The Imperial Conference of 5 November

In the first days of November 1941 the Japanese state travelled, in less than a hundred hours, from an hours-long dispute around the table of a liaison conference to orders that set the army and navy in motion. During the night of 1–2 November the government of General Hideki Tōjō and the chiefs of staff agreed on a new “Essentials for Carrying Out the Empire’s Policies”. On 2 November they presented it to Emperor Hirohito; on 3 November the chiefs of staff briefed him on the operational plans, including the plan to strike the American fleet in Hawaii; and on 5 November a conference in the emperor’s presence (御前会議, gozen kaigi) adopted a document whose first sentence stated that the Empire “resolves on war with the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands”. Hostilities were to open at the beginning of December, and negotiations with Washington could continue until midnight on 1 December.

Many war chronologies record under 4 November that Hirohito approved the attack on Pearl Harbor. This is a shorthand that needs qualifying. No separate decision to attack Hawaii was taken on 4 November. The Naval General Staff had already accepted the plan for the Hawaii Operation in the second half of October; the emperor heard it from the Chief of the Naval General Staff on 3 November; and the war whose opening blow was to be Pearl Harbor was resolved upon politically, conditionally, by the conference of 5 November. The final decision for war was taken only by the Imperial Conference of 1 December, and on 2 December the monarch approved the date of 8 December. 4 November was a day of preparation for the conference: on that day, according to some historians, including Herbert Bix, the emperor attended a joint meeting of the army and navy Supreme War Councillors (軍事参議官会議), which considered the war plans ahead of the conference; the foreign minister sent Washington instructions containing new Japanese proposals; and the former ambassador in Berlin, Saburō Kurusu, agreed to fly to the United States.

Sixteen hours

The Imperial Conference of 6 September had tied the negotiations with the United States to a deadline and to a decision for war. When the deadline passed without agreement, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe resigned, and his successor, General Tōjō, was instructed by the emperor to reconsider the matter afresh, without feeling bound by the September resolution. From 23 October the government and the general staffs met almost daily. The calculations were grim. Since August, when the Americans cut off oil supplies, Japan had been living on its reserves, and the navy kept repeating that it was growing weaker every month while the American fleet was growing. On 30 October the navy minister, Admiral Shigetarō Shimada, who had joined the government as an advocate of diplomacy, told his deputies that he could no longer turn back the “great tide”, and agreed to war. Japanese historiography regards this moment as the removal of the last barrier on the road to war.

At nine in the morning on 1 November a liaison conference began which the war diary of the Army General Staff later called “historic”. Tōjō put three options to those present: renounce war and endure hardship (“sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall”, as the Chinese proverb has it), decide on war at once, or decide on war while pursuing preparations and negotiations in parallel. The foreign minister, Shigenori Tōgō, and the finance minister, Okinori Kaya, spoke in favour of the first option. Kaya pressed the Chief of the Naval General Staff, Admiral Osami Nagano, on whether the American fleet would really attack Japan if Japan did not start a war. Nagano replied evasively that there was no way of knowing, while assuring him that for the first two years of a war the navy’s victory was certain; what would come after that, nobody could tell. The argument that prevailed was that waiting meant certain decline: if after two years, when the oil had run out, the American fleet moved against Japan, the Empire would have to yield without a fight.

The Chief of the Army General Staff, General Hajime Sugiyama, and his deputy, General Osamu Tsukada, demanded an immediate decision for war, with diplomacy reduced to a screen for the preparations. Tōgō and Kaya defended a last attempt at negotiation. In the end the third option was adopted, but on the terms of the Army General Staff, which did not want a repeat of September, when vague wording had given the politicians room for manoeuvre. Negotiations could continue until midnight on 1 December, and hostilities were to begin at the beginning of December. If agreement were reached by that hour, the war was to be called off.

The fiercest argument concerned what Japan could offer. On 29 October “Plan A” (甲案) had been agreed: Japan accepted that the principle of equal commercial opportunity should apply in China if it applied throughout the world, and would withdraw its troops from China, except for the northern provinces, Mengjiang and Hainan island, within two years of concluding peace with China. In those regions they were to remain for “the necessary time”. An annex instructed the diplomats that if the Americans asked how long that meant, they were to answer about 25 years. Tōgō wanted five years, in the general staff there was talk of 99, and Tōjō pushed through a figure that sounded like a time limit but in practice meant permanent occupation. On 1 November, to the soldiers’ surprise, Tōgō laid “Plan B” (乙案) on the table, a temporary arrangement: Japan would move its troops from southern to northern Indochina, and the United States would restore the trade that had existed before the freezing of assets, together with oil supplies. The Army General Staff protested that this meant withdrawing troops without settling the China question. Tōgō threatened to resign, which would have brought down the government. The compromise was to add a point under which the United States would undertake not to hinder Japan in ending the war in China – in practice, to stop its aid to Chiang Kai-shek. The staff officers agreed in the conviction that the Americans would never accept such a condition anyway.

