A12 REDMOND SPOKESMAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2022
OFFBEAT OREGON
Part 3: Matsuoka allies with Nazis
E
ditor’s note: This is the
third in a three-part se-
ries on Oregon-raised
Yosuke Matsuoka, who became
the foreign minister of Imperial
Japan.
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
W
hen Yosuke Mat-
suoka accepted his
appointment as
Imperial Japan’s foreign min-
ister, it was the fulfillment of
a dream for him. The gregari-
ous 13-year-old who had been
informally adopted into Port-
land opium smuggler William
Dunbar’s household back in
1893 had come a long way in
47 years. He had become a na-
tional hero in Japan and was
by far the single most famous
Japanese person in the world
internationally and almost
certainly the most famous
University of Oregon alum-
nus.
It should have been a trium-
phal time for him. And while it
did have its moments, Matsuo-
ka’s year in the chair as Japan’s top
diplomat was a real pivot point
in his life. The mistakes he made
as Foreign Minister — crucial
strategic mistakes that ironically
came disguised as huge foreign
policy wins — would define Mat-
suoka and his legacy forever, and
not in a good way.
The first of these, and the big-
gest, was the pact with Nazi Ger-
many — the Tripartite Pact.
The pact was signed on Sept.
19, 1940, bringing Japan offi-
cially and irrevocably into the
Axis. Japan was now, for better
or (much) worse, an ally of Nazi
Germany.
Instead of respecting Japan’s
resolve and working to defuse
tensions to prevent getting drawn
into a two-front war, the Ameri-
cans grew alarmed, sensing that
they were being closed in upon.
Instead of sending Franklin D.
Roosevelt packing as punish-
ment for allowing this setback to
occur, they rallied around him
and started getting ready for the
upcoming fight. Instead of mak-
ing it harder for Roosevelt to
sell assistance to England to the
American public, the pact made
it easier.
There was something else that
Matsuoka did, too, that he soon
bitterly regretted — although it
was one of the diplomatic mas-
ter strokes of his career. In April
1941, while visiting Hitler in Ber-
lin, he induced Hitler to do a little
bragging and get carried away
while talking about what Ger-
many might do in a war with the
United States.
“Germany would wage a vig-
orous war against America with
U-boats and the Luftwaffe, and
with her greater experience ... this
would be more than a match for
America,” he told Matsuoka.
That’s when he said it, proudly
and publicly — a single sentence
that would literally seal his own
fate, along with Matsuoka’s and
that of both their countries:
“If Japan gets into a conflict
with the United States, Germany
on her part will take the neces-
sary steps at once.”
With that, Japan had the per-
sonal pledge of the Nazi dictator
that if war came — Germany
would be in it and on their side.
But as Matsuoka quickly
learned, that was a sword that
cut two ways. It turned Japan
into a tripwire that the Roosevelt
Administration could tug on to
Photo courtesy Japan War Art
A postcard from Imperial Japan showing Yosuke Matsuoka meeting
with Benito Mussolini in Rome in January 1933.
bring a reluctant America to the
aid of the beleaguered British.
As far as I know, there isn’t any
direct evidence that Roosevelt’s
people started tugging on that
tripwire. But, given the circum-
stances, it would be contrary to
human nature and the nature of
diplomacy if they didn’t. And in
the months that followed, Mat-
suoka clearly thought they were
doing exactly that.
Matsuoka’s tenure as foreign
minister ended three months
later, in July 1941. Convinced
the U.S. was trying to bait Japan
into war, he’d become something
of a loose cannon, and had lost
the confidence of army minister
Gen. Hideki Tojo, who by now
was the real power in the Japa-
nese government. Prime Minister
Konoe accordingly dissolved the
cabinet and reformed it without
Matsuoka.
Konoe’s government only
lasted a few months after that.
Tensions with the United States
got worse and worse. Tojo got
more and more bellicose. Finally,
in October, Konoe took the hint
and resigned.
He was replaced with Tojo.
And, of course, Tojo took the
country straight to war, taking
special care to make sure the Na-
zis would back Japan up as their
fuhrer had pledged to do. As, of
course, they did.
On the morning of the Pearl
Harbor attack, Matsuoka heard
the news on the radio, like every-
one else. Initially he was exhila-
rated, but a day later the situation
had sunk in a bit more. “The
Tripartite Pact was my worst
mistake,” he told a visitor. “I had
hoped to prevent the United
States from entering the war.”
Matsuoka spent the war years
struggling with the tuberculosis
that would shortly kill him. By
the time the two atomic bombs
had been detonated on Japanese
soil, he was in obvious decline.
And so the war ended with Ja-
pan utterly supine, and with Mat-
suoka nearly on his deathbed.
He finally succumbed to his tu-
berculosis at age 66 in June 1946
while in prison, awaiting trial on
charges of war crimes.
Yosuke Matsuoka was a prod-
uct of his time. But more than
that, he was a product of another
time, and another place — of
the late 19th century in one of
the roughest, least-refined parts
of the American frontier: The
shanghaiing-era Portland water-
front.
And it showed. Just after the
war’s end, a Japanese reporter
asked him what Americans were
like. This was his response:
“Now assuming that you are
walking on a small path in a field,
which is so narrow that only one
person can pass through, and an
American comes from the op-
posite direction,” he said. “You
are facing each other and neither
side is willing to yield his right of
way. Soon becoming impatient,
the American will clench his fist
and sock you in the jaw. Taken
by surprise you may lower your
head and let him pass by. Next
time when you meet him on the
same path, he will simply raise
his fist. He considers that the best
solution.”
