I've always had a question I couldn't understand for a long time: Why did Japan go to war with the United States?
Our descendants look at history as if we had opened the perspective of God, overlooking a city from a high altitude, and everything can be seen at a glance. We know the cause, process and result of all things, and we can arbitrarily act as an afterthought. But people in history are different. Not only can they not see the result, they can't even see the "now". Not to mention finding the best path to travel through the city of "history", it would be nice if you didn't get lost or circle around a place without a map.
Furthermore, when our descendants are talking about politics, they always like to discuss issues in terms of "country", such as what is going on in China, what is going on in the United States, what is going on in Japan. In fact, there is no such a decision-maker called a "country". Decision-making is made by specific people, and each country has its own decision-making mechanism. All decision-makers have opposition. Such compromises and compromises lead to an inexplicable decision that is neither a global nor a local optimum.
The head of the Japanese Navy (Nagano Shoushen) once asked Yamamoto fifty-six: Once we start a war with the United States, what are our chances of winning?
Yamamoto studied at Harvard University and served as the Japanese embassy in the United States, and was then the commander of the combined fleet of the Japanese Navy. He said, if your Excellency has seen the cars in Detroit, the oil fields in Texas, you will know that once the war begins, there is no certainty at all.
Anyone with common sense, even in the context of international relations and power comparisons at that time, can understand that this is a self-defeating move.
Why go south instead of north?
In the distant 1941, Japan and the Soviet Union signed the "Japan-Soviet Non-aggression Pact", you read that right, Japan and the Soviet Union non-aggression. The Soviet Union's intention is to let Japan free itself and build the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere". Don't interfere with my back door. Frankly speaking, from the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, Japan and Russia have been enemies. Not long ago, Japan and the Soviet Union fought a battle on Mongolian soil, the "Nomonhan Incident" (1939), and Japan also lost the key point. , so simply don't provoke the bear.
First of all, what really decided Japan's southward movement was actually the conflict between the Japanese army and navy. Since the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese parties represented by Satsuma and Choshu have run through the development of modern Japanese history, and finally formed a conflict system between the "Army" and "Navy". And going south is the only option that both the Army and the Navy agree on.
Furthermore, the southbound must be for strategic resources such as oil and rubber. Later, Japan's "going south" invaded French Indochina (Vietnam), which is the entire Indochina Peninsula, including Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Thailand.
And this really violated the interests of Western countries, so the United States froze all of Japan's assets in the United States (July 1941). The United Kingdom and Canada also took the same measures. There is no France because France has fallen. So Japan can no longer get oil from the western world. If you think about it from a positive perspective, the US is forcing Japan to come to the negotiating table, and if you think about it from a negative perspective, it is forcing Japan to go to war.
So do we really have to go to war?
Japan had sought a diplomatic solution after the U.S. trade embargo against Japan. The prime minister at that time was Konoe Fumio (mi). As can be seen from the surname, he was a prime minister from aristocratic background. In 1919, he also participated in the Paris Peace Conference with the Japanese delegation.
Prime Minister Konoe was not a pacifist - on the contrary, he pushed for a full-scale Japanese invasion of China. Out of fear of the power gap, Prime Minister Konoe hopes to solve the problem through diplomatic channels - Japan does not want peace, but hopes that the foreign powers will not interfere with Japan's aggression against China and Southeast Asia, not embargo oil, and not freeze assets.
At that time, Japan's foreign minister (Toyoda Zhenji) had been trying to solve the problem through diplomatic channels. His remarks represented the attitude of the Konoe government: Although it is said that we are currently occupying Indochina, it is because of the shortage of resources. We really have no intentions of the Southwest Pacific. Therefore, please also ask the United States to stop its hostile actions against Japan and restore Japan-US trade relations.
The Prime Minister even prepared to travel to the United States to meet with President Roosevelt. And nationalists are rampant, with at least two assassinations of the prime minister. Japan and South Korea have a long tradition of assassination, which often means a change of government.
In fact, from the 1920s, the United States began to intercept and decipher Japanese telegrams. That is to say, Roosevelt completely grasped Japan's diplomatic and military trends from the very beginning.
He knew from the beginning that the Japanese just wanted to have a negotiation retreat, and then took it out of context to gain a pretext for their own actions. Roosevelt didn't want to talk at all, but accompanied the Japanese to finish the script. Roosevelt had summoned the Japanese ambassador to the United States (Yoshizaburo Nomura), and delivered a direct warning, which he and Churchill had negotiated with Churchill not long ago (the Atlantic Charter): any action by Japan in the Southwest Pacific will cause the United States to respond accordingly, which ultimately leads to war.
