1941; Leadership in US and Japan Primed for War

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Michael Beschloss, The March to War; Two books explore the run-up to World War II in the United States and Japan.
www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/books ... and-japan-1941.html
(“This story has, of course, been told many times before, but what Kaiser especially brings to the table is his mastery not only of the documents and other primary sources that directly reveal Roosevelt’s behind-the-scenes leadership but also of other archives that are sometimes too little mined by political historians, like Army and Navy war plans (the author taught history at the Naval War College)”)

Note:
(a) This is a book review on two books.
(i) David Kaiser, No End Save Victory; How FDR led the nation into war. Basic Books, 2014. (The “save” is a preposition meaning “except.”)
(ii) Eri Hotta, Japan 1941; Countdown to infamy. Alfred A Knopf, 2014.

(b)
(i) “Eri Hotta was born and raised in Tokyo. She received a BA in history at Princeton and did her M.Phil. and D.Phil. in International Relations at Oxford, where she also taught from 2001-2005. She now lives in New York.”
Macmillan, undated
us.macmillan.com/author/erihotta-1
(ii) The surname Hotta is 堀田 (hori 堀 【ほり】 (n): "(1) moat; fosse; (2) canal; ditch").
(iii) However, Amazon Japan uses her English spelling rather than kanji.

(c) “In February 1933, President-elect Franklin Roosevelt was nearly murdered in Miami by a gunman whose errant fatal shot struck Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago. Cermak gallantly told Roosevelt, ‘I’m glad it was me instead of you.’ Today’s Americans should not disagree. Had Roosevelt been killed, the 32nd president of the United States would have been his running mate, [House] Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas.”
(i) Giuseppe Zangara
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Zangara
(1900-1933; executed)
(ii) Anton Cermak
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Cermak
(1873-1933; of Czech origin; Democrat; Chicago mayor (1931-1933))
(iii) United States presidential inauguration
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_inauguration
(Prior to the Twentieth Amendment, [ratified on Jan 23, 1933] the date was March 4, the day of the year on which the Constitution of the United States first took effect in 1789; the last inauguration to take place on the older date was Franklin D. Roosevelt's first one on March 4, 1933

(d) “Kaiser argues that his famous 1940 deal to trade United States destroyers for British bases was ‘a logical step based on current US war plans and the ever-present possibility that Britain might fall and force the United States immediately to defend the Western Hemisphere.’  * * * United States Army intelligence was warning him that unless the still-unprepared America entered the war fast, Britain would enjoy at best a one-in-three chance to survive. * * * the author almost offhandedly quotes Roosevelt in November 1941, privately recalling his involvement years before in Harvard’s decision to reduce its share of Jewish students to 15 percent; Kaiser adds no reaction of his own.”
(i) Franklin D Roosevelt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt
(On September 2, 1940, Roosevelt openly defied the Neutrality Acts by passing the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, which, in exchange for military base rights in the British Caribbean Islands, gave 50 WWI American destroyers to Britain)
(ii) Neutrality Acts of 1930s
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Acts_of_1930s
(of 1935, 1936, 1937 and 1939)

All were signed by Roosevelt himself!
(iii) Rafael Medoff, What FDR Said About Jews in Private; His personal sentiments about Jews may help explain America's tepid response to the Holocaust. Los Angeles Times, Apr 7, 2013 (op-ed)
articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/07/opinion/la-oe-medoff-roosevelt-holocaust-20130407
("In 1923, as a member of the Harvard board of directors, Roosevelt decided there were too many Jewish students at the college and helped institute a quota to limit the number admitted")

(e) “Eri Hotta’s ‘Japan 1941’ seeks to reveal and explain the secret internal mechanics of the Tokyo regime that planned and executed the Pearl Harbor assault. * * * the Japanese leadership was a sequestered gaggle of blinkered, hallucinatory, buck-passing incompetents, who finally pushed the vacillating Emperor Hirohito into gambling on war against the United States. * * * the cumulative effect of her narrative is chilling as we watch it march toward global tragedy despite warning after warning.”
(i)
(A) blinker (n): “BLINDER”
(B) blonker (vt): “to put blinders on”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blinker
(ii) pass the buck: "Evade responsibility [or blame] by passing it on to someone else"
The Phrase Finder, undated.
www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/pass-the-buck.html

choi

(continued)