He continued: “On the other
hand, if you do not retreat the
first time, and engage in a coun-
terattack, the American will be
shocked and take another look at
you. ‘Well, this fellow knows what
he is doing.’ So recognizing, he
will become your best friend.”
Responding to this quote, Da-
vid Lu, Matsuoka’s biographer,
writes, “This was the America
of cowboys, of confrontation at
high noon and of the Wild West.
And this image of the bygone
era acquired in the still-under-
developed Pacific Northwest
was to govern Matsuoka’s think-
ing when he negotiated with the
United States.”
As evidenced by the fact that
he was still thinking this way in
1945, after it was all over and his
“punch the cowboy and he will
become your pal” strategy had
failed again and again and again,
Matsuoka never really learned
the lesson.
And yet: Is it possible that the
crafty old diplomat was actually
right?
Certainly not in his own life-
time, but in ours, Japan has be-
come many Americans’ favorite
foreign country. In fact, accord-
ing to Gallup’s annual World Af-
fairs poll earlier this year, 82 per-
cent of Americans regard Japan
“mostly favorably” or “very favor-
ably.” This puts Japan in fourth
place, behind France (84%),
Great Britain (86%), and Canada
(87%).
As the rawness of the wounds
of the war has faded to a mem-
ory, a certain admiration and re-
spect for an uncommonly gutsy
old adversary remains. In fact,
that analogy of the American
cowboy and his Japanese new
best friend sitting side by side
at the bar in a saloon, each with
a shiny new black eye, having
a beer together — that actually
seems pretty spot-on, doesn’t it?
There is something else Mat-
suoka was long-term right about,
too, and this is where this story
actually gets a little spooky. It was
a famous speech, one that he gave
in Geneva in 1931 as the League
of Nations debated what to do
about the Manchuria Incident
(the invasion by rogue Japanese
army officers, you’ll remember).
Matsuoka stood before the world
on that day, and this is what he
said:
“Humanity crucified Jesus of
Nazareth 2,000 years ago,” he de-
claimed. “And today? Can any of
you assure me that the so-called
world opinion can make no mis-
take? We Japanese feel that we
are now put on trial. Some of the
people in Europe and America
may wish even to crucify Japan in
the 20th century. Gentlemen, Ja-
pan stands ready to be crucified!
But we do believe, and firmly
believe, that in a very few years,
world opinion will be changed
and that we also shall be under-
stood by the world as Jesus of
Sources
Agony of Choice: Matsuoka
Yosuke and the Rise and
Fall of the Japanese Empire,
1880-1946, a book by David
J. Lu published in 2002 by
Lexington Books; “Yosuke
Matsuoka: The Far-Western
Roots of a World-Political
Vision,” an article by Masa-
haru Ano published in the
Summer 1997 issue of Or-
egon Historical Quarterly;
“Americans Rate Canada,
Britain, France, Japan Most
Favorably,” an article by Me-
gan Brenan published on
news.gallup.com on March
14, 2022
Nazareth was.”
This speech was not well re-
ceived, especially by serious
Christians who felt it was bor-
derline blasphemy, if not worse.
But in Japan it was a sensation.
Translations were printed and
distributed. The speech was used
in schools’ English-language pro-
grams alongside Shakespeare. A
phonograph record was made of
the speech and sold in shops.
And again, looking back on
that speech from 1945, it sure
must have looked like that had
been just a lot of hot air, liberally
spiced with bitter irony. Japan
had been “crucified” indeed, on a
cross not of gold but of uranium,
and for what?
But by 1962 it actually made
some sense. In fact, if someone
had brought it to Nikita Khrush-
chev’s attention during the Cu-
ban Missile Crisis after he made
the conscious decision to risk be-
ing ousted as leader of the Soviet
Union by reaching past the big
red button on his desk and pick-
ing up the phone instead — a de-
cision that has to have been influ-
enced by the spectacle of Japan’s
burning cities and radiation-rav-
aged people and the gut-wrench-
ing journalism of John Hersey in
his eyewitness account of Hiro-
shima after the bomb — maybe
Khrushchev would have under-
stood, and agreed with, Matsuo-
ka’s sentiment.
It is entirely possible, if not
likely, that Japan’s atomic sacrifice
saved the world from nuclear ho-
locaust 17 years later.
The argument goes like this:
Hiroshima became a sacrifi-
cial lamb on that day and a few
days later Nagasaki became an-
other, giving the world a small
taste of what nuclear holocaust
might look like in the era of
multi-megaton hydrogen bombs.
After seeing that film footage
and reading those eyewitness
accounts, no one would ever be
able to think of nuclear war in
purely abstract terms again. No
one would ever be able to hold
national pride in one hand, and
thermonuclear war in the other,
and think for one second that
they were of similar value.
And that is a gift the whole
world received in 1945, paid for
in full with the blood of Japa-
nese innocents. The gift they
bequeathed us was a visceral
demonstration of why such
weapons must never be used
again. And we may never know
if we owe those innocents our
own lives. But it seems likely,
doesn’t it?
So, maybe — just maybe — we
would all be dead today and our
beautiful planet a scarred and
smoking cinder if it hadn’t been
for an incompetent drug smug-
gler on the old shanghaiing-era
Portland waterfront taking a little
Japanese boy into his household,
130 years ago. And if that’s not
the “butterfly effect,” I’d just like
to know what is.
█
Finn J.D. John teaches at Oregon
State University and writes about odd
tidbits of Oregon history. His book,
Heroes and Rascals of Old Oregon, was
recently published by Ouragan House
Publishers. To contact him or suggest a
topic: finn@offbeatoregon.com or 541-
357-2222.