Subject to Change
I talk to the world's best historians and let them tell the stories. And the stories are wonderful! (And occasionally I change the subject and talk about films, philosophy or whatever!).
Subject to Change
Manchuria to Pearl Harbor: Japan's Path to War (2)
How did Japan become embroiled in one of history's deadliest conflicts? The answer lies not in December 1941, but decades earlier. Jonathan Clements returns to unravel the forces that propelled Japan down a path to war with the world's greatest industrial power.
Following Japan's victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the country emerged with new confidence only to face the humiliation of the Triple Intervention, when European powers forced them to surrender their hard-won territories. This sparked a determination to secure Japan's place among world powers, leading to their stunning defeat of Russia in 1904-1905 – a conflict Clements describes as "World War Zero" for its preview of technologies that would dominate WWI battlefields.
The narrative takes us through Japan's growing reliance on Manchuria, transformed into the puppet state of Manchukuo under the last Chinese emperor. Here we discover the industrial heartland that supported Japan's imperial ambitions while exploring the darker realities of colonial rule. Perhaps most fascinating is Jonathan's exploration of Japan's internal dissent, from brave parliamentarians like Saito Takao who questioned the endless China conflict to the telling detail of restaurants suddenly serving only squid – a sign the fishing fleet had been devastated by war.
As economic pressure mounted in 1941, we witness the fateful deliberations that led to Pearl Harbor, including Admiral Yamamoto's reluctant planning and prescient warning about "waking the American dragon." Through meticulous research and compelling storytelling, Jonathan shows how resource dependency and strategic miscalculations drove Japan toward a confrontation it couldn't win.
Hello and welcome to Subject to Change with me, russell Hogg, and this is part two of our podcast about Japan at war in the Pacific with Jonathan Clements. So welcome back, jonathan, to the podcast. Thank you for having me again. So at the end of part one we were discussing the war which Japan fought with China over Korea, and at the end it had gone really well for the Japanese. They'd got the Liaodong Peninsula, they got Port Arthur, only at the last minute to sort of have these snatched away from them and bizarrely given to the Russians. So I guess the simple question is what happens next? Because as I understand it I don't know whether it's as a cause, perhaps slightly, of the war that China and Japan fight, but there's a sort of beginning to China's kind of beginning to come apart a bit of the seams, as there's this massive boxer rebellion, uh, in 1900, uh, which, I think, uh, which is part of what then gives rise to to further trouble. So do you want to say just a bit about that?
Speaker 2:well, I think, firstly, we should. We should accept that china has been falling apart for 60 or more years, that the thing that interests everybody about china is is one of the last colonial, one of the last territories they could get away with colonizing. Everybody is, um. When I say everybody, I mean all the, all the foreign powers and the japanese are eyeing up china as a fantastic opportunity because china is, uh, falling apart. The manchus, the manchu emperors, have lost control. There are huge rebellions. I mean, we talk about, for example, the Taiping Rebellion, but 20 million people died. It'd be better to call it the Taiping War. China is losing control of itself. There are various treaty ports being carved out of it and in 1900, there is, as you say, the Boxer Rebellion, which is a ridiculous martial arts cult of people who think they're immune to bullets if they do the right exercises. That's not what's ridiculous about them, really, but they want to expel all the foreigners from China and in doing so, are co-opted by the Manchu government. Basically, the Manchus are playing this fantastic game themselves. As I've said on this podcast before, to invite controversy, the most successful colonial power in China up until the 19th century was the Manchus, who came from Manchuria, conquered all of China and then told everyone that they were Chinese. And so what you have with the Boxer Rebellion is you have this movement that wants to throw foreigners out and the Manchus go yes, but we're kind of on your side, really, in order to avoid being thrown out as well. And as a result of the siege in Beijing of the foreign legations, there is this massive multinational effort to come to their rescue with a whole bunch of armies the Japanese, the Italians, the French, the Germans, the Russians, they all oh, I forgot the British, I'll leave them out till the last. They all show up, liberate Beijing and start, you know, extracting more concessions out of the Chinese.
Speaker 2:But one of the controversial things about the Boxer Rebellion is that the Russians, as part of their action, walk into Manchuria and seem not that keen on leaving. And the thing about Manchuria is that the Russians have been eyeing it up for at least 50 years, maybe more. They have this notion which as it turned out was ill-founded that the Amur River, which is this massive swastika-shaped river network I mean, it's not just one river, it just spreads all out through all of Manchuria. They thought that was going to be the new Mississippi. They thought if they got a railway out to Vladivostok and then they could go up all these little rivers and tributaries and they'd have this huge kind of empire in the Far East centered on Manchuria. And Manchuria is an amazing place. It's got fantastic resources. It's a beautiful country Well, I shouldn't call it a country, but it's a beautiful land and it's right next to Russian Siberia. And so the Russians are really eyeing it up and they've built this railway, which means that they are very close to, in terms of freight speed. They're only a few days away from Moscow. I mean, they're only a few days away from Moscow. I mean they're still completing the railway at this time, but it's very, very close now that that railway is going to be up and running. And they even build a city. There's a city called Harbin, the Paris of the North or the Moscow of the North really, which is basically a Russian city on Chinese territory.
Speaker 2:And so the Russians are really making a meal of the fact that they're not leaving manchuria and that bothers the japanese. Firstly, because japan's borders are now, you know, japan's got an influence in korea, but they're they're looking at manchuria next. They're quite keen on manchuria for themselves and they want the russians out of manchuria, and preferably out of the liao dong peninsula as well, and that eventually escalates into the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, which, very controversially, the Japanese started without telling anyone. Everything was very tense and there were clues. I mean, suddenly they shut down all the telegraph networks in Tokyo, Ando, and the russian ambassador's like that's weird, why do they do that? Um and uh, they, they launch an attack on port arthur, which is where the you know, the russian pacific fleet is based. And then, you know, a few hours later the declaration of war kind of limps in and tsar nicholas ii is outraged at this. He like, how dare you attack without declaring war? That's not how we play this game. And the Japanese are like we've stopped playing your game, we're just getting on with stuff.
Speaker 2:Incidentally, when you invaded Sweden, you didn't tell them you were coming either, which is just a little point I'd like to make as a Finnish citizen. No, no, the Japanese did say that. They said you know, in the in the russo-swedish war, you didn't bother telling the swedes you were coming when you took finland. And so the times in london is like wow, look at those brave, plucky little japanese. They, they've gone and shown the russians what's what, um, as indeed they did in the russo-japanese war. Big chunks of it fought in korea, as usual.
