Taki, FDR and the facts
From Lord Black of Crossharbour Sir: There were several inaccuracies in my friend Taki's version of the origins of the Pacific war in 1941 (High life', 20 September). Japan imported 75 per cent of her oil from the United States and Roosevelt had upheld the policy of his predecessor not to recognise territorial acquisitions by force. China had been invaded by Japan without provocation; 100 million Chinese were under brutal Japanese occupation, more than 50,000 civilians were killed in Nanking alone. It was Roosevelt's practice to embargo strategic materials to aggressor states, as he had with Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union after its attack on Finland.
It was also his policy to advance Lendlease assistance to the victims of aggression, as he did with Britain and Russia after Germany attacked it, and China. Roosevelt deployed B-17s to the Philippines to try to deter attack; there was no thought of initiating hostilities against Japan. as Taki claimed. Admiral Richmond Turner warned him that the Japanese might attack, not that the President's actions constituted an act of war. Roosevelt didn't take his advice on international law from naval officers. Nor was 'cutting off Japan's oil supply . . . a de facto declaration of war'. Japan could have bought all the oil it wanted from the United States if it had ceased its criminal assault upon China and illegal occupation of Indochina. Roosevelt didn't fall 'into the Japanese militarist trap'. The Japanese militarists committed the greatest strategic error in modern history, and permitted the Allies to win the second world war, which would not have been possible without the full participation of the United States.
Contrary to Taki's account, there were three aircraft carriers absent from Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked, and Roosevelt had 33 aircraft carriers under construction. (There were only 25 aircraft carriers in the world at that time.) Under no conceivable scenario could Japan have avoided utter annihilation after it attacked the Unit
ed States. I agree that Prince Konoye was a civilised man and that his death was regrettable, but he did not offer to let Roosevelt mediate the Sino-Japanese war as Taki claims, and Roosevelt only withdrew his tentative offer to meet Konoye at Honolulu or Juneau when Konoye was unable to assure any progress toward a rapprochement. Civilisation was fortunate that the president of the United States, then as subsequently, would not tolerate the barbarous aggression of one country against another, even when American interests were only marginally in play. In the Thirties, Roosevelt was the only leader of a Great Power not to be ashamed of: neither a barbarous dictator nor an appeaser of barbarous dictators.
Conrad Black
Chairman, Telegraph Group Ltd, London El4
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