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

30 • ABE, NOBUYUKI
1940 began eyeing the resource-rich colonial regions of Southeast
Asia, which had been left defenseless by Germany’s war against their
colonial masters in Europe. A necessary corollary of any drive into
Southeast Asia, it eventually was agreed, was a military alliance with
Germany and Italy. It also was agreed that the Japan–Germany–Italy
Tripartite Pact—signed in September 1940—would have the added
effect of providing Japan with leverage against the United States. The
actual effect was just the opposite.
The United States regarded Great Britain’s survival in its war
against Germany as essential to its own security, and it refused to
countenance the possibility of Japan aiding Germany by threatening
Britain’s Far Eastern possessions. Herein lay the origins of the socalled
ABCD encirclement of Japan. The first concrete step toward
ABCD encirclement came in late April 1941, when American,
British, and Dutch officers confirmed the three nations’ collaboration
in the event of war in the Pacific. They also agreed to incorporate
China into their strategic planning.
More immediately, ABCD encirclement aimed at the economic
strangulation of Japan. The administration of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt in September 1940 retaliated to the Japanese occupation of
northern Indochina by slapping a virtual embargo on aviation gasoline,
high-grade iron, and steel scrap. The cabinet of Prime Minister
Fumimaro Konoe turned instead to the Dutch East Indies. The subsequent
negotiations with Dutch officials yielded no success and, in
June 1941, Tokyo recalled its ambassador. Within weeks, Japanese
troops occupied southern Indochina. The Roosevelt Administration
froze all Japanese assets in the United States and a complete economic
embargo on Japan ensued. The British and the Dutch soon followed
suit and the economic ABCD encirclement was completed.
See also PACIFIC WAR; WORLD WAR II.
ABE, NOBUYUKI (1875–1953). Born in 1875, Nobuyuki Abe graduated
from the Military Academy in 1897. In 1902, he was admitted to
the army’s War College, a sure sign that he had been marked as one
of the army’s best and brightest. His education at the War College interrupted
by the Russo–Japanese War, Abe was not graduated until
1907. He was subsequently posted to Germany—the preferred posting
for the army’s most promising junior officers—and, a few years