The meeting ended at one in the morning on 2 November, after sixteen hours. Tōgō and Kaya asked for time to think it over and gave their consent before noon. At five in the afternoon Tōjō, Sugiyama and Nagano stood together before the emperor and reported the resolution. According to those present, Tōjō spoke with tears in his eyes, as if apologising for having failed to fulfil the monarch’s hopes for peace. Hirohito asked about the chances of the negotiations and about how Japan would justify war to the world. According to Japanese studies, that same day he suggested to the prime minister that in future an end to the war might be sought through the mediation of the Pope. He agreed to the summoning of an Imperial Conference.

The plans on the table

On 3 November Sugiyama and Nagano presented the emperor with the operational plans for war with the United States, Britain and the Netherlands. The army was to strike simultaneously at Malaya and the Philippines, then take the Dutch East Indies with their oil, as well as Hong Kong and Guam. Nagano outlined the navy’s plan, whose boldest element was an attack by carrier aircraft on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. According to Japanese studies he also gave the emperor the planned date of the attack: 8 December Japanese time, that is Sunday 7 December in Hawaii. Thus the emperor learned for the first time in detail of the operation on which the commander of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, had been working since the spring.

The Naval General Staff had long resisted it. Its officers considered a strike on Hawaii a gamble: it required six aircraft carriers to cross the North Pacific undetected, and the carriers were needed in the south, where the struggle for raw materials was to be fought. Yamamoto argued that unless the American fleet were destroyed at the start of the war, the south could not be taken safely, because the Americans would strike the flank of the Japanese offensive. When in mid-October the general staff still refused to agree to the use of all six carriers, his emissary, Captain Kameto Kuroshima, declared in Tokyo that if the plan were not adopted, Yamamoto would resign. Around 20 October Nagano gave way, saying that since the fleet commander was so sure of himself, he had to be trusted. From then on preparations went ahead at full speed. On 3 November Yamamoto was in Tokyo and agreed with Nagano the final text of the Combined Fleet’s operational order.

The emperor’s part in these preparations has been the subject of a dispute that has gone on since 1945. Hirohito did not direct operations, but as supreme commander he received detailed reports and asked questions, and without his sanction the general staffs could not issue orders. Historians such as Herbert Bix stress that in November, unlike in September, the emperor made no attempt to halt the course of events, and that the confidence with which the general staffs presented the prospects of the first phase of the war dispelled his earlier doubts. The diary of the Grand Chamberlain Saburō Hyakutake, discovered in 2021, contains remarks indicating that in the second half of November the emperor’s entourage was trying to restrain his resolve rather than strengthen it. Other scholars point out that the monarch acted within a system in which he had long refrained from rejecting resolutions agreed by the government and the general staffs, and that after the war he himself pleaded precisely this custom in his defence.

The meeting of 5 November

The conference at the Imperial Palace on 5 November, by Japanese reckoning the seventh Imperial Conference since 1938, followed the same ritual as the one in September: the participants knew the text and read out prepared statements, while questions were put by the President of the Privy Council, Yoshimichi Hara. Tōjō set out the situation. According to the minutes published after the war, he said that in two years Japan would have no oil for its armed forces and its ships would come to a standstill, and that if it merely waited, after two or three years it would become a third-rate power. Tōgō reported on the state of the negotiations and did not hide that the chances of agreement were slim. Kaya and the head of the Planning Board, General Teiichi Suzuki, described the state of the economy and of reserves, giving assurances that Japan would manage for the first years of a war, especially once it had captured the oil of the Dutch East Indies. Nagano and Sugiyama spoke about the prospects of the operations.

Hara asked above all about things no one could foresee. According to the minutes, he observed that a war with America would probably be long, and voiced the fear that the Germans, who for racial reasons regarded the Japanese with dislike, might at some point come to terms with the Anglo-Saxons and leave Japan on its own. He concluded, however, that since the negotiations offered no hope and further waiting meant ruin, adopting the plan was unavoidable. This time the emperor remained silent. The document was adopted without amendment.