Speaker 2:But, uh, the russian army makes great use of this railway that can move things to to the far east, but the japanese are still beating them on land because, you know, the japanese haven't got far to come, that's, you know, the russians are still coming a long way, but the japanese are just walking across the tsushima strait. The landing of admiral togo does fantastic job at destroying the russians, um, in in port arthur, which which is subject to a long siege. And then, very famously, the Russians have to fight back by taking their Baltic fleet, which is quite old and beaten up, and sailing it all the way around the world to come to the rescue of the Russians in the Far East, at Port Arthur. And so the Baltic fleet just goes on, this absolute comedy trip around the world and no power is allowed to help them. There's this kind of international deal in place where if more than two countries are involved in a certain thing, then another country has to do something else and everything collapses. This very kind of World War I level kind of balance of power. And so, very famously the, the russians have got like piles of coal on the decks of their ships because they can't put in at coaling ports on the way. And infamously, the french secretly offer them aid. And there's this big scandal about how the russian fleet seems to turn up in indo-china, at camran bay in what is now vietnam, um, and the correspondent for the telegraph actually kind of goes through the jungle and finds this Russian fleet just trying to run away and pretend they weren't there. And eventually the Baltic fleet, after this long, long, long journey all the way around the world, is coming up towards Japan and the Japanese absolutely wipe the floor with them.
Speaker 2:And the thing about the Russo-Japanese War, the thing that's absolutely fascinating about it to many historians, including me, is almost everything that made world war one such an important event was tested in the russo-japanese war. You can hear it called world war zero by a lot of historians, because star shell, barbed wire, trenches, machine guns, telegraph, uh, wireless telegraphy these were all things that were used in the Russo-Japanese War. Admiral Togo, very famously, is basically playing battleships on a real map going well. I think they've got enough fuel to make it through here. So I reckon if we put our battleships on both sides of the Tsushima Strait in Korea and in Japan. We can just pincer them and ruin their lives.
Speaker 2:So this is a huge, huge deal because the Japanese and Asian power defeat the Russians, a European power, and there's a lot of ambiguity in that, because it's not the first time that Europeans have been defeated in asia just ask coxinger in taiwan. And also the concept of russia as a european power is something that some russians have trouble with. So you know, let's not get too deep into the woods on that one. But nevertheless, globally this is a huge issue because the japanese have done the unthinkable. They've. They've kind of entered into this game and beaten a European power which is met with some degree of elation but also fear.
Speaker 1:They did beat them, but the Russians are. You know, despite the railway, they're a very long way away. Japan is dead close and I don't know how long it takes them to capture Port Arthur, but it's a very long time. There's a sense that the Japanese weren't really terribly good at it. They have this General, general Nogi, who I think he eventually commits suicide once he's allowed to. Once the Emperor Meiji dies because he's so ashamed of how badly he handled the war. And their tactics don't seem to have been particularly effective.
Speaker 2:Well, firstly, on the case of Norgi, I think there are many reasons why he killed himself. He was a young officer in 1877, during the Satsuma Rebellion, when he lost his regimental banner. The rebels actually captured it off him and he wanted to kill himself then. So he's been saying he wants to kill himself for years. Yes, I'm, I'm not a military specialist, um, so I don't want to go right out on a limb and say that nogi nogi was a terrible general, um, the japanese certainly had a great deal of respect for him publicly, in the media and so on, but certainly he was using quite outmoded tactics from 20, 30 centuries, 20, 30 decades earlier, you know, standing in a line and marching forwards and not worrying too much about how many people got killed, which was not really suitable for the kind of 20th century warfare that you were experiencing in in the russo-japanese war. He was, uh, he ran into conflicts with the japanese navy, who were getting really annoyed at being his supply line Because, you know, you still needed to.
Speaker 2:I joked about walking across the Tsushima Strait, but it's not a walk, it's a long journey and the Japanese Navy has to do that for them, and the Japanese Navy were getting really annoyed about the army taking all the credit for these victories on land, when they were the ones who were supplying them. And I think Norgi's son I think two of his sons maybe died in the Russo-Japanese War. One of his sons was killed at Port Arthur. And so, at the end of it all, it wasn't just the loss of life at Port Arthur, it was the personal impact on him of a war that he'd fought in, destroying his family. And, yes, he had asked for permission to kill himself. And the emperor had said and the emperor said no, no, we want you alive, don't be stupid.
Speaker 1:and when the Meiji emperor died in 1912, nogi did very famously commit suicide with his wife, which is why I think, I imagine, that the death of his son was probably much more on his mind at that time right than the loss of a regimental banner or the death of other people's sons right and there was a bit in your book which I thought was interesting is that you felt, I think, that some of the lessons of the war were missed, for example, that the Russians had actually been quite successful in launching raids on Japanese shipping and sort of foreshadows the problems that they had against the Americans. Perhaps because Japan is an island, right, it needs shipping in a way that, say, russia doesn't.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think that the Japanese Navy is all about a decisive battle which is not me making up a term that's an actual decisive, final. Decisive, final battle is how they look upon military actions. The enemy fleet shows up, our fleet shows up, our fleet destroys them. We've won. That's how they look upon battle. It's a very kind of war gamey sort of attitude, and the fact is is that naval history is not all about battles. It's about the logistics of supply, it's about constabulary actions, and the Japanese Navy just didn't think about that.
Speaker 2:So, while they were going backwards and forwards over the Tsushima Strait, while Admiral Togo is winning these fantastic victories against the Russians, these big headline-grabbing victories, there's a squadron from the russian fleet that comes out of vladivostok and just shells the shit out of japan and just kind of raids all the way along the coast and everyone's pretending it's not there. And that's not really covered in in the japanese press at the time. It obviously it's suppressed as as um as sensitive news and and so, as a result that there's um not a lot of discussion of it in historiography either, and it's a lesson the Japanese did not learn during the Russo-Japanese War, and so that's what I mean by that really is that the Japanese Navy continued to concentrate on this idea of our fleet, their fleet battle end, and not to think more about the much longer-term kind of issues that would have been more useful and certainly would prove to be quite critical in later wars in the 20th century.
Speaker 1:Once again, the Japanese have won the war, just like they won the war against China. So, I think, against China they get paid this massive indemnity which presumably allowed them to fight the war against Russia. What do they get out of the war against Russia?
