Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

108 • HORNBECK, STANLEY
HORNBECK, STANLEY (1883–1966). Stanley Hornbeck was chief
of the United States State Department’s Division of Far Eastern Affairs
from 1928 to 1937 and adviser on political relations from 1936
to 1944. He entered the State Department as a scholar of some
renown, having published on Far Eastern politics while teaching at
various Chinese colleges and later at Harvard University. He had
moreover served as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference and
the Washington Conference. Once he entered the State Department,
he revealed himself to be possessed of both an incisive mind and
sharp tongue, regularly rebuking his subordinates for not having met
his expectations.
Hornbeck held various assumptions regarding the maintenance
of peace in the Far East. In the first instance, he held to the conviction
that China must be able to defend its political and territorial integrity.
He also believed that the United States must display resoluteness—and
if necessary force—to warn off predatory nations,
principal among which was Japan. His position toward Japan noticeably
hardened after the outbreak of the Sino–Japanese War in
July 1937, when he began to advocate economic sanctions in an effort
to force Japan to step back from its perceived ambitions. When,
in September 1940, Japan concluded an alliance relationship with
Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, Hornbeck was convinced that this
“left no doubt that the world [was] confronted . . . not with merely
regional or local wars but with an organized and ruthless movement
of conquest.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed with Hornbeck,
stating that, by its actions, Japan had announced itself as
“openly and unashamedly one of the predatory nations and part of
a system which aims to wreck about everything the United States
stands for.”
Hornbeck’s abrasiveness in his dealings with his subordinates,
combined with his unshakeable confidence in Chiang Kai-shek’s
leadership of China, eventually proved his undoing. In late January
1944, several junior officers and emerging China specialists, who
were convinced that Hornbeck had “sold his soul to Chiang Kaishek,”
petitioned Secretary of State Edward Stettinius for Hornbeck’s
sacking. He was subsequently appointed ambassador to the Netherlands,
where he remained until his retirement in 1947.