Does the emperor care about them?
Since the all-out war of aggression against China in 1937, Japan has started to hold a "base camp-government joint meeting", which is basically once a month. The base camp refers to the army. There is a full-scale invasion of China behind. So this meeting actually means the "military-government" joint meeting.
At the "joint meeting" in September 1941, there was a seven-hour discussion, mainly about finalizing the details of the "Outline for the Implementation of the Empire's National Policy". This outline was drafted by the Navy, and the main content was how to prepare for war. The details are disputed, but generally no objection. All in all, there is not much room left for diplomatic efforts.
After the details are finalized, it is time to report to the emperor.
Anyone who has a little knowledge of Japanese history will know that Japan is a constitutional monarchy. But those who have a deeper understanding of Japanese history will know that the emperor has no status in Japan, and is mainly responsible for the blame. After 1200 AD, the samurai family has always been in power, formerly the shogunate, and now the military department. Emperor Xian of Han could still give the throne to Cao Pi, but no one would dare to ask the emperor to give the throne.
Later in the day, the Prime Minister brought Lu Hai and two officials in charge into the palace to meet the Emperor. Emperor Hirohito asked, what are the chances of Japan winning once it starts a war with the United States? The head of the army (Moto Sugiyama) replied that Japan could achieve victory in three months. The emperor said, in the China Incident (July 7 Incident), you told me the same, you can use 3 divisions to launch a decisive blow, win and get peace.
Lu Xiang Shanyuan quickly quibble: China is vast and has encountered many unexpected difficulties. Emperor Hirohito asked him, isn't the Pacific Ocean even wider?
The person in charge of the navy side (Nagano Shoushen) hurriedly interjected - please remember the following example, it is a universal sentence pattern, you can always use it - of course we can't guarantee 100% victory, but it is like Just like treating a disease and saving a person, the doctor believes that there is a 70% chance that the operation will be successful. Even if the post-operative patient dies, that can only be so, and this is the situation we face today.
The next day, the imperial meeting was held. Everyone reported the joint conclusions to the emperor, and each person in charge explained the international situation and the details of the war plan again. However, it is not suitable to go to war against a country with a huge disparity in national strength and resources. Logically, the emperor expressed his desire to "do our best to avoid the worst between Japan and the United States". After an awkward silence, the Emperor asked, why did you avoid answering my question?
I am most afraid that the air will suddenly become quiet.
At this time, a very dramatic scene happened. Emperor Hirohito, who usually never speaks at the meeting, took out a piece of paper from his pocket and began to read:
"In the four seas, all brothers are brothers, but the wind and rain can disturb the world"
This is a poem written by his grandfather Emperor Meiji when the Russo-Japanese War broke out. After reading it twice, he said: I have always loved this poem, and I will never change my memory of the peaceful mind of Emperor Meiji. The situation has come to this point. I am very sorry.
The Emperor, the favorite of the Japanese National League, and the man who carried the pot, we can't accurately know his mental state and motivation at that time, but all the choices in life are difficult choices. For ordinary people, studying and working, getting married Divorce, stay and leave, there is no standard answer, and there is no right or wrong. Everyone is gambling, we are coerced by life, and the big men are coerced by the torrent of history.
When everyone only cares about their own interests, the collective interests will go in an indescribable direction.
Future generations have never stopped arguing about the interpretation of this poem. However, there is an important fact that cannot be changed. The countdown to the war has begun.
countdown to war
After the Imperial Conference, everything basically cannot be changed. Japan will break its dependence on the United States through military gambling. As for whether the gambling is a disaster, it can only be left to fate.
Prime Minister Konoe basically failed, so he left Tokyo and went straight to his Kamakura villa to rest.
Once Prime Minister Konoe and Hideki Tojo discussed a solution. Tojo's view is that if we give in, America will get ahead. We sometimes have to summon the courage to do the unimaginable, like jumping off the stage at Kiyomizu Temple.
The stage of Kiyomizu Temple is a stage for bodhisattvas, but over the centuries, it has evolved into a suicide shrine. It is crazy that Hideki Tojo used suicide as a metaphor for war against the United States, but what is even more crazy is that Hideki Tojo has become the next prime minister to take over as Konoe. Originally, he was not the candidate for the prime minister, and he was not qualified. The initial candidate was a member of the royal family (Prince Higashikurinomiya Minoruhiko). Later, several candidates including this member of the royal family did not want to take the blame, and the position of prime minister fell. On the head of Hide Tojo.
