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

76 Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
bit, forcing her to look elsewhere for the supplies and materials
she had been accustomed to buying from the United States.
Th e Japanese had considerable commercial interests in southeast
Asia, especially in French Indochina (now comprising the
states of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). After France fell in June
1940, Japan had negotiated with the Vichy government of unoccupied
France for permission to occupy French Indochina, to
take over bases there, and to maintain order. Th e rather helpless
Vichy government had agreed. As trade with the United States
became more diffi cult, Japan’s interests in Indochina gained in
importance and she turned more and more in that direction for
the foods and raw materials she needed. Trade pacts concluded
later with Indochina assured Japan of uninterrupted supplies of
rice, rubber, and other needed raw materials.
U.S. Ambassador Grew in Japan kept Roosevelt fully advised
of her precarious economic situation and urgent need for imports.
Chief of Naval Operations (NCO) Stark had warned the president
of the danger of imposing an oil embargo on Japan. Stark
had “made it known to the State Department in no uncertain
terms that in my opinion if Japan’s oil were shut off , she would
go to war.” He did not mean “necessarily with us, but . . . if her
economic life had been choked and throttled by inability to get
oil, she would go somewhere and take it . . . and if I were a Jap, I
would” do the same. 2
Many people, including Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s
wife, were concerned about what Japan might be planning. In
the fall of 1940, she had asked her husband about our continuing
shipment of oil to Japan. FDR answered Eleanor on November
13, 1940:
2 79th Cong., 1st sess. Joint (Congressional) Committee on the Investigation
of the Pearl Harbor Attack. Pearl Harbor Attack, 39 vols. (Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Offi ce, 1946), part 32, p. 43. Testimony before the
Naval Court of Inquiry.