http://www.amconmag.com/2003/09_08_03/buchanan.html



September 8, 2003 issue
Copyright © 2003 The American Conservative



The Tojo Doctrine

by Pat Buchanan


August always calls to mind the final weeks of the war in 1945: Hiroshima on
Aug. 6, Nagasaki on Aug. 9, the surrender of Aug. 15. Formal surrender in
September to General MacArthur on the Missouri in Tokyo Bay was but a photo
op.

Today, World War II is recalled as the "good war" on Hitler's empire. But
that was not true for the generation that lived through it. For even the
youngest, it was, first and foremost, a war against the evil empire that had
carried out the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

And understandably so. Even before U.S. troops first clashed with Rommel's
Afrika Corps, Pearl Harbor, the Coral Sea, Midway, Bataan, Corregidor, the
Doolittle Raid, and Guadalcanal were already burned in our memories. And
while the morality of our war measures-the fire-bombing of Tokyo, Hiroshima,
Nagasaki-is still debated, no one denies the morality of the war itself.

Yet, even as Bush and Tony Blair today face charges of having "lied us into
war," so, too, did FDR. Even more so.

Indeed, why did Japan, an island nation smaller than Montana, attack the
most powerful nation on earth? How did Hirohito and Tojo expect to win a war
to the death with America that they must have known a surprise attack on
Pearl Harbor would ignite?

In 1952, the great revisionist historian Charles Callan Tansill, in Back
Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933-1941, concluded it was not
Japan that sought war with us, but FDR who sought war with Japan, as a back
door to war with Nazi Germany. His case: in 1931, Japan occupied Manchuria
as a defensive move to secure her northern flank from Stalin who had seized
Outer Mongolia and Sinkiang. Manchuria was as critical to Japan as Mexico is
to us.

In 1937, following a clash on the Marco Polo Bridge outside Peiping, Japan
and China went to war. For four years they fought, with Japan controlling
the coasts and China the interior. For three years of this war, America saw
no vital interest at risk and remained uninvolved.

But when Japan joined the Axis and occupied Indochina, FDR sent military aid
to Chiang Kai-shek under lend-lease and approved the dispatch of the Flying
Tigers to fight against Japan. He ordered B-17s to Manila to prepare to
attack Japan's home islands. He secretly promised the Dutch and British
that, should Japan attack their Asian colonies, America would go to war.
Japan was aware of it all.

In July 1941, FDR froze Japan's assets, shutting off her oil. Adm. Richmond
Kelly Turner warned FDR it meant war.

Indeed, when Israel's oil supply was imperiled by Nasser's threat to close
the Straits of Tiran to ships docking in Israel, the Israelis launched their
own Pearl Harbor, destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground before
invading the Sinai and ending the oil threat to Israel's survival.

Nevertheless, knowing it meant war, FDR cut off Japan's oil. Thus was the
Japanese empire and national economy, entirely dependent on imported oil,
put under a sentence of death.

Japanese militarists wanted war but the government of Prince Konoye did not.
He offered to meet FDR anywhere in the Pacific. The prince told the U.S.
ambassador that if oil shipments were renewed, Tokyo was ready to pull out
of Indochina and have FDR mediate an end to the Sino-Japanese war. FDR
spurned the offer.

Japan then sent an envoy to Washington to seek negotiations. On Nov. 26,
Secretary of State Cordell Hull rejected negotiations and handed an
ultimatum to the Japanese: get out of Indochina and China.

Japan faced a choice: accept a humiliating retreat from an empire built with
immense blood and treasure, or seize the oil-rich Dutch East Indies. Pearl
Harbor followed. The Tojo Doctrine of pre-emptive war.

Did FDR truly believe China's integrity was a vital interest? Hardly. Once
war broke out, China was ignored. The Pacific took a back seat to Europe.
U.S. forces on Corregidor were abandoned. Aid to Churchill and Stalin and
war on Germany took precedence over all.

At Yalta, FDR, without consulting Chiang Kai-shek, ceded to Stalin Chinese
territories that were to be taken from Japan.

Was America's war on Japan a just war? Assuredly. Were U.S. vital interests
threatened by Japan? No. Provoking war with Japan was FDR's back door to the
war he wanted-with Hitler in Europe.

After a meeting with FDR, Nov. 25, Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in
his diary that the main question is "how we maneuver them into the position
of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves."
That is the American way to war.

September 8, 2003 issue
Copyright © 2003 The American Conservative