Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1940, The Far East, Volume IV

711.94/10001

The Ambassador in Japan (Grew) to President Roosevelt¹⁵

Tokyo, December 14, 1940.

Dear Frank: I would give a great deal to know your mind about Japan and all her works. It seems to me to be increasingly clear that we are bound to have a showdown some day, and the principal question at issue is whether it is to our advantage to have that showdown sooner or to have it later.

The chief factors in the problem would seem, from this angle, to be:

(1) whether and when Britain is likely to win the European war;

(2) whether our getting into war with Japan would so handicap our help to Britain in Europe as to make the difference to Britain between victory and defeat; and

(3) to what extent our own policy in the Far East must be timed with our preparedness program and with respect to the relative strength of the American and the Japanese Navies now and later.

Those are questions which, with our limited information here, I am not qualified even approximately to answer.

From the Tokyo angle we see the picture roughly as follows:

After eight years of effort to build up something permanently constructive in American-Japanese relations, I find that diplomacy has been defeated by trends and forces utterly beyond its control, and that our work has been swept away as if by a typhoon with little or nothing remaining to show for it. Japan has become openly and unashamedly one of the predatory nations and part of a system which aims to wreck about everything that the United States stands for. Only insuperable obstacles will now prevent the Japanese from digging in permanently in China and from pushing the southward advance, with economic control as a preliminary to political domination in the areas marked down. Economic obstacles, such as may arise from American embargoes, will seriously handicap Japan in the long run, but meanwhile they tend to push the Japanese onward in a forlorn hope of making themselves economically self-sufficient.

History has shown that the pendulum in Japan is always swinging between extremist and moderate policies, but as things stand today we believe that the pendulum is more likely to swing still further toward extremes than to reverse its direction. Konoye, and especially Matsuoka, will fall in due course, but under present circumstances no Japanese leader or group of leaders could reverse the expansionist program and hope to survive.

Our own policy of unhurried but of inexorable determination in meeting every Japanese step with some step of our own has been eminently wise, and that policy has sunk deep into Japanese consciousness. But while important elements among the Japanese people deplore the course which their leaders are taking, those elements are nevertheless inarticulate and powerless and are likely to remain so. Meanwhile the Germans here are working overtime to push Japan into war with us. I have told Matsuoka point blank that his country is heading for disaster. He has at least seen that his efforts to intimidate us have fallen flat and have had an effect precisely the reverse of that intended.

It therefore appears that sooner or later, unless we are prepared, with General Hugh Johnson,¹⁶ to withdraw bag and baggage from the entire sphere of “Greater East Asia including the South Seas” (which God forbid), we are bound eventually to come to a head-on clash with Japan.

A progressively firm policy on our part will entail inevitable risks—especially risks of sudden uncalculated strokes such as the sinking of the Panay¹⁷ which might enflame the American people—but in my opinion those risks are less in degree than the far greater future dangers which we would face if we were to follow a policy of laisser-faire.

In other words, the risks of not taking positive measures to maintain our future security are likely to be much greater than the risks of taking positive measures as the southward advance proceeds. So far as I am aware, the great majority of the American people are in a mood for vigorous action. The principal point at issue, as I see it, is not whether we must call a halt to the Japanese program, but when.

It is important constantly to bear in mind the fact that if we take measures “short of war” with no real intention to carry those measures to their final conclusion if necessary, such lack of intention will be all too obvious to the Japanese who will proceed undeterred, and even with greater incentive, on their way. Only if they become certain that we mean to fight if called upon to do so will our preliminary measures stand some chance of proving effective and of removing the necessity for war,—the old story of Sir Edward Grey¹⁸ in 1914.

If by such action we can bring about the eventual discrediting of Japan’s present leaders, a regeneration of thought may ultimately take shape in this country, permitting the resumption of normal relations with us and leading to a readjustment of the whole Pacific problem.

In a nutshell that is about the way I regard the present and future situation. No doubt you have seen some of my telegrams which have tried to paint the picture as clearly as has been possible at this post where we have to fumble and grope for accurate information, simply because among the Japanese themselves the right hand often doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Their so-called “New Structure” is in an awful mess and the bickering and controversy that go on within the Government itself are past belief. Every new totalitarian step is clothed in some righteous-sounding slogan. This, indeed, is not the Japan that we have known and loved.

If you are willing to give me even a cue to your thoughts, either in a personal ultra-confidential letter or orally by some trustworthy person coming out here, it will be of tremendous help.

I cabled you my enthusiastic and affectionate congratulations on your re-election. You are playing a masterly hand in our foreign affairs and I am profoundly thankful that the country is not to be deprived of your clear vision, determination and splendid courage in piloting the old ship of state.

Faithfully yours,

Joseph C. Grew

15. Copy transmitted by President Roosevelt on January 3 to the Secretary of state with notation: “Will you personally prepare a reply for my signature? F.D.R”
16. Resigned from military service in 1919. In 1940 lie was a newspaper and radio commentator.
17. On December 12, 1937, the Panay, a United States river gunboat, was bombed and sunk by Japanese airplanes while it was on the Yangtze River above Nanking. For correspondence, see Foreign Relations, 1937, vol. iv, pp. 485 ff., and Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. i, pp. 517 ff.
18. British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at outbreak of World War I.