Report From Tokyo

REPORT FROM TOKYO A Message to the American People By JOSEPH C. GREW United States Ambassador to Japan, 7932 to 19 ifc f 42 Simon and Schuster NEW YORK Contents PREFACE vii INTRODUCTORY NOTE xi PRESIDENT ROOSEVELTS MESSAGE TO CONGRESS xxv 1. RETURN FROM JAPAN 3 2. WHY WAR CAME 11 5. THE EXTENT OF THE JAPANESE CHALLENGE 19 4. HOW WE MUST FIGHT TO DEFEAT JAPAN 6 5. WHY WE CAN NO LONGER DO BUSINESS WITH JAPAN 37 6. JAPANESE YOUTH 50 7. TRUTH IN JAPAN 55 8. IS THIS A RACIAL WAR 60 9. OUR ALLIES IN THE PACIFIC 67 10. JAPAN THE PLEDGE AND THE PERFORMANCE 73 11. BUILDING THE FUTURE-A POSTSCRIPT 86 Preface The purpose of this book is to overcome a fallacy in the thinking of a large proportion of my fellow countrymen about our war with Japan. That thinking, so far as I have been able to gauge it since my return from Tokyo on August 25, 1942, is clearly influenced by preconceived but un founded assumptions as to Japans comparative weakness and vulnera bility in war. Such thinking is not only erroneous it constitutes a grave danger to our fighting spirit, our war effort, and our united will to win. If persisted in, it will be a serious obstacle to our ultimate victory. During my mission to Japan I kept our Government informed, espe cially throughout the year 1941 , of the ever-present danger of an all-out, do-or-die attempt by the Japanese military machine to render their coun try, through vast territorial expansion, secure against economic pressures from abroad. I reported that Japan might strike with dangerous and dramatic suddenness. This is precisely what happened at Pearl Harbor. The decision of our Government before then to construct a two-ocean Navy and to build up and strengthen our Army and Air Force were the outstanding measures, among many others, which prove beyond any shadow of doubt that the Administration was alive to that danger. A primary axiom in war is to know your enemy. The American people, as a whole, are dangerously ill-informed regarding the strength of one of our enemies Japan. I have lived in Japan for the past ten years I know vii PREFACE the Japanese people and I know a good deal about the Japanese military machine, its constant strengthening, its intensive training over many years, its piling up of reserves, its fighting spirit, and its overweening am bition first to conquer and wholly to control the area and people of Greater East Asia including the South Seas and, later, to conquer and wholly to control areas and peoples of other parts of the world, including our West ern Hemisphere. Once in unchallenged control of those far-flung terri tories in Asia and the Pacific, with their wealth in raw materials and their almost unlimited resources in labor readily to be enslaved for the process ing of those materials and for the intensive building of naval and commer cial ships, the Japanese would, ivithout question, directly threaten our own shores and our own homes. That threat might not seriously develop in a year, or two years, or even five years, but a Japan firmly in possession of and successfully exploiting the vast area which her armed forces have seized during the past twelve months would constitute for us as grave a menace as a Nazi Germany securely in control of the European continent would constitute for the British Isles. Even today we are face to face with a powerful, resourceful, utterly ruthless, and altogether dangerous enemy. We must defeat that energy, conclusively, and leave no margin for a recur rence of that threat in future. I have been trying to tell these things to our people in public addresses and broadcasts, of which there will be many still to come, but it seems to me desirable to assemble in this small book, for publication on a mo mentous anniversary, December 7, 1942, a few of those remarks. I hope they will be read by every American in every walk of life throughout our land. I hope they will be read, too, by other peoples of the United Na tions...