(f) “Hirohito’s 裕仁 [年号: 昭和] navy chief of staff tells him in July 1941 that there might be ‘no choice but to strike,’ although he is ‘uncertain as to any victory.’ The emperor replies, ‘What a reckless war that would be!’ Hirohito complains to his prime minister, Prince Konoe Fumimaro, that he has been ‘kept in the dark’ about advanced military preparations, and ineffectually recites a pacifist poem written by his grandfather [年号: 明治,  whose personal name is 睦仁]: ‘In all four seas all are brothers and sisters. / Then why, oh why, these rough winds and waves?’  Gen TŌJŌ Hideki 東条 英機, then the Japanese defense minister [陸軍大臣 (1940-1944), also translated as Army Minister], is told a potential war is unwinnable, but brazenly scoffs: ‘This is, after all, a desktop exercise. Actual wars do not go as you fellows imagine.’ Hotta acidly remarks: “Was Tojo hoping for the sudden discovery of oil fields in Japan so that his country could forget that the United States had until recently been providing more than 90 percent of its petroleum? . . . Was he anticipating a series of natural disasters to work in the empire’s favor, like the typhoons that had prevented the Moguls from invading Japan in the 13th century?’ In September 1941, three months before Pearl Harbor, Adm Yamamoto Isoroku presents his now well-known caution that ‘a war with so little chance of success should not be fought.’ As Hotta writes, in the end ‘all the leaders asserted their right to decide Japan’s fate by initiating a war, while paradoxically insinuating that they had no ultimate control over the fate of the country they led.”
(i)
(A) Osami NAGANO  永野 修身
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagano_Osami
(1880-1947; chief 総長 of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff 軍令部 (April 1941-February 1944); A級戦犯; 病死 while awaiting trial)
(B) Japanese Wiki said Admiral Nagano said “uncertain as to any victory 勝てるかどうかも分かりません” when asked by the emperor 勝算を問われると on the occasion “[1941]7月30日には昭和天皇に上奏し.”

* wakaru 分かる 【わかる】 (v): "to understand"
(ii) Fumimaro KONOE  近衛 文麿
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fumimaro_Konoe
(1891-1945; His grandson, Morihiro HOSOKAWA 細川 護煕, became prime minister fifty years later [after his suicide])

(iii) Hirohito “ineffectually recites a pacifist poem written by his grandfather [年号: 明治,  whose personal name is 睦仁]: ‘In all four seas all are brothers and sisters. / Then why, oh why, these rough winds and waves?’”

昭和天皇
ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%98%AD%E5%92%8C%E5%A4%A9%E7%9A%87

Quote: “1941年（昭和16年）9月6日の御前会議で、対英米蘭戦は避けられないものとして決定された。御前会議では発言しないことが通例となっていた昭和天皇はこの席で敢えて発言をし、明治天皇御製の
「四方の海 みなはらからと 思ふ世に など波風の 立ちさわぐらん 」
[moern way of speaking:]（四方の海にある国々は皆兄弟姉妹と思う世に なぜ波風が騒ぎ立てるのであろう）”

という短歌を詠み上げた。”

translation: In the Imperial Council held on Sept 6, 1941, it was decided wars against UK, US and the Netherlands were unavoidable. Usually reticent in Imperial Council up to that point, Emperor Shōwa ventured to comment and recite Emperor Meiji’s tanka 短歌 (a kind of poem): I really think all people in the four seas are my compatriots, why make trouble?      

* あえて 《敢えて(P)》  (adv): “dare (to do something); venture (often overcoming reluctance, or in the face of probable failure)”
* pronoun:  みな = all (people)
* 同胞 【どうほう(P[rincipal]); はらから】  (The kanji has two pronunciations in Japan: mainly Chinese pronunciation dōhō, but also Japanese pronunciation “harakara.”)
* namikaze 波風 【なみかぜ】 (n): "(1) wind and waves; (2) strife; discord"
* 波風が立つ 【なみかぜがたつ】 (exp[ression]): “to be discordant; to have discord”
* sawagu 騒ぐ 【さわぐ】 (v): “to clamor"

(iv) “Adm YAMAMOTO Isoroku 山本 五十六 presents his now well-known caution that ‘a war with so little chance of success should not be fought.’”

Jeffrey Record, Japan's Decision for War in 1941: Some Enduring Lessons. Strategic Studies Institute, US Army, February 2009, pp 3-4.
www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB905.pdf