Empire Game

All the pieces were on the board for a new game of Empire, and Japan was pleased. In Tokyo, Prince Fumimaro Konoye sat with his new and venturesome military Cabinet, without the embarrassing presence of Yosuke Matsuoka, who had guessed wrong about German-Soviet relations. In Russia the bulk of the Red Army was anchored a comfortable 4,500 miles away from the Amur River and Vladivostok. Hitler's public-address system in Vichy had been tested, echoed his every word with admirable fidelity. Steaming south, somewhere in the China Sea, were warships of Japan's Fleet, transports of Japan's Army, all provided with good charts of the Indo-China coast.

As conventional as a chess gambit were the first moves of the game. Vichy's loudspeakers rumbled out the most abject communique they had ever uttered. It began: "The Japanese Government Information Office published this morning the following declaration . . .", went on for seven paragraphs of pretty indirections. Japan and Vichy were in complete accord, had decided to "cooperate" in the "defense" of Indo-China.

Japan's "joint-defense" effort was excellently coordinated. Hardly was the announcement out than Japan's ships nosed in at Saigon, were landing their freight of men and guns. As the troops arrived, Governor General Jean Decoux hardly looked up from the conference table in Hanoi, where he was having a long serious talk with the chief of Japan's military mission, Major General Raishiro Sumita.

Before a foot or wheel had touched the ground, the well-drilled Japanese Foreign Office had turned its attention to the campaign's next objective, Thailand (whose biggest politico, Major General Phya Bahol--pronounced Peeya B'hoon--last month hastily took the non-political yellow robe of a lama, entered a monastery). It looked, said the Foreign Office's Tokyo newspaper, as though Thailand would need the strong helping hand of an outside country to keep the British from disrupting "the good relationship that has developed between Japan and Thailand."

So far the game had followed the rules, and the Japanese could reasonably expect a breathing space while Britain and the U.S. pondered their answering move. But the thinking had been done before hand. So fast that it made Tokyo's head swim, President Roosevelt issued an order freezing Japanese assets in the U.S. (see p. 11). A similar British order followed at once.

Axis capitals loosed a stereotyped yell about U.S. aggression in the Far East, and let it go at that. Japan made a routine gesture of freezing U.S. and British assets, but Finance Minister Masatsune Ogura explained carefully that Japan would use economic measures against the democracies only in retaliation, would, pending further developments, continue to pay interest on Japanese dollar bonds. He added that Japan is blessed with an abundance of raw materials (see p. 61).

Japanese-held East Asia, however, is virtually unblessed with petroleum. Almost every drum of gas and gallon of oil that Japan burns in her tanks, planes and other empire-building machinery must be imported. Biggest source of supply, outside of the U.S., is The Netherlands Indies, with whom Japan last year contracted for an annual supply of 1,800,000 tons.

Before Japan had a chance to take another step, she received a rude shock. The Netherlands Indies not only froze Japanese assets but slapped a bung in the oil barrel, suspended the contract.

From Japan's point of view, at the week's beginning, her orderly chess match had turned into a rough-'em-up game of sandlot football. She had her bases in Indo-China as planned--a long strip of Annamese coast on the China Sea, a hunk of Cochin China across the Gulf of Siam from Malaya and, diagonally, from Singapore. But playing against her were the British Empire, the U.S., The Netherlands Indies. She had counted on facing them, but she had not expected such swift teamwork. It was disconcerting.

Furthermore, when Japan would have liked dearly to keep her mind strictly on southern Asia, there was urgent unfinished business to the north. For the benefit of her good friend Adolf Hitler, who was having his own troubles, she ought to create a diversion in Siberia; for her own benefit she ought as soon as possible to seize the port of Vladivostok (called by Japanese "the dagger which points at the heart of Japan") looming over her from the mainland.

Japan was at last playing in the big leagues. The game was war.

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