Speaker 2:They end up having to sign the Treaty of Portsmouth Because one of the things they get out of the war against Russia is they've almost completely run out of money. And when the Americans step in and say let's sit down at a table and talk about this, I mean Theodore Roosevelt shows up and says come to New Hampshire and sit down and we'll hack out a treaty. The Japanese are secretly really grateful because they couldn't have gone on for much longer. And that's one of the things worth mentioning as well, because you say the Japanese weren't as good at it as they looked on paper and indeed they might have bankrupted themselves if it had gone on for a moment longer. Russia gave them Port Arthur, so that's a big deal. Technically, port Arthur should have belonged to China, but Russia had a leasehold on it. So the Russians were like, hey, have this bit of China that we didn't want. So they gave them the naval base. They also gave them Sakhalin, or the southern half of Sakhalin, which is the island just above Hokkaido.
Speaker 2:For the next 40 years Japan had a presence on Sakhalin, which is a very oil-rich island. Chekhov went there very famously and called it absolute hell. But there was, very famously, a Japanese presence on Sakhalin. And if you go to Sapporo, there's a museum in Sapporo which has a gallery of kind of Japanese Sakhalin, because, you know, for 40 years it was part of Japan and then suddenly it wasn't again. So they get Sakhalin which doesn't look great on paper but, you know, does have some territorial value to them.
Speaker 2:But this was not good enough for the public, because the Japanese put all of this effort into the war and there was a huge effort on the home front as well, which we don't really have time to talk about. But the Japanese people were expecting a lot more from that. They were expecting Siberia. They were expecting the Russians to hand over all of Siberia the Russian Far East, as it's called and they were expecting money. They were expecting the Russians to go okay, here you go, as it's called, and they were expecting money. They were expecting the Russians to go okay, here you go, we'll do what the Chinese did and we'll just give you a big chunk of cash. So, as with the triple intervention a decade earlier, there was a huge protest in Japan. In fact, in September of the year there were riots in Hibiya, there were three days of riots in Tokyo and the government had to declare martial law.
Speaker 1:I think you said in your book that you thought that might have been something the opposition had sort of organized in order to embarrass the government.
Speaker 2:Yes, oddly, because these incidents happen in Japanese history and most of the time it turns out that someone else was behind it. So when a riot breaks out in Hibiya, the first thing I think is, oh well, it's probably the opposition, you know, handing out some Molotov cocktails and saying off you go. People try and cause some trouble. So, yeah, there's a huge number of people died and the Japanese did not have as much to show for it as they'd hoped for. Again, this brings us back to the notion, to Ida's notion of the alien game. The Japanese go okay, we're going to fight a war and we're going to win all this stuff. Let's see what you've won. And they open the curtains and it's like oh great, zach Harlin. So once again they were disappointed and once again there was a bubbling, you know, pool of rage, you know, in Japan, about putting all this effort in for something that they didn't really get anything out of.
Speaker 1:How are the Japanese seen at this stage in the West? Because they already seem to have. Britain seems to have quite good relations with them and I'm just wondering do they see them as a threat? Do they see them as honorary white people? What's the sort of attitude? If you're Russian, you see them as a white people. What's the sort of?
Speaker 2:attitude If you're Russian, you see them as a threat, if you're British, you see them as the British of Asia. So in 1902, they signed the Anglo-Japanese Treaty, which is the thing that stopped all the foreign powers from interfering as the Baltic power was sailing around the world. I see, because if anyone offered help to the Russians, the British would be obliged to come in and help the Japanese, and that would have been World War I, 14 years early, 10 years early. The British are very keen on the Japanese because they're a monarchy, they're a constitutional monarchy as far as they can see. They're a naval power. They've scored a fantastic victory and the British don't really want to deal with the Pacific. You know, the Pacific is turning into an American lake, shall we say, and the British Navy, the Royal Navy, is quite overstretched. And if they do a deal with the Japanese and the Japanese are just in charge of the Pacific, then the Royal Navy can move over back into the Atlantic area and it's economical for everybody. So the British are very keen on them.
Speaker 2:There are numerous visits by Japanese naval officers to Britain because they're supervising the construction of their ships. It becomes quite traditional for Japanese officers to come to Newcastle or Glasgow and live there while their ship is built, observing it under construction and then to sail it home on the shakedown cruise. That's something they all start doing a hell of a lot. So the Japanese developed very strong connections with Britain. They've already got strong connections anyway, because they've sent dozens of people all over Scotland learning how to make whiskey, for example. You know Hokkaido being the centre of the Japanese whiskey industry because it's like Scotland.
Speaker 1:Well, it sort of is it sort of is it sort of is yeah, exactly, um, and so, yes, the british are very friendly with them there was one visit, prince fushimi sudanaru, I think I wrote down and he turns up in 1907 and I don't know if it ties in with your mia san song, but the british are absolutely terrified that the japanese will get to hear the Mikado, which is a very popular opera by Gilbert and Sullivan at that time, and I think they actually ban it completely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's the Fushimi incident as it was. Another incident, Not a jehen, not a geopolitical dog whistle, but a very unfortunate thing. And so, yeah, that's Fushimi Sadanaru. He comes to Britain supposedly to thank the British for their advice during the Russo-Japanese War. By this point, the Mikado has become quite a famous opera. I mean, the Mikado is from 1888, I think. So it's been around for a long time, but and I'll try and keep this as quick as possible, because it's got nothing to do with warfare, even though it's fun when possible, because it's got nothing to do with warfare, even though it's fun um, when gilbert and sullivan were writing the mikado, supposedly they went down to kensington, which had this japanese village, this kind of display village, and they talked to the people there about japanese culture and used that in the mikado. That's not true at all.
Speaker 2:In another book project I'm working on at the moment I've actually got something else from from gil. He explains to Mrs Alec Tweedy where the idea came from. He met a guy who used to work at the British legation in Tokyo and he asked him what the Japanese national anthem was, and this guy told him oh, it's this song that goes Miyasama, miyasama, ono mano ma ini. And so what you get in the Mikado is Miyasan transformed from the rather cheeky Miyasan to the much more polite Miyasama, as misremembered by some guy who heard it once. And you actually get this snatch of the Satsuma battle hymn showing up in the Mikado. But the Mikado, of course, is a very let's use the word cheeky again. It's a very kind of frivolous depiction of Japan, because it's really a satire on Britain and there was a concern among the British authorities that if the Japanese ever saw it they would be apoplectic with anger. They said listen, when this prince shows up, nobody play a song from the Mikado. Nobody do it. All right, everybody shut up and we're not going to do it. And they actually banned its performances as well because they were afraid that Japanese journalists might show up and see it. So there's this kind of blanket ban on the Mikado which led to questions in Parliament. Someone said so we're going to ban Hamlet if the Danish show up. I just want to know. You know how serious this is.
