By Bismah Mirza
Almost 80 years ago, on December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor took place. It is believed that the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese was in retaliation to the oil embargo imposed by Americans. However, contrary to the popular belief, Franklin Roosevelt, the then President of the United States was against an embargo, he wanted to only allow as much oil to Japanese as they need to operate their military and not go beyond China.
In the last week of July 1941, Washington froze all Japanese assets in the US. The State Department was authorized to decide how much oil Japan could purchase, and a three-man panel named the Foreign Funds Control Committee (FFCC) comprised of assistant secretary of state Dean Acheson, Treasury Department general counsel Edward Foley and Justice Department assistant attorney Francis Shea was authorized to release money from the US Treasury for the Japanese to buy the approved volume of oil.
The intention behind freezing Japanese assets was to discipline Japanese and to bring them to’ their senses’ rather than on their knees. President Roosevelt was confident that his strategy to constraint the Japanese and the support he had lent to China (a poor country then was enough to establish an Christian state in the Far East) would keep the US out of the war. He then left on a secret visit to meet Winston Churchill for the first time to Newfoundland in Canada.
Taking advantage of the absence, the FFCC did what it could to obstruct the release of funds to Japan and imposed a de facto embargo. Acheson, the dominant figure behind the scheme, took advantage of the fact that secretary of state Cordell Hull was ill and absent from the State Department for an extended period.
Lower-level officials effectively cut off the supply of oil to Japan behind Roosevelt and Hull’s backs. Facing such humiliation by the hands of American bureaucracy, Japanese shifted their mindset towards war. There were several back and forth diplomatic engagements during the following weeks to avoid such an outcome, but the damage had already been done.
On November 26, 1941, Hull presented the Japanese ambassador with an ultimatum, demanding the complete withdrawal of all Japanese troops from China and Indochina. By the time the note arrived in Tokyo, though, Japanese aircraft carriers were already on their way to Pearl Harbor. The rest is history.
What is surprising is that all those three bureaucrats who were responsible for dragging the US to war were promoted. 80 years later Japan no longer possesses a threat to the US but its neighbor China does. Which at that time was a poor country and was fighting the Japanese at one end and communist on the other? A country which the United States once sympathized with is now being warned against by its think tanks, bureaucrats and a new generation of war has been in place to deter china. Historians called the Washington Warrior, who wanted a strict policy for China.
The lessons which China in general and world should take from Pearl Harbor are:
- Firstly, the words and act of U.S president is important but it is not the only voice which should be given importance
- Secondly, while dealing with U.S cautioned will be practiced as its bureaucracy creates such situation for their president where war is unavoidable
- Thirdly, Washington can be very forgiving to the act of their advisors, policy makers or pundits who creates war like situation
- Lastly, it is very likely especially looking at American history that sane voices will get drowned by the hue and cry made by the Washington Warriors.
And it is a possibility that World may remember China as an irrational and ambitious state which prompted the war.Caution & Patience are the key words.