southward against the Dutch and British posses-
sions. What was not clear was whether the
Japanese intended to attack the US simultaneously
in the Pacific. The Americans, therefore, were
aware while negotiating that unless they were pre-
pared to abandon China war would become
inevitable. The Japanese might be brought to
compromise on their ‘southern’ drive in return for
American neutrality but not on the issue of the
war in China. The Hull–Nomura negotiations
were thus unreal, maintained on the American
side mainly in the hope of delaying the outbreak
of war. It is in this light that Roosevelt’s remarks
at a policy conference that took place on 25
November must be judged. Roosevelt by this time
regarded war as virtually inevitable, observing:
‘The question now was how we should manoeu-
vre them into the position of firing the first shot
without allowing too much danger to ourselves.’
But the well-known Hull Note of the follow-
ing day, sent in reply to an earlier Japanese
note, was couched in the form of a ‘tentative out-
line’ to serve as a ‘basis for agreement’. It set out
America’s ideas for a settlement point by point.
The Japanese could look forward to a normalisa-
tion of trade and access to raw materials in return
for peace in eastern Asia; the Japanese must
promise to respect the territorial integrity of all its
neighbours; the ‘impossible’ American condition
from the Japanese point of view was that both
Japan and the US should give up their special
rights in China and that Japan should withdraw all
its military forces from China and Indo-China.
At the Imperial Conference in Tokyo on 1
December 1941, this note was placed before the
assembled Japanese leaders as if it were an ulti-
matum. It was a deliberate misrepresentation by
the Japanese themselves, intended to unite the
ministers. Differences were now, indeed, recon-
ciled. The decision was reached to attack Britain,
the Netherlands and the US simultaneously.
The Japanese sent a formal declaration of war
to Washington, intending it to be delivered fifty
minutes before the carrier planes of Admiral
Yamamoto’s task force, which was at that
moment secretly making for Pearl Harbor,
attacked America’s principal naval base in the
Pacific. Unfortunately, the Japanese Embassy was
slow in decyphering the message and so the
Japanese envoys appeared at the State Depart-
ment almost an hour after the start of the Pearl
Harbor attack on the US fleet. That made 7
December 1941 an unintentional, even greater
‘day of infamy’.
Japan had decided to start the war having
clearly set a time limit for negotiations in
September. It was self-deception to believe that
the US was about to make war on Japan after
Hull’s note on 26 September, even if Roosevelt
thought war virtually inevitable. There is no evi-
dence that Congress would have allowed the
president to declare war for the sake of China or
of any non-American possessions in Asia attacked
by the Japanese. The traumatic loss of lives and
ships, the fact and manner of the Japanese attack,
now ensured a united American response for war.
For Churchill a great cloud had lifted. With the
US in the war, he knew that Hitler would now
be defeated. Furthermore, the US found herself
simultaneously at war with Germany, not by res-
olution of Congress, which might still have been
difficult to secure, but by Hitler’s decision to
declare war on America. In this way it came about
that in December 1941 all the great powers of
the world were at war.
It was Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku,
commander-in-chief of the Japanese navy, who
had planned the daring pre-emptive strike on Pearl
Harbor. The actual task force was commanded by
Vice-Admiral Nagumo Chuichi. The Japanese
warships reached a position 275 miles north of
Pearl Harbor, escaping detection; Nagumo
ordered the carrier planes, two waves of bombers
and fighters, into action and they hit Pearl Harbor
on a Sunday morning. The naval base was unpre-
pared. Six battleships were sunk and the remaining
two damaged; many planes were destroyed on the
ground; 2,403 servicemen and civilians were killed.
The unexpected position of the Japanese task
force, and lack of proper service cooperation in
Washington were responsible for the disaster. That
Roosevelt and Churchill wanted it to happen
belongs to the legend of conspiracy theories. The
US Pacific fleet was only temporarily crippled; of
the eight battleships six were repaired and saw
action again.