Speaker 2:Anyway, as Fushimi's ship is pulling in, the British are standing there and they hear a medley from the Mikado being played by Fushimi's band and the British are like what the hell is this? Who's playing that? Shut it down, shut it down. Oh no, it's coming from the Japanese, because, of course, what the Japanese are doing is they're playing Miyasan. They're playing the original song, but the British absolutely cack themselves in fear because they think that someone you know someone behind a curtain somewhere is doing it, and when Fushimi kind of got off the ship, he goes. I'd really love to see this Mikado thing. You know, I've heard it's delightful and harmless.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so you had this kind of you know thing going on with the Japanese and the British, but, as you can see, the British are being awfully respectful towards the Japanese. They are tiptoeing around the possibility that this prince might be insulted by a song. So I think that you can say that they're trying very, very hard to impress each other. So shall we?
Speaker 1:skip forward a bit, I guess. Do we skip forward to World War I at this stage? You can if you like. So Japan is a long way away from the action in World War I. I guess so do they do much to help the Allies Because they pile in on the British side.
Speaker 2:It depends who you ask. Really, the general attitude among general historians is the Japanese didn't do a whole lot. They sailed around in circles for a bit, they stole some German possessions in the Pacific and then they went home complaining um. I think that's quite unfair, though under the terms of the Anglo Japanese alliance, they were obliged to help the British. They sent several ships to the Mediterranean, where they saved over 1800 British lives. That's not to be sneezed at. They lost 50 men in action, saving some British from a German attack. They also freed up the entire Royal Navy from the Pacific, which is something that the people of Canada were very grateful for, because, don't forget, the Panama Canal was only completed in, I think, 1914.
Speaker 2:So at the very beginning of world war one. The nearest royal navy ship to canada is 15 000 miles away. Right, it's a long old trip, and so the fact that the japanese are sending a, a ship to cruise up and down the coast of british columbia is something the japanese, the canadians, are very pleased about. There's actually a story about there's a Canadian warship that put to sea with no ammunition just to look busy in case the Germans were around, and then, in the case of the Pacific. The Germans had a number of Pacific islands and they also had the Shandong Peninsula, which is a crucial colony on the Yellow Sea, and the Japanese took all those places very famously, very famously. Of course they hung on to them. But, uh, the japanese. There was a joint japanese british assault on chingdao which is where the beer comes from, when the reason there's a brewery in chingdao is because the germans had it as a colony, and the japanese seized the whole bunch of islands, uh, all around the pacific, some of which were of vital strategic importance. I mean, some of them were nexuses for telegraph wires, so they were actually really important.
Speaker 2:And so, in the course of the First World War, the Japanese did an incredible amount of stuff. They also discovered, to their great chagrin, what would happen if the Americans shut down the pipeline of oil, not a literal pipeline, but the supply of oil. Partway through the war, the Americans were getting rather anxious about the amount of money the Japanese were making, because the Pacific was secure and they were just busy sailing all around it doing lots of stuff. And the Americans eventually shut down the supply of oil and certain other raw materials, which put the Japanese on the back foot very quickly and made them realize that in the event of oil and certain other raw materials, which put the Japanese on the back foot very quickly and made them realise that in the event of a war in which they were fighting America, that could happen too.
Speaker 2:And so it's during World War I that they send a naval officer called I think he was naval, he might have been army called Koizu Kuniaki. They send him on a fact finding mission to China and they say to him listen, america's got a whole continent, britain's got a whole empire. We need a cordon of security around Japan. We haven't got a lot of natural resources ourselves. What should we do? And Koizu comes back and says you need Manchuria, you need to do what that Charles Legendre guy said you should have done all that time ago. If we owned Manchuria, or had it pretty much in our pocket, we'd have all the oil, all the gas, all the coal that we needed. We'd have all the natural resources. We wouldn't need to rely on supplies from across the Pacific. And so that became a thing that the Japanese took very, very seriously and became a long-term project to secure Manchuria for themselves. And that all happened during World War I.
Speaker 1:And I suppose that the opening of the Panama Canal, they make the ability of the Americans to exert pressure in the Pacific just so much greater.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean this becomes more of an issue in the 1920s. But yes, the opening of the Panama Canal was largely overwritten by the fact that World War I was going on, so it wasn't a big topic of discussion. But the fact is is that once the Panama Canal was opened, new York was nine days closer to Asia than it was before. It was 3,700 kilometers, I think, closer and that drastically reduced fuel prices and labor costs in shipping things to Asia. It made America a much more interested party in Pacific freight. It also made Brazil nine days closer, which was a huge issue for plantation workers, many of whom were Japanese. And so the Panama Canal changed the logistics of power in the Pacific significantly. In fact, what you get between, say, 1895 and 1914 is two game-changing logistics alterations to world power. You have the Trans-Siberian Railway bringing Russia into the Pacific and you have the Panama Canal bringing the United States of America into the Pacific as well. And these are both topics that the Japanese Navy in particular is very excitable about, because the size of Japan's empire has expanded by about 8,000 square kilometres in World War I because they keep those islands they took from the Germans, and this is all the Navy's problem. So the Navy's placing huge pressure on the japanese government to increase its budgets and they're saying you know, this is a vast area that we now have to patrol. And we've seen what happens when the germans send a q ship in and pretend to be a freighter, and then these guns pop up and they shoot at us. We need to have huge navy patrols in this area. The navy needs to be a big deal. And then's saying well, don't listen to the Navy so much, because what we really need is Manchuria. So we need a land army. We need to be ready for that. And the Navy's going no, no, no, no, forget Manchuria. We want to invade the Dutch East Indies. That's where we get all of our oil and stuff from. That's what we should do. And so all of these arguments are going on.
Speaker 2:Japan is being roundly embarrassed at the Paris Peace Conference. In what way? Well, the Japanese are playing the game. They've come in on World War I on the side of the Allies, and at the end of it all, they expect some decent returns. And they are given Shandong. They are allowed to have Shandong as a compromise, which really irritates the Chinese. The Chinese, in fact, refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles as a result, because the Chinese were also allies in World War I and they expected to get Shandong back from the Germans, and instead it was just handed to the Japanese. One of the Chinese delegates said if you imagine that someone's stolen your pocket watch and a policeman comes along and he gives it back to the thief that's what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2:What the Japanese really wanted at the Paris Peace Conference was a resolution to be written into the treaty and also into the League of Nations, which kind of sprang out of that, outlawing racism. They wanted equal treatment in immigration and trade. They wanted the australians to say, yes, come in, you know you can be just like white people, come in. They wanted the californians to say, yes, yes, you want a farm, you can come over here and build one.