The new “Essentials for Carrying Out the Empire’s Policies” (帝国国策遂行要領) differed from the September version from the very first sentence. In September Japan was to prepare for war “with the determination not to shrink from it”. In November the Empire, “in order to break through the present crisis, secure its self-preservation and self-defence and build a new order in Greater East Asia”, resolved on war with the United States, Britain and the Netherlands. The resolution had five points: the time for the use of force was set for the beginning of December, and the army and navy were to complete their preparations; negotiations with America were to be conducted on the basis of Plans A and B; cooperation with Germany and Italy was to be strengthened; close military relations were to be established with Thailand just before the start of hostilities; and if the negotiations with America succeeded by midnight on 1 December, the use of force would be called off. In this one point lay the whole hope of peace.

The orders

Still on 5 November, when Nagano returned from the palace, the Naval General Staff issued Yamamoto with the first Imperial General Headquarters navy order (大海令第一号). It stated that, in view of the strong likelihood that Japan would be forced into war with the United States, Britain and the Netherlands, the Empire had decided to complete its operational preparations in the first ten days of December. That same day, aboard the battleship Nagato, flagship of the Combined Fleet, lying in Saeki Bay on Kyūshū, Yamamoto issued his Operational Order No. 1, a thick volume describing every phase of the preparations and the opening strikes. On 7 November Order No. 2 set the so-called Y-Day as 8 December. On 6 November the army formed the Southern Army under General Hisaichi Terauchi, which was to conquer Malaya, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies.

The orders did not yet mean war. Yamamoto told his commanders that if the negotiations in Washington succeeded, all forces would turn back, even if they were already under way, and, according to the recollections of those present, he told anyone who thought this impracticable to tender his resignation at once. In the second half of November the carriers assembled in Hitokappu Bay in the Kuril Islands.

The diplomats’ last mission

Early on the morning of 4 November Tōgō summoned Kurusu and asked him to fly to Washington to support the ambassador, Admiral Kichisaburō Nomura, who had long been asking for help or to be recalled. In the evening Kurusu met Tōjō. According to Japanese studies, the prime minister put the chances of agreement at roughly 30 per cent and assured him that if an agreement were concluded, he would back it against any opposition at home. The one condition that could not be abandoned was that troops remain in China. On 5 November Kurusu left Tokyo. According to contemporary accounts, the Americans, at the request of the Japanese, held a Pan American aircraft for him in Hong Kong, in which he crossed the Pacific. On 15 November he was in Washington.

Also on 4 November Tōgō sent Nomura the text of both plans, with the proviso that they were a “last effort” and, in the full sense of the word, a final proposal. On 5 November he instructed him to begin with Plan A, to present Plan B only with Tokyo’s consent, and to sign an agreement by 25 November at the latest. The telegrams were read by the Americans, who had been breaking the Japanese diplomatic cipher for a year. Washington therefore knew that Tokyo had set a deadline, and assumed that once it passed Japan would strike. The translations produced by Magic intelligence also contained errors that deepened distrust of the Japanese proposals. On 7 November Nomura presented Plan A to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and a few days later to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Hull, who already knew the contents of Plan B as well, did not take it seriously.

Place in the war

The resolution of 5 November was Japan’s decisive step towards war. From then on the negotiations in Washington proceeded in the shadow of preparations that the general staffs regarded as more important than the talks. Officers of the Army General Staff wrote in their diary that they feared an agreement, and on hearing of Kurusu’s difficulties they rejoiced that the talks would soon be broken off. On 20 November Nomura and Kurusu presented Plan B. On 22 November Tōgō moved the deadline for signing an agreement to 29 November, adding that after that things would happen “automatically”. On 26 November Hull handed the Japanese a note demanding the withdrawal of all troops from China and Indochina, and in Tokyo it was regarded as an ultimatum. A day earlier by Washington time, and on 26 November by Tokyo time, the carrier force of Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo had sailed from the Kurils towards Hawaii. On 1 December the Imperial Conference resolved to begin the war; on 2 December the fleet received the signal “Niitakayama nobore” (Climb Mount Niitaka); and on 7 December 1941, Hawaiian time, Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor and troops landed in Malaya.

Before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the resolutions of 6 September and 5 November were among the principal pieces of evidence for the charge of conspiracy against peace. Tōjō, Tōgō, Kaya, Suzuki and Shimada were convicted, Nagano died during the trial, and Sugiyama committed suicide in September 1945. The emperor was not indicted. For historians the conference of 5 November remains an example of how a state whose leaders knew that they could not win a long war with America judged it a smaller risk than concessions in China and the slow exhaustion of its oil reserves. In doing so it accepted a calculation in which the fate of diplomacy was decided by the general staffs’ calendar.