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The 5-5-3 ratio was invented at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-22. At the Geneva conference in 1932, Japan's delegate Osami Nagano proposed the abolition of aircraft carriers, long-range submarines, limitation of large offensive capital ships. If his proposals had been accepted, Japan would have been safe from transpacific attack, and could have pursued her ambitions in the China seas without fear.
Admiral Nagano also represented Japan at the London Conference, 1935-36, and it was there that he finally blasted the 5-5-3. A Navy man primarily, narrow, naive politically, he kept drumming at the theme of parity, although he knew the idea could never be accepted. Toward the end he said to a British delegate: "If I do what you like, when Nagano goes back, wzzt!"—and he raked his fingers across his throat. The same throat a few days later intoned the death notice of the conference.
"We cannot," he said, "accept the views that a power is entitled to possess naval forces generally superior to those of others on account of the vastness of its overseas possessions and the extensiveness of the lines of communication it has to protect. If such a view were correct, how could one explain why there should be parity between Britain and the United States?" Nagano went home, Japan completed its present fleet—on a ratio limited not by treaty but by Japan's ability to compete industrially.
The Officer Mentality. Osami Nagano represents the most aggressive, hearty, popular officer type Japan possesses: he is a kind of Greater East Asian Halsey. He is big for a Japanese—about 5 ft. 9 in., and built like a barrel. He is famous for being able to roll liquor past his tongue without loosening it. He is, as all Japanese warriors should be, a good family man: at the age of 62 he is presently engaged in raising a family with his third wife. He laughs with his belly and his guts are tough.
As little is known in the U.S. about his specific naval skills as about any Japanese officer's. It is one of the U.S. Navy's laments that they know so little about the strengths and weaknesses of top-ranking Jap officers. But in both the U.S. and British Navies, Nagano has the reputation of being with the best.
Nagano, on the other hand, knows the U.S. as well as any Japanese naval officer. He was a language officer in the U.S. in 1913 and studied law at Harvard for seven months. He even took courses at the War College. In 1928 he commanded a Japanese training squadron which visited Annapolis, was received by President Hoover. As naval attaché in Washington (1920-23), he assisted at the Washington Conference and was all tact. He always remembered Americans' birthdays, and always remembered to tell the story of the little cemetery in Japan where some shipwrecked U.S. sailors were buried, whose graves were perpetually and tenderly cared for. In 1937, with tears literally blurring his eyes, he apologized for the sinking of the Panay. "I am merely an ignorant sailor," he said, "but I want you to know that I am speaking from the depths of my heart. I am positive it was an accident."
Osami Nagano, the bluff, hearty sailor, became Chief of Naval General Staff in charge of operations on April 9, 1941. He still held the job on Dec. 7, 1941. What happened that day was not an accident.