marketrent OP t1_ixyhsod wrote
Excerpt:
A Japanese foreign minister met Pope Pius XII and his secretary of state during World War II to seek mediation in a desperate bid to avert war with the United States, eight months before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Vatican documents recently seen by Kyodo News show.
Yosuke Matsuoka wanted the Holy See to speak to President Franklin Roosevelt to try to prevent "a war of mutual destruction," telling Cardinal Luigi Maglione that Tokyo also wanted a cease-fire with China after more than three years of war, according to a summary by the cardinal's office of a meeting on April 2, 1941, between the two.
[Matsuoka] said that the U.S. leader would be able to bring peace to the Far East by mediating on Japan's behalf with Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, according to the documents.
Matsuoka held talks with the pope before he met with the cardinal but what the pope said during the discussions remains unknown to the public.
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, leading the United States to declare war against the country the next day and formally enter the conflict.
After his country's surrender in 1945, Matsuoka was arrested and indicted as a Class-A war criminal by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East but died of illness in 1946 before the trial's completion.
According to historian and author Satoshi Hattori, Matsuoka began exploring ways to save Tokyo's relationship with the United States around December 1940 after realizing that the Japanese southward military advance would fail.
The document is a demonstration of Matsuoka's last-minute attempts to prevent war with the United States by using every possible channel, he said.
Kyodo News, 27 November 2022.
Gemmabeta t1_iy1b477 wrote
> Yosuke Matsuoka
He was the guy that announced that Japan is leaving the League of Nations (after being condemned for conquering Chinese Manchuria) in an incendiary speech.
Also:
> Following his return to Japan, Matsuoka announced his resignation from the Rikken Seiyūkai and his intent to form his own political party modeled after the National Fascist Party in Italy.
marketrent OP t1_iy1e2l3 wrote
From a profile by the Oregon Historical Society:
>Matsuoka was a Japanese diplomat who played a key role in Japan’s foreign relations from the 1900s through the early 1940s. He also happened to have a strong connection to the state of Oregon.
>Matsuoka would go on to have a long, controversial diplomatic career during one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of Japanese foreign relations. He believed that Japan, like the other island empire, Great Britain, was destined to expand outward. “Both must be colonial empires,” he told one reporter, “both must be maritime and naval powers.”
>In 1930, Matsuoka was elected to the Japanese parliament. Three years later he pulled Japan out of the League of Nations while serving as his nation’s chief delegate after the League condemned Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. He went on to serve as foreign minister from 1940-1941, during which time he signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy.
Yosuke Matsuoka, https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/yosuke-matsuoka/
EmperorsCourt t1_iy2k1an wrote
that was war wasnt inevitable, it was completely preventable by the Japanese, and it had a real simple solution:
dont attack the United States.
[deleted] t1_iy60wx7 wrote
[removed]
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