was that they were now at war with America. Despite the operational criticism of the attack on Pearl Harbor there was much rejoicing in Japan, including in the Imperial Palace.
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The happy mood was to continue with a sequence of Japanese successes during the very early stages of the Pacific War.

Just a few hours after Pearl Harbor, American air power was severely damaged by an attack on its air fleet, which was grounded in the Philippines and was another sitting target. Within a week or so Thailand was occupied, yielding diplomatically. The small British naval fleet off Malaya was badly crippled, allowing Japanese military advances in the area. Guam
fell on 11 December, with a number of other Pacific islands falling in the following two months. Hong Kong was captured on 25 December. Borneo surrendered on 19 January. On 15 February, in one of the worst and most demoralising moments in British military history, Singapore surrendered unconditionally following an unexpected land-based assault. It had been considered by most Britons to be impregnable and held some 70,000 combatants – more than twice as many as the Japanese troops attacking it. By the end of February Sumatra, Timor, and Bali had also fallen. Batavia surrendered on 6 March. Rangoon, in Burma, fell on 8 March, and Java on 9 March. In the Philippines, Manila fell on 2 January 1942, though Bataan held out till early April and Corregidor Island held out till 7 May. In March General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964), the American Commander of Far East Forces, had left his base in the Philippines for Australia under orders from Washington. His famous words ‘I shall return’ became a rallying cry for Allied forces in the Pacific region.

Initial successes by Japan were in part due to the Allies being occupied in Europe, but in large part also due to the sheer intensity of their attacks. This was something for which the Allies were not really prepared. Winston Churchill’s comment on the fall of Singapore, that the ‘violence, fury, skill, and might of Japan far exceeded anything we had been led to expect’,
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was shared by many. Westerners had seriously underestimated Japan. This included Japan’s western allies. Hitler was greatly disturbed by the ease with which the
untermenschen
(‘inferior people’) Japanese defeated white troops in Singapore in particular.
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Japanese intensity was, as the Japanese themselves saw it, spiritually based.
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They felt their strength of spirit was greater than that of soft westerners weakened by materialism and egoism. It included a determination to fight to the death. In one specific illustration, a successful Allied counter-attack in the Aleutian Islands in May 1943, Japan suffered 2,351 men killed while only 28 surrendered.
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This ratio of deaths to surrenders, in the order of 84:1, was not uncommon for the Japanese. It was even surpassed in some cases, such as North Burma where the ratio was 120:1.
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Moreover, the majority of Japanese taken prisoner were either wounded, unconscious, or otherwise incapacitated at the time.
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This contrasts dramatically with the general Allied ratio of one death to four surrenders
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– a difference of several hundred-fold, though boosted by mass Allied surrenders such as at Singapore.

Not all Japanese were
prepared to fight to the death, as later oral accounts in particular show.
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Some did surrender, especially in the later stages of the war, though by that point many found it difficult to do so, for few prisoners were being taken on either side.
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On the whole, though, most thought it better to die than surrender. Many, of course, were indoctrinated to believe that the sacrifice of one’s life for the nation was the ultimate service to the emperor-god, the very aim of one’s existence and the ultimate purification. Oral accounts again show the extent of this death wish, which on occasion caused severe anguish to those thwarted in their attempt to die for the cause.
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To the very end the Allies were never sure that the Japanese race as a whole would not destroy themselves rather than surrender, in a mass death wish known as
ichioku gyokusai
(‘the self-destruction of the jewel-like hundred million’).
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Most Japanese believed such fighting to the death for a cause to be in the honourable samurai tradition, with few realising how idealised their view of that tradition had become – though this is not to deny the real effect that an ideal can have, nor to deny the many cases of genuine commitment and bravery, including by ethnic Japanese Americans fighting for the Allies.
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At a less glorious level, many Japanese were also given to believe that if captured they would be brutally tortured by the enemy, and that death would be less painful. Even those who were not swayed by indoctrination or by warnings of torture still often preferred death, for they believed surrender would bring shame and victimisation for themselves and their families later, back in Japan.
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Most of those who did end up alive and captured preferred their families to think them dead in action – in contrast to Allied PoWs, who invariably asked for their families to be informed of the fact that they were still alive.
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The idealised belief that a true and perfect warrior fought to the death lay behind the brutality of the treatment meted out to those who failed to do so. Japanese abuse of Allied PoWs is well known. The death rate was around 30 per cent for Allied PoWs in Japanese camps as opposed to less than 5 per cent in German and Italian camps.
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However, the Japanese treated their own men with almost equal brutality if they were felt to have acted with dishonour, or were somehow otherwise sullied or impure.
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Those assigned to duties in PoW camps were usually in this category, for a true warrior would have nothing to do with ‘disqualified human beings’ such as captives. Their own distress and self-loathing at being assigned such duties may partly explain some of the extremes of their behaviour towards their captives.

Brutality to Allied captives was made worse by the anger and distrust that had been brewing towards the west during the previous few decades.
There was also a growing feeling of contempt towards westerners, who had set themselves up as superior and would not recognise Japanese as equals, yet were now proving the weaker in battle. The Japanese readiness to rank things also applied to races, and many did not need indoctrination by the
Kokutai no Hongi
or similar to convince themselves that Japan was the superior nation. As a race they were pure, and they were perfect. Lesser and/or impure beings rarely merited respect – even if they were not captives, as many of the occupied Asian nations found out.