Speaker 2:But of course, what we have in the 1920s is these very severe anti-immigration policies aimed at the chinese and the Japanese. And so the Japanese wanted that written in, and one of their very junior delegates at the time, prince Konoe Fumimaro, who ended up as Japan's wartime prime minister. He said you know, if we don't get this, then they're telling us it's not worth playing their game, they're telling us we shouldn't bother. And so this series of events at the Paris Peace Conference, which leads to the Treaty of Versailles, which leads to the League of Nations, it turns the Chinese away from believing anything the West is going to say Chinese, or the Japanese, the Chinese I'm on the Chinese at the moment, because this is a big deal. In China, there are riots in front of the Tiananmen Gate.
Speaker 1:Oh, I see, Because they've had their territory just stolen from them.
Speaker 2:Their territory was just taken from them. It didn't matter, they were on our side, it didn't make any difference. And they're like well, screw you and screw the Japanese. What else is there? And Lenin's waving at them from Russia going hey, has anyone tried communism? It's great. And the beginning of the Chinese Communist Party is in the May, the 4th demonstrations of 1919. Gosh, and then in Japan it's the same issue. In Japan it's like well, clearly we're not going to get anything out of the West. We'll play along with the League of Nations for as long as necessary, but we are taking Manchuria. That's what we're going to do. And this is not a decision made by the Japanese government. It's a decision made by the Japanese army, which eventually does engineer a number of incidents in Manchuria which lead to it becoming a Japanese puppet state.
Speaker 1:I mean, we're jumping ahead a bit to Manchuria, but as I understand it, there's some completely farcical incident where a bomb goes off quite near to a railway line, but not close enough to do any significant damage, and then some sort of incident breaks out where people are shooting at each other, yes, and the imperial government, in fact maybe the emperor himself, is saying you know, let's calm this down right now, but it's all too late. It's just completely out of control.
Speaker 2:You're conflating one or two incidents there across the various Japanese involvement in Manchuria. Oops, they very famously assassinate Zhang Zuolin, who's the warlord of Manchuria. They put a bomb on a bridge above his train and blow him up because it looks like he might get in bed with the nationalists. And the Russians and the Japanese want Manchuria for themselves. There was an attempt at a show work restoration. There was an attempt by the army to to seize control in the manner of the meiji restorationists and that was very famously and very controversially put to a stop by hirohito himself. The emperor rode out on a horse and addressed the soldiers and said I do not want you to do this. And the soldiers like ah, but maybe he's had bad advice.
Speaker 1:He's like no, no, I'm absolutely serious, do not do this.
Speaker 2:And sayonji kinmochi, who I've, but maybe he's had bad advice. He's like no, no, I'm absolutely serious, do not do this. And sayonji kinmochi, who I've mentioned before, he's the last of the grand old men advising the emperor. He is having conniptions about this because he doesn't want the emperor to make his feelings known, because if the emperor makes his feelings known and they still disobey him, that creates a constitutional crisis. But famously, the soldiers turn around and go home and this is brought to a stop. And the reason that this incident which happened in 1936, is so famous is because Hirohito took a decision and told people what it was. That has been used by numerous historians ever since to say well, if he could do that, then why couldn't he do it in 1937? Why couldn't he do it in 1941? You know that that's how the reasoning goes, and the answer to that is that Hirohito was taking his life in his hands in 1936. When he did it, within a year, it would have killed him. Someone would have would have stood up to him in a way that would have created a constitutional crisis, which would have required the emperor to meet with a sudden accident falling out of a window, because the army and the navy are so in control of Japan by this point that no one's daring to argue with them.
Speaker 2:In the case of Manchuria, yes, the incident when they tried to blow up a railway line and the damage was so insignificant that the next train along just rolled over the broken rail, it didn't really make any difference.
Speaker 2:But the thing is is that I think it's very important to remember that we are dealing with a different time, when the kind of communications that we have, you and me talking to each other a thousand miles remove and being able to see each other while we do it, was not available. So when the news says bomb goes off on the chinese railway guy found nearby, looking a bit Chinese, which literally happened, I mean, this is the real shock about that incident. They rounded up three tramps in Manchuria and they said we're going to give you some money if you do this very important job for us. And they went, oh, okay, and they gave them a haircut and they washed them and they put them in Chinese clothes. And they said and here's some letters from Chinese people telling you to blow up a railway. And one of them ran away because he got very suspicious, and with good reason, because the other two walked into a room and bayoneted, and then their bodies were taken and left by the railway line so they could recover them and go.
Speaker 2:Oh, look at this, it's a note that says the Chinese want to blow up this railway. We'd better send in our soldiers to protect it. And the reason this all came out is the guy who got away got picked up by the police and said I don't know what they're doing, but they wanted to give me a haircut and then they wanted to kill us. I don't understand. So all of these kind of incidents are going on and the Japanese have a military presence in Manchuria to protect the railway.
Speaker 2:I mean, this is the thing about Manchuria that's so fascinating for train nerds is that you have a railway that goes right through the middle, between Russian territory on one side and Vladivostok on the other, and then in the middle of that there's Harbin, and then from Harbin there's a railway that goes straight down to the Liaodong Peninsula and these various other railways as well. And so the railway company is running everything in Japan. Running everything in Manchuria is in Japanese hands, and they have their own police force and they have, like, a military presence there. And because the railway connects all the main towns and there's just open territory between them, whoever controls the railway controls Manchuria. And so the history of the Manchurian railway. The history of the South Manchurian railway in particular, which is the one that links Liaodong to Harbin, is the history of the slow takeover of Manchuria. And eventually, what they do in Manchuria is they turn up with a ready-mix emperor. They the last emperor.
Speaker 1:Well is this? How does manchuria become?
Speaker 2:manchukuo, ah, okay. So what happens is the manchuria is the homeland of the manchu emperors clues in the name uh who conquered china in 1644, and so ever since then manchuria has been part of china, because they were basically merged at that point. And what the Japanese do is they say, is they kind of roll that back and say, well, if the Manchurians were foreigners from north of the Great Wall, manchuria is not really China, is it? It's a bit we can cut off quite easily. And in fact there were points when even Sun Yat-sen was prepared to offer them Manchuria if they would just leave him alone. I mean, every now and then, the idea that Manchuria could be lopped off from China and leave essentially China for the Chinese still came up. The words I'm saying right now are not permissible in China. Manchuria is an inalienable part of China and it cannot be divided. But back in the 1920s, the 1930s, the concept that the Chinese could just have their original territory and Manchuria could be locked off as some kind of deal were present in international discussions. And so what the Japanese do is they arrange the foundation of a new country, manchukuo, the land of Manchuria, and they put the last emperor of China in charge of it as a figurehead.
Speaker 2:Henry Puyi, the last Manchu emperor, was officially overthrown in 1911, 1912, with the foundation of the Republic of China, and he's been batting around various foreign embassies ever since and living in Tianjin and trying to get on with his life, and he's scooped up by the Japanese.
