Guest Post: Shozo Okumura Works Late at the Office

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History.

December 6, 1941 - Shozo Okumura, the first secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Washington, received a final memorandum electronically that declared an end to the bilateral talks with the United States.

This unknown junior diplomat was assigned the historic duty of physically delivering a paper copy of this announcement of the withdrawal from talks aimed at avoiding war to Secretary of State Cordell Hull by 1 P.M. the next day. In substance, it was a virtual declaration of war: the only meaningful purpose of this token notification was to spare the Empire of Japan the disgrace of carrying out a "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor. Of course, the empire had history of sneak attacks, having done exactly the same against the Russians at Port Arthur, Mukden against China, and the 'Peking Bridge' incident also against China.

Diplomatic talks on disputes over Tokyo's expansionist policies had clearly failed, and the American embargo continued. The United States was obviously prepared to tolerate British and French imperial possessions in the Far East but not an expansionist Empire of Japan. The consensual view in Tokyo was that America had a racist perspective, Hull's Note was an ultimatum, and "after that things [were] automatically going to happen," in effect making America the aggressor nation. In Washington, FDR had dropped his plans for offering a counter-proposal based on the military intelligence that Japan was moving invasion forces toward Thailand. The truth was that both Great Powers were fully aware that they were heading to war, and the timing of the delivery of the final memorandum was largely irrelevant to overall momentum as there was no need to cloak Japan's intention to declare war.

Another reason the memorandum was irrelevant was that American code-crackers had intercepted the transmission to Okumura. The first wave was detected by United States Army radar and, thanks to the last minute alert from Washington, was correctly identified as hostile. This provided barely sufficient time for anti-submarine nets to be laid, preventing torpedo attacks on the base. The U.S. Pacific Fleet was badly damaged but survived as a potent weapon to launch an immediate counterattack.

Author's Note:

In reality, he had gone home and the memo was not delivered before the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor "due to a lack of urgency." Takeo Iguchi, a professor at Tokai University, discovered the file at the Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Record Office in February, 1999. Many historians have said that if the document had been delivered earlier, the United States could have anticipated attack and taken precautions at its bases.

Provine's Addendum:

Cries of "sneaky attack" were heard across the United States following the Battle of Pearl Harbor, but the effective stand in defense proved to many Americans that there was nothing to worry about. With the US Navy in the Pacific returned to full strength after a few months of repairs, Japanese attacks at Midway and the Solomon Islands were rebuffed. Supply lines to the Philippines remained open, where the Japanese campaign against the rugged holdouts of the Allies ground on well into 1943 until the US Navy was able to establish an effective blockade. With over 100,000 Japanese soldiers trapped and ultimately surrendering, diplomats made efforts to reopen talks and promote a ceasefire. If the decision toward an unconditional surrender hadn't been part of the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, that might have been an early end to the war.

Instead, war dragged on the in the Pacific in something of a stalemate while resources were shifted to Africa and Europe. Japan was felt to be "contained" at sea, and much of the fighting focused on supporting Chinese efforts on mainland Asia, gradually working northward after retaking French Indochina. It was the demonstration of an atomic bomb, a single device that could destroy a whole city, and the threat of invasion by the USSR that brought an end to the war in the early summer of 1945.