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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.