Speaker 2:He's taken to Chongqing, actually, which then becomes the capital of manchuria not of china, just as the emperor of manchuria, and so there's this wonderful kind of moment in history where this completely new fake country is created out of out of nothing. The japanese are very much in charge, um, but technically it's an independent state and it's not recommend, it's not recognized by a whole bunch of people. The league of nations, the japanese walk out of the league of nations over the whole thing, because the league of nations, you're not supposed to do that, like no, we're off. And they, they actually walk out in protest and to the sound of a lone applauder, um, mrs madame wellington ku, the wife of the chinese delegate, is up in the balcony giving them a slow hand clap as they leave, which is the kind of girl she was, um, and and just but just a quick question on the emperor.
Speaker 1:Does he want to be emperor? Is he sort of grabbed and plonked down and given no choice? And what happens to him? Uh, what happens to this character?
Speaker 2:well, in answer to that question, I highly recommend bernardo bertolucci's film the last emperor, which is a brilliant evocation of the era, and I think if you watch that you'll see. It's very difficult to ascribe any kind of will to a man who was crowned as a child and who was raised in this palace and then told at a very young age oh, you're not the ruler of the world anymore. Sorry, can you just live there for there for a bit? Oh no, you can't live in your palace anymore, come and live in the chenjin. You know he's a creature out of time. He doesn't really know what's going on a whole lot. I get the feeling with puyi that you know he was kind of baffled by the whole thing. If he was enthusiastic about the japanese, that did not last long, really didn't last long, um, because he was just a puppet in their hands. But what kind of choice did he have really? I've been to his palace in chongqing. It's a, it's a threatening place. It's really. It's kind of deco and it's really drab and it's got like brown leather sofas in it and big, chunky ashtrays and you can just see this sort of awful, nicotine soaked deal making going on.
Speaker 2:Um, manchuria, manchu qua, I should say, was the country that thrived on the drugs trade. It was mainly dealing in opium to supply its um. Its economy it was run by the japanese and the chinese were just kind of slave labor stuck underneath it all. And it's economy it was run by the japanese and the chinese were just kind of slave labor stuck underneath it all. And it's an absolutely fascinating place historically, which has largely been disowned by everybody. Now, I mean, if you want to, if you want to see manchurian films because there was the largest film studio in asia was based there under the japanese you have to go to two different archives well, three, because the, because the Russians stole a bunch of them, and the Chinese have some of them and the Japanese have some of them, but there's a huge argument about who really owns it at this point. So yeah, manchuria is absolutely fascinating and it was a cause of great world annoyance that the Japanese were getting away with it.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you've seen the film. Is it Kobayashi? I can't remember, but the film is the Human Condition.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:I just saw it recently and it was actually quite disturbing in a way, because a fairly central plot point was that they thought that the Chinese slave labourers would work better if they were given access to women. So there was these prostitutes, uh were sort of wheeled in, and I suppose the thing I found disturbing was that the prostitutes are sort of portrayed as, you know, sexy minxes, you know happy-go-lucky. There's there's no sense of the of the sheer and utter misery. Uh, that must have been involved in something like that?
Speaker 2:yes, and I would. I would say that doesn't sound like the kind of the comfort women that we now know existed and not depicted in quite that same way. If there were prostitutes working for the Japanese authorities, they were certainly unwilling and probably also drugged, not just to keep them docile but also to keep them dependent. And there are some very interesting books about this, about the necropolitics of Manchuria. There are several very interesting books about the way this was an absolutely hellish country with very free and liberal actions permitted by its authorities because no one believed in this country. I mean, by the end of the war, manchukuo was recognised by Japan, by a couple of Japanese puppet states within China, by Nazi Germany, italy and Finland. Those were the only countries that recognised Manchuria, and the Finns were only doing it in the last year because they'd switched sides. Yeah, it's a fascinating and very depressing story, manchuria.
Speaker 1:I mean you say it was sort of a narco state. But I thought the whole point of the Japanese moving into Manchuria was they realised they needed resources, because you've got Britain with its huge empire, you've got the Americans with its huge continent. How can we resist them unless we get somewhere with resources? So do they manage to turn manchuria into a, into a big supply base for them, or or not?
Speaker 2:absolutely. Manchuria is the great promised land of japan in the 1930s. There's huge immigration now. I think it was seven million japanese people came home after the war. Wow, from manchuria, ituria. It's got massive amounts of farmland. It's the bread basket of the Japanese empire. It has mines, it has chemical industries, it has factories, it has the Asia's largest film studio. It's an incredibly useful part of the Japanese empire.
Speaker 2:During the war, as things got worse and worse on the home islands, the big ticket was a trip to Manchuria. You could get away from all the trouble by moving to manchuria and several of the people who I've written about in japanese history end up doing that. So yeah, manchuria was the safest part of the japanese empire for a very long time, until the very end of the war, when, of course, the russians and the chinese both come piling in. So yes, it did do all those things. It was a very successful industrial base for the Japanese. The problem was, historiographically, is that at the end of the war the Russians turned up and dismantled as much of the industry as they could and took it back with them. So some of the great successes of the Manchurian industry were lost because they went back to the Soviet Union, but it remained an industrial powerhouse. I mean, manchuria was also an industrial powerhouse of the People's Republic of China. So, yes, it certainly fulfilled what the Japanese wanted from it.
Speaker 2:And I would say as well and I'm not the only person to say this that if the Japanese had stopped in Manchuria, if they just said, okay, this will be it, we've got what Koisal recommended in the 1910s, we've got what we need, they could have probably got away with it. But of course they didn't. They kept on pushing south. They kept on pushing down into Beijing. They tried to take over Nanjing. They kept on pushing into the south and they kept moving. They wouldn't stop Because there was always one more problem at the border they had to deal with, and so eventually they would end up pushing so far and overextending themselves and also inviting a war with the United States of America, which was not going to do them any good.
Speaker 1:I thought there was a very powerful bit in your book. I can't remember the exact date, I think it must be 1938 or 1939. I'm not quite sure when the war broke out, between when Japan actually, you know, was at war again with China. But there's this guy, saito Takao, and he stands up in the Diet, right yeah, and I think he's getting on a bit, but anyway he stands up to denounce the war and he says you know, what exactly are we doing here? What are we gaining? And he's held down by the other delegates. But I thought that was interesting. There was still, at this late stage, there was still some resistance inside civil Japan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was actually the war in China officially now broke out in 1931. People used to say 37, but the People's Republic has officially rolled it back to 31 because of the actions in Manchuria and that's a very complex issue in historiography that it's not worth getting into right now. But basically, as far as East Asian historians are concerned now, the war in China was a 15-year war which was ended in 45 and began in 31. What you're talking about was 1940, because that was the very height of Japanese activities. And yes, saito Takao, he was 71 years old and he was a conservative as well. He was not some kind of dissenter or subversive. He broadly supported the idea that Japan needed an empire to support itself.
