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

14 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
On November 3, 1938, Japan announced a “New Order” in
China, “a tripartite relationship of mutual aid and co-ordination
between Japan, Manchukuo [ Japan’s name for Japanese-occupied
Manchuria] and China.” 15 Prime Minister Prince Konoye pointed
out in a public statement that the Chiang Kai-shek administration
in China was little more than a local regime. Konoye declared
further that Japan wanted the development and cooperation, not
the ruin, of China and that she wished to establish stable conditions
in the Far East without prejudice to the interests and rights
of other foreign powers. However, Konoye went on: “Th e world
knows that Japan is earnestly determined to fi ght it out with communism.
What the Comintern intends to do is bolshevisation of
the Far East and disturbance of world peace.” And lest there be
any misunderstanding, he added: “Japan expects to suppress in a
drastic manner the sources of the evils of bolshevisation and their
subversive activities.” 16 Konoye’s position was that Japan’s confl ict
was not with China so much as it was with the Comintern that
was backing China.
Japan compared her Manchurian venture to the way England
had acquired her empire—India, Hong Kong, etc.—and to the
way the United States had wrested its western territory from
the Indians. And Japan thought the United States’s Monroe
Doctrine protecting the Western Hemisphere from foreign intervention
was similar to Japan’s wish to preserve Asia for Asians. 17
According to Japan’s Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka (1940–
1941) Japan was fi ghting for two goals: “to prevent Asia from
15 Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United
States: Japan, 1931–1941 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Offi ce, 1943), vol. 1, p. 478.
16 Ibid., p. 480.
17 John Toland, Th e Rising Sun: Th e Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire,
1936–1945 (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 56.