From Mahan to Pearl Harbor by Sadao Asada

Author:Sadao Asada [Asada, Sadao]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612512952
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

THE NAVY’S SEARCH FOR PARITY

A deepening sense of isolation in the aftermath of Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations in March 1933, the crisis in relations with the United States, fear of American (or Anglo-American) intervention in the Far East, and uneasiness about the incipient U.S. naval buildup under President Franklin D. Roosevelt—all these factors combined to convince Japanese navy men that the Washington and London treaties had become outmoded and disadvantageous. From his first days in office, Roosevelt had backed a naval buildup as contributing to national recovery and making the United States the naval equal of Japan. Recent developments in air power were a new factor that made Japan’s defense more vulnerable.15 The navy believed that technological advances facilitated the American fleet’s transpacific passage and conversely made Japan’s attrition-interceptive strategy more difficult to implement.

Japan had traditionally contended that it needed a 70 percent ratio to have a fifty-fifty or slightly better chance in a main-fleet engagement in the western Pacific, but this ratio no longer seemed adequate, given the drastic reduction in the strategic distances of the Pacific. Japan’s naval planners rapidly concluded that the nation must abrogate the “unequal” treaties and demand parity at the forthcoming preliminary London talks, scheduled to open in October 1934 to lay the groundwork for the naval conference in 1935.16

Taking stock of Japanese sensitivities, Ambassador Joseph C. Grew wrote in his diary on 23 January 1934, “Whatever may happen with regard to the Naval Conference in 1935 ... it will inevitably subject Japan’s relations with the United States, and perhaps Great Britain in less degree, to a more or less serious strain, with loud and angry vituperations against us for keeping Japan an ‘inferior nation.’”17

An early and vociferous advocate of parity in the middle echelon was Commander Ishikawa Shingo. Like Katō Kanji, he fervently believed in the equality of the right of defense among sovereign nations. Characteristically, his claim bordered on irrationalism. He held that the parity question had “already ceased to be a matter of mathematical theory, so it is impossible even to explain it or have it understood.”18 On 21 October he submitted to Katō a long memorandum in which he argued that the United States would not refrain from using arms to enforce the Open Door policy. He declared that the success of the Manchurian venture would depend on naval parity. In fact, Japan must be “prepared for war if it could not attain the parity at the forthcoming naval conference.” To Ishikawa, the parity demand and the Manchurian venture were two sides of the same coin. He wrote, “The next naval conference is not only a meeting to discuss naval strength but will be an open forum for the United States, Britain, and China to censure Japan’s program in China. In short, the next naval conference is a crucial gathering to decide whether our Manchurian policy is going to be a success or failure, and the conference will mark the initial stage of international struggle in the Pacific.

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