In fact, it is not that there is no way for a diplomatic solution, and the United States is not unwilling to talk, at least it has the will to postpone the war, because the United States is not ready for war. The China issue has always been the key to peace talks. That is to say, as long as Japan is willing to withdraw its troops from China, there is still something to talk about. However, this is basically impossible, because this is the core interest of the Army.
In the new government of Tojo Hideki, a new foreign minister (Togo Shigeru) was appointed, and in the hawkish government, the foreign minister was not a hawk, which may seem strange, but it is not strange, it must be concealed , You can't be too straightforward about starting a war, and you have to put on a peaceful posture. At the 66th base camp-government joint meeting, everyone focused on the deployment plan before the war began. The meeting lasted for 17 hours, starting from work at 9:00 in the morning and continuing until 2:00 at night.
In this heated meeting, the new foreign minister pioneered a 25-year timetable for withdrawing troops from China in exchange for peace in the United States. Whether you say it's nonsense or a plan to slow down the army, it's better than not talking about it at all.
As we mentioned before, in fact, the United States has long grasped the movements of Japan. The United States has already understood that the war will break out in the near future, and all diplomatic means are delaying time. U.S. Secretary of State (that is, foreign minister) Hull at the time gave a direct, almost insulting reply. He demanded that Japan give up all the overseas territories it had occupied since the Boxer Rebellion and only recognize Chiang Kai-shek's government in China. In exchange, the United States agreed to unfreeze Japanese assets.
When Japan received this reply, known as the "Hull proposal", the Tojo government could be said to be elated, because, finally, the talks broke down and the war could be fought without restraint.
The time of the attack on Pearl Harbor was December 7th. The Japanese declaration of war should have been submitted to the US government at 1:00 noon Washington time, but the Japanese intelligence work was too poor, and the embassy's decoding work It was not completed until 1230, and it was almost 1400 after printing.
More importantly, the U.S. government could of course intercept the telegram, and Roosevelt had read parts of the telegram as early as 9 pm the night before. The military had already issued war warnings to U.S. military bases in Hawaii and the Philippines before, and there was no need to repeat it that night.
We often hear conspiracy theories about Pearl Harbor. In fact, from this point of view, the Americans did know that the Japanese were going to attack the United States, and they did indeed send a war warning, but they did not expect that the final attack would be the United States, and they did not expect such a large scale.
5 minutes to decide the outcome
We all know what happened later, when the U.S. attacked Pearl Harbor. Chuichi Nagumo, the commander of the Battle of Midway, defeated the British Fleet Z (the equivalent of the British Far East Fleet). The Japanese army occupied the Philippines. The Philippines was a former American colony. MacArthur was stubbornly resisting. The US military was afraid that he would be a prisoner.
It can be said that the Japanese Navy was invincible from the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, to the Pacific battlefield.
In the Battle of Midway, Japan was divided into 6 main forces and 8 main aircraft carriers (a total of 13 other types of aircraft carriers). In fact, the United States has only 3 aircraft carriers, the Enterprise, the Hornet, and the injured Yorktown, which means that the Japan-US troop ratio is almost 4 to 1.
But how did Japan lose?
In fact, the war has a certain contingency. Starting from the Japanese-Russian naval battle, the world has entered the era of cannons and giant ships. However, during World War II, it became a war mode in which aircraft carriers fought each other with aircraft. In that era, there was no radar network. Generally, the location of the opponent was determined by radio orientation. However, before the war, the radio was usually silent, so basically it was to send planes in all directions to find the opponent with the naked eye.
That is, whoever finds the opponent's position first wins.
For Japan, Japan sent seven reconnaissance planes that day, but two of them failed to successfully complete the reconnaissance mission, and the U.S. aircraft carrier was precisely in these two areas. And as soon as the U.S. aircraft arrived, the Japanese aircraft carrier fleet suffered a fate that would eventually perish.
The final decision of the war is 5 minutes.
On the surface, it looks like luck, but in fact the whole war is won and lost in every detail. As we mentioned before, every detail of Japan's diplomatic and military intelligence is mastered by the United States.
The Japanese Navy used the JN25B cipher system (Purple Secret) at the beginning. Later, the Allies seized the cipher book on the Japanese submarine and deciphered it (1941). Since then, they have almost fully grasped the military trends of the Japanese army, and Japan has actually noticed something. , was upgraded in 1942, using the third version of JN25C, but due to the large number of ships in the Pacific, the codebook has not been changed, and this is precisely the time of the Midway naval battle. The most important thing is that until Yamamoto's landline was shot down in the end, Japan still used the JN25 encryption system, and the entire system had long been mastered by the Allies.
In the film, the outstanding contributions made by these intelligence workers are especially mentioned.