Speaker 2:But, as you say, he got to his feet in 1940, stood up in front of the Japanese parliament and he said when is this going to stop? Who is going to pay for this? You know you're calling it a holy war, you're calling it an international justice. But where does this actually stop? And he was the member of of the japanese parliament for cope, for an area near kobe, and um, he'd been there when the, the the army had shown up and ripped up the railway tracks and they said, oh, we need these for a thing in southeast asia. Sorry, how is this helping me? How is this helping me? And and so he, he very, um, very pointedly asked these questions and and, as you say, the transcript that we have of his speech, uh, is full of these ellipses, because people kept on shouting at him to shut up and he was probably about the last time that anyone could do this in in the japanese parliament, because I think that there was a law passed soon afterwards that it would be treasonous to suggest it and so on, and so it was all shut down.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, so as late as 1940, saito is saying this, and also we have the celebrations that came out in what, for the Japanese, was the year 2600 after the first legendary emperors, and that sort of turns up in, I think, 1940. And there are all these big celebrations around the country that it's been 2600 years and he kind of alludes to that in his speech. He says, you know, this is the largest war that we fought in 2600 years. He's saying to them this is this huge anniversary, the coronation of this legendary emperor, and and here we are, you know, ripping up our railway lines to build railways in another country for a war, we're fighting with someone else. You know how is that a thing?
Speaker 2:So those kind of that kind of dissent is a very interesting thing to to to note, because because the japanese press at the time has this very resolute tone to it because it has to, and then you kind of poke around in the margins and you see that there are people who don't want to be doing this, there are people who are protesting about it. They're often being locked up for doing so, but there are all kinds of signs that deep down, the people of Japan are getting, in various different ways, annoyed by it. And there's all kinds of little things Like there's a moment in the 40s when there's all kinds of little things. Like there's a moment, uh, in the 40s, when there's suddenly nothing but squid in the fish restaurants. And as a food historian, I can tell you that's because squid is a coastal farming product.
Speaker 2:Right, and the reason there's nothing but squid in the shops is that the fishing fleet's been sunk. It's not safe to leave japan anymore and go fishing in in the ocean. And everyone's like everyone isn't squid, great, and you're like why are we having squid again? Why is squid on the menu all of a sudden. So there are all kinds of little things like that that show you. You know that there's trouble at mill. The state is vastly overextended now and has no way of stopping it either, because, even though every single indicator is that this is going to end in disaster, you still have a hard core. You know, in the army, in the navy, of officers saying oh, no, no, no, no, it'll be fine, it'll be fine.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, there is that when you talk about squid. But there was a great image and I don't quite know where it comes from, but it's an octopus eating its own tentacles. Yes, I think that's the image to sort of quite know where it comes from, but it's, uh, an octopus eating its own tentacles?
Speaker 2:yes, I think that's, and that's the image to sort of explain what's going on in the war against china yes, because the thing with the war, with the war against china, I mean we're dotting all over, all over the place here now, but I think that's fine. The thing about the war in china is that the, the generals, assure hirohito it'll be over by christmas. They say, oh, you know, we can do this. I think they said three months or something.
Speaker 1:They said three Starting where, because I don't think that's starting 31.
Speaker 2:I think that's starting 37. That's 37.
Speaker 1:So what's the difference between 31 and 37? What's the reason for starting the war in 37 as opposed to saying it started in 31?
Speaker 2:31 is the Manchurian incident and it's taken over Manchuria. 37 is Nanjing. Nanjing is he's attacking china itself and the the marco polo bridge incident. So the marco polo bridge is a real place. It's still there today. It was described by marco polo in his travels, which is why it's where it gets his name from, and these days it's down in the south west of toke of the beijing. You can get the metro reaches there and it's this 13th century, I think, bridge, at least 700 years old by that point. And there's a base nearby and the Japanese said oh, we've lost some men. Can we come in and look in the fortress for them? And the Chinese are like, no, you can't. And then they start shooting at each other. And one thing leads to another and the Japanese said we've accidentally started a gunfight on the outskirts of Beijing. We need to secure everything and and that's the first moment that leads to the the land war in China itself. So 37 is when everything really kicks off and the Japanese.
Speaker 1:There's some treaty is there that allows them to have soldiers in in Beijing. It seems weird that they're allowed to be there when their dagger is drawn over over Manchuria.
Speaker 2:I can't remember what the exact reason was. Now it's something mental like we need to protect the railway nearby. I think that's normally the excuse, or something like that. Remember, china has fallen apart by this point. There are various different warlords in charge of different places and it's not quite clear who's running what.
Speaker 1:And yet, despite the fact it's falling to pieces. I mean, you make the point. You know the Chinese well. It's so vast, I suppose it's incredibly difficult to fight. But the Japanese, they don't really have it all their own way and the Americans, I think, start getting behind the Chinese.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, there's a huge argument among the americans about the degree to which they should supply the chinese war effort or the japanese war effort, and sometimes they're sending, they're selling stuff to both sides, um, and there is, there was basically a proxy war that started a couple of years earlier with, uh, the russians and the Americans supplying arms to the Chinese to help them fight the Japanese off. And there was this very difficult kind of moment, I think, where the Americans realized they're supplying both sides and both sides have taken out loans and only one of them can be paid back in the event of victory, which is just, you know, that's bad karma, if there ever was. And so, yeah, there are all kinds of, you know, complaints, because America's isolationist, it doesn't want to get involved in a war anywhere, and then it turns out that they're supplying all this stuff to the Japanese. Japanese parachute regiments can't survive without silk, which actually, no, sorry, that's not true. Go the other way, american parachute regiments can't survive without silk, which, um, actually, no, sorry, that's not true. Go the other way, american parachute regiments can't survive without. So, I mean, the americans are desperately buying silk in the fear that they might lose access to the silk markets which are um, which they need for their paratroopers. They're selling oil to the japanese and they're selling metal to the japanese which is being turned into bombs and fired at chinese people.
Speaker 2:And there is a, there is this, this sense among the americans that there's, there's a, there's a, an incredible disconnection here. It's like we say that we're not interested in war, but here we are supplying this war and it's not a whole lot of hope to anybody. The other thing is, of course, that when the japanese are occupying nanjing, they're causing trouble for the foreigners there, right? So you know you have foreign people in nanjing saying you know they're not being very nice to us, they're, they're treating us like they're.
