Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy - Ludwig von Mises ...

Talk of Ultimatums and Deadlines 119
3. British naval and air reinforcements were expected to reach
Singapore by February or March.
Marshall and Stark reconfi rmed the policies and strategies
agreed to in the U.S.-British staff conversations. “War between
the United States and Japan should be avoided,” they wrote,
while building up defensive forces in the Far East, until such
time as Japan attacks or directly threatens territories whose
security to the United States is of very great importance.:
1. Territory or mandated territories of the United States, the
British Commonwealth or the Netherlands East Indies;
2. Certain parts of Th ailand in southeast Asia;
3. Portuguese Timor, New Caledonia, and the Loyalty
Islands, all in the southwest Pacifi c.
Th e memorandum also stated that:
We should not intervene against Japan if she should attack
Russia.
We should attempt to weaken Japan economically.
We should not send troops to China, but we should give
“[a]ll possible aid short of actual war . . . to the Chinese
Central Government.”
U. S. plans should be fully coordinated with the British and the
Dutch.
It closed with a strong recommendation: “Th at no ultimatum be
delivered to Japan.” 15
Note that the territories Marshall and Stark named with
whose defenses we were concerned and “whose security to the
15 Ibid., part 14, pp. 1061–62.