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

HULL, CORDELL • 109
HOUSE, EDWARD H. (1836–1901). An American journalist who first
went to Japan in 1871, House wrote for several publications and
taught in Tokyo. House accompanied the Japanese army during the
invasion of Taiwan in 1874. In his articles, books, and letters to
American friends, such as Mark Twain and former President Ulysses
S. Grant, House often argued that Japan should be treated as an
equal to the Western powers. See also YATOI.
HULL, CORDELL (1871–1955). Cordell Hull served as secretary of
state from 1933 to 1944—approximately half again as long as any
predecessor in that high office and nearly the double the term achieved
by the most enduring of his 20th-century forerunners. Born on 2 October
1871 near Byrdstown, Tennessee, Hull spent two terms in the state
legislature before he entered the House of Representatives in 1906. He
remained there (with one two-year interruption) until 1930, when he
successfully ran for the Senate. As a Congressman, he developed a political
philosophy that revolved around the concept of free trade as the
key to worldwide economic growth and political stability.
Through the 1930s, Hull’s political philosophy came under sustained
assault as Germany, Italy, and Japan sought through military
conquest to carve out autarchic spheres. Two factors combined, however,
to curtail his ability to respond to this threat. First, the Great Depression
meant that the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt
had to focus the vast majority of its energies on domestic
issues. Second, Roosevelt was inclined to act as his own secretary of
state. That said, Roosevelt did allow Hull an unusual degree of autonomy
throughout the Japanese–American negotiations of 1941.
In his negotiations with Japanese Ambassador Kichisaburō Nomura,
Hull repeatedly asked for Japan’s acceptance of four principles:
respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations;
non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries; equality of
commercial opportunity; and no disturbance of the status quo in the
Pacific except by peaceful means. Adhering inflexibly to these principles,
Hull reacted negatively to various Japanese counterproposals
for diplomatic rapprochement between the two nations, arguing that
the United States should conclude no agreement that ran counter to
its basic principles.