Rochester (Joseph Rochefort) is the person in pajamas and slippers in the play. He first played Sudoku on a boat, was discovered by the captain, and was later recommended to go ashore to decipher the code. When he reported on Midway before the war, the data he reported was extremely accurate. The number of ships, the main direction of attack, and the strategic deployment were all clear. Nimitz thought it was completely incredible. And in the end, the data of the two sides was revealed and decrypted after the war. Really, just like the lines in the play, "the time is only 5 minutes away, the bearing is only 5 degrees away, and the distance is only 5 nautical miles away."
It is a pity that this great hero was not good at words and did not please the leaders. He was finally demoted to manage a dock and died of depression. In fact, a math genius like him should go to Wall Street.
Does Japan really have no choice?
We always felt that the Japanese war was an unbelievable act of stupidity. In fact, for Japan, although it is unbelievable, there is still a chance: if the war is resolved quickly, it may be able to force the United States to sign a treaty under the city, thereby recognizing Japan's Far East interests, which is actually a gamble for Japan.
From this perspective, Japan's strategic mistakes are actually more than that. According to the bureau, why should it be divided into six fleets? Isn't it bad to besiege the U.S. fleet in a concentrated way, and even if Midway loses 4 aircraft carriers, there are still 9 available and can continue to fight, not without hope.
However, Yamamoto chose to think behind closed doors for several days. Whether this was a personal strategic mistake or another political struggle, we do not know. However, the most terrifying thing was the bureaucracy. The Japanese government finally chose to promote the Midway War as a victory, because the feint troops finally attacked the Aleutian Islands, which had almost nothing to do with the whole war situation. The fleet was transferred to support the Battle of Midway.
Rational comparison of strength, Japan has absolutely no possibility of winning, but in addition, we often ignore many irrational factors.
In fact, the international situation at that time became more and more turbulent and uneasy. Western countries were full of hostility to Japan and imposed high tariffs on Japanese industrial products, which gave birth to the tendency of nationalism - this is almost the same as today's international situation .
At the same time, the economic crisis and political turmoil in the capitalist world in the 1930s indicated the bankruptcy of the Western capitalist order, and people had doubts about the world order dominated by the United Kingdom and the United States. Then the Westerners would no longer be able to dominate the world and belong to the new East. An international order will be established. And China's Northeast has become a symbol: it means that Japan will never go back to the Versailles Washington system of 10 years ago, because the Versailles Washington system meant exploitation and enslavement by the West - and today's world order The changes are still almost the same!
From various phenomena in today's world, I believe that this is not simply the wishful thinking of the Japanese elite. If you have been enthusiastic about the military parade, then this is actually the fanaticism of the entire Japanese people, great power chauvinism and nationalism, and as long as you deviate from this the road, it will be considered poverty, failure and shame.
When Prime Minister Konoe submitted his resignation letter, he actually made it clear in his resignation letter: If we are willing to sacrifice our honor temporarily and accept the proposal of the United States, then everything has a chance.
At the last imperial meeting (referring to before the attack on Pearl Harbor), the emperor's spokesman bluntly said that if we surrender, we will lose all the territories since the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and the Manchuria Incident (Korea, Manchuria, etc.) China, North China, Taiwan and Indochina), we not only have to endure the four years of hardships that the Japanese people have endured since the "China Incident" (referring to the war of aggression against China), but we have to endure even more pain. The ultimate logic of going to war is: if there is peace with the world dominated by the United States, it will be a shame. Although the war may fail, at least it is to die for the dignity of the country.
Japan is a very strange nation, and many Japanese executives have a sense of fate similar to that of samurai: war will break out, and it may even mean the destruction of Japan, but since as a Japanese, you should endure this fate and not retreat.
But if you think about it, it's not surprising, because every one of us here, doesn't it often take the risk of doing something incredible? Studying, falling in love, changing jobs, staying away from home, and singing about the motherland, because of those pleasures, give us the power to be happy.
History is really magical. In fact, the entire confrontation is just a duel between 5 minutes, 6 aircraft carriers, and 100-200 fighters. It is these hundreds of pilots who decide the fate of billions of people.
However, history is full of realism. Behind these hundreds of pilots are tens of thousands of ground and intelligence personnel, tens of millions of industrial workers in the United States, and hundreds of times the industrialization strength of Japan. By the end of the war, the United States had about 150 aircraft carriers and nearly 10,000 ships of various types.
Today's world has returned to a crossroads. Nationalism, populism, and terrorism are all hurting the world. Can we make this world a better place?
In fact, after all, history is written in the blood of the victors, the full text is over.
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