The Ambassador Who Tried to Prevent the Attack on Pearl Harbor In 1931, the Japanese army occupied Manchuria. The following year, Japanese naval officers assassinated the prime minister. Conspiracies flourished and anti-West propaganda campaigns swept Japan. Into this maelstrom stepped Joseph C. Grew, America’s most experienced and talented diplomat. For the next decade, right up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Ambassador Grew warned American leaders about the risks posed by Japan’s raging nationalism and militarism, as he also attempted to influence Tokyo’s increasingly erratic and volatile foreign policy. The events that unfolded during Grew’s tenure proved to be pivotal for Japan and for the world.
Freelance journalist Steve Kemper has written four books and many articles for national magazines. His most recent book is Our Man in Tokyo: an American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor (Mariner, 2022), a behind-the-scenes account of the personalities and contending forces in Tokyo during the volatile decade that led to World War II. It recently won the Dillon Book Award from the American Academy of Diplomacy.
Steve grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. After graduating from the University of Detroit, he taught literature and writing at the University of Connecticut while earning a Ph.D. He has taught writing and journalism as an adjunct professor at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and at Fairfield University. Kemper lives in West Hartford.
Speaker suggested by Charles Salmans and Gary Banks and arranged with the help of Gary Banks.
Speaker Summary
Steve spoke about his book and provided an enlightening view of the activities leading up to the invasion of Pearl Harbor by Japan, a perspective that most people have a limited understanding of, especially relative to our knowledge of the build-up to the war in Europe. His focus was on the role and perspectives of Joseph Grew, the Ambassador to Japan from 1931-1941, with Kemper relying heavily on the personal diaries of Grew to provide an insider’s look into the activities of the time.
Steve started with a brief history of Grew and his service as a career diplomat, serving in 14 posts and being appointed by President Hoover as Ambassador to Japan in 1931 in an effort to stabilize and bring greater harmony to the relationship between the U.S. and Japan. Kemper provided a look into the turmoil in Japan that resulted from a complex and often discordant relationship between the military and political leadership and Japan’s move to a Parliamentary Democracy juxtaposed against an historical leadership approach by the ruling family of the emperor. As a result, Grew dealt with 17 leadership changes in Japan during his tenure there. This was further compounded by the rapid revolution of the Japanese culture as it emerged from a philosophy of closed secrecy to becoming a world power in just 60 years. Japan embraced many aspects of a more open/progressive Western culture which created tension and clashed with the more conservative/traditional view of Japanese culture and values. This ultimately overflowed into debate, violence and resistance fueled my media that misrepresented the role of the West and the U.S. in fomenting these changes.
While Grew focused on bringing the U.S. and Japan closer together, the rise of political extremism (and distrust among leading power players in the U.S State Department), ultimately undermined his efforts and the hope for peace between the nations. This was exacerbated by Japan’s activities against the civilians and cities in China as well as U.S. resources, forces, property and people in the area during and after the Sino-Japanese War. In fact, Grew counted over 300 instances of “unintentional” acts against the U.S. in the area during the late 1930’s.
Following a brief furlough, Grew returned to Japan in late 1939 just as Nazi Germany began its assault on Europe. The success of Germany emboldened Japan and their view of their imperial right to control Asia, undermining the U.S. attempts at slowing/managing Japan’s efforts at expansion. Then, in 1941, efforts led by Grew and his Japanese counterpart to reach a peaceful approach to moving forward was thwarted by Secretary of State Hull’s distrust of Japan, leading to Japan moving forward with their alternative plan – an assault on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor.
Kemper closed with the story of the delayed communication from FDR to Japanese leadership on December 6 that might have stopped the attack the next morning and how Grew was then held as a POW in Japan for 6 months. During this time, he wrote a report regarding what happened and what could have been done differently to avoid this tragedy. The report was rejected (and largely destroyed) when presented by Grew to Hull. Kemper characterized this report as Grew’s answer to the question “what if….”. We’ll never know the answer, but it was Kemper’s perspective that nothing was likely to deter Japan’s actions based on their view of their imperialistic right to control Asia and their willingness to pay whatever price it required.