Speaker 2:You know an occupying regime. You have the, the, the jews in in shanghai um, who come there to escape the russians and come there to escape the nazis, and then, of course, once the japanese are in bed with the nazis, suddenly the japanese are persecuting them as well in the Shanghai ghettos. So, yeah, there are all kinds of you know other geopolitical issues taking place. The fact that it's a global war is only something we recognize in 1941 with Pearl Harbor, but actually you know the involvement of the various powers in it and the jostling around behind the scenes is something that goes on for much longer.
Speaker 1:Or why did sort of American attitudes harden against the Japanese that they started, I think, threatening to cut off supplies and so on? Can you just unpick that a little bit for us? So?
Speaker 2:America and Japan are in this very odd position. At this point, 5% of American exports to Japan are aeroplanes and aeroplane parts being used in in in combat. American scrap metal is being sent to japan where it's being used to shoot at the chinese, who are technically allies of america. And there was one these were rumors, I don't know if they were ever proved, but the, the elevated railway on on third avenue in new york was dismantled and sold as scrap um. And then there were complaints by american missionaries that we have no, we're taking shrapnel out of the bodies of these wounded Chinese, and it's come from New York. So that's, you know, a huge issue.
Speaker 2:And by April 1941, the Americans are looking at the likelihood that there might be a war with Japan. They're not saying they're going to fight it, but they conduct some vulnerability studies, which is where the sense of economic warfare comes back in. We already know from World War I that the Americans can really harm the Japanese by shutting down this pipeline of materials. By this point, for example, half of Japan's copper, 80% of its oil, is coming from America, from American imports, and this is going to sound awfully cynical. But the US Treasury is looking at Japan's gold reserves and they're figuring that they're going to run out by maybe June 1940 or the very latest the middle of 1941. So as far as the Americans are concerned, by the middle of 1941, there's going to be no more money coming from Japan to pay for the stuff that they're importing. So at that point Japan's going to start borrowing money to pay for the Americans the stuff that's coming from America for a war that if Japan loses they'll never have to pay back. So this is what's going on in America.
Speaker 2:And sovelt's treasury advisors find a law from the first world war, from 1917, in in july 1941. The americans say uh, listen, we found this law. It says we can freeze dollar transactions, not just with our enemies but with any foreign country, if it's an enemy or an ally of an enemy or otherwise. And so at that point they say okay, we're shutting down, uh, your use of foreign currency in trading. Uh, the british and the dutch do the same thing.
Speaker 2:And so by july 1941 the japanese government is having meetings saying we're going to have to go to war with the Americans. There's nothing else that we can do because otherwise we're going to run out of money. We can't go to them cap in hand and ask for a deal, because that would be suicide for our government. So we know what happened in 1918 when they shut down our supply lines. So what are we going to do? Well, there is this kind of Hail Mary move we can do. That might sort stuff out, and that would be if we can paralyze the americans in the pacific, just stun them for for a few months. We can seize british malaya, we can seize the dutch east indies, and those new territories could be brought back online to help us before a counter-attack arrived.
Speaker 1:So what are the supplies that are in the East Indies?
Speaker 2:Oil is the most important thing Oil refineries and oil itself. And so Yamamoto Isoroku who's this Japanese admiral? He goes listen, you can do this. You've asked me to write this plan. I've written this plan.
Speaker 2:If you attack the East Indies, the British and the Dutch will sabotage their oil refineries, but you can get them back online. If you do that, then it'll be fine. But there is a problem. He uses the term a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan, but he's not talking about Korea anymore. He says the real problem that you've got is, if you want to seize that land and get that oil so you can continue your fight in china, is, the americans have got a huge naval base at a place called pearl harbor and you absolutely have to knock that out. If you knock that out, it'll take them a few months to get back online and then you'll have the time to to secure your position in the east indies. But you absolutely have to knock out pearl harbor.
Speaker 2:But I'm warning you, if you do that, the clock is ticking because you do not want to make wake up the american dragon. If you attack pearl harbour, they will be coming for you and you need to be ready, and the only way you will stop them is if you march in person down the avenue in washington into the capitol building and say that you're taking over, and the japanese general's like okay, that sounds good. And he's like no, no, I'm not saying that to encourage you. I'm saying that if you commit to attacking pearl harbor, everything's going to change. And you have, I don't know six months and it's six months of running wild and then it's done and they go fine.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. Uh, admiral yamamoto, that's great. And he's like I don't know if you're hearing me here. Um, and so yamamoto is set up as this guy who comes up with this master plan for defeating america. And he's like I'm not doing that at all. I'm really not doing that. You ask because you know armies and navies all around the world come up with these. These mad plans are on demand.
Speaker 2:I mean, the americans in 1906 had a plan for fighting a war against britain and japan yeah and they never thought it was going to happen, but just in case it did, there's a folder in a safe somewhere that says this is what you do and this is what how you hold chicago from an attack from canada, and so on. That's their job. There's entire uh units of the military whose job it is is to come up with these crazy science fictional ideas just in case it happens, so that no one is wrong-footed by something mental, like a surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and so. So Yamamoto is there doing the same thing for the Japanese and he goes I will, I will, I've got this idea, I don't like it and I don't recommend it. And they're like thank you very much, okay, we'll let you know. And and off he goes. So so that is the idea that he comes up with to to save them from this kind of issue, because manchu kua is great for a lot of things, but all the only oil they can get from there is shale oil and it's not really good enough for their purposes. And so the admirals and the generals they're going to the emperor and they're going okay, if we do this thing, we could probably take china in aals and the generals they're going to the emperor and they're going. Okay, if we do this thing, we could probably take China in a month and the emperor's like. You said that a month ago and you said that a month before they go. No, no, this time it'll actually work.
Speaker 2:And so what happens is is that by November 1941, trade is being shut down between Japan and America and the very last Japanese imports into america are logged in the customs ledges. I actually found them. It's, um, it's some christmas ornaments, a consignment of kikoman soy sauce, 30 bucks worth of fishing tackle and a crate of ceramic squirrels. Right, that's the last thing into america. And by the end of the month after the trade is shut down, there are six Japanese aircraft carriers sailing up into the north of the Pacific for an unknown purpose and then heading down south towards Hawaii. And there are intelligence analysts all over the Pacific, including in Pearl Harbor themselves, and US military intelligence on the 1st of December says we don't know where these carriers are going. They've just kind of gone, wandering off.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, we'll maybe find out where they did head off to and what they were up to next time. Anyway, thank you very much, jonathan. That was terrific. Thank you, thank you.