The Rise of Military Fascism. It was a rainy summer afternoon on
July 8, 1924. From the Miura Peninsula spectators could see seaplanes
nosediving one by one to bomb the warship Ishimi. Flames were vi-
sible from a distance. At five thirty the battered warship offered no
more resistance, sank gradually and left a white whirlpool behind her.
On the same day at Sagami Bay, Nagato and Mutsu, ships which were
the pride of the Japanese Navy, loaded their forty centimeter guns with
live shells and fired upon their sister ships, Satsuma and Aki; both
sank instantly. Thus the Japanese Navy fulfilled its obligation to re-
duce its tonnage under the naval treaty concluded at the Washington
Conference of 1922.

This treaty placed the Japanese Navy in an inferior position quanti-
tatively. Great Britain and the United States were each allowed to
maintain 525,000 tons in capital ships during a ten-year naval holiday
while Japan was restricted to 315,000 tons, the ratio being 5:5:3. How-
ever, there was a compensating factor. The United States pledged
that it would not fortify the Philippine Islands. This made Japan the
undisputed master of the Southwestern Pacific. Nevertheless the
Navy's pride was hurt. It was similar to the inferior feeling Japan
experienced at Versailles when the western powers rejected its de-
mand for racial equality. "From this day on, we are at war with the
United States," muttered Commander Kanji Kato, who had been a nav-
al aide at the Washington Conference, as he saw Satsuma and Aki sink.
"We shall avenge."

At the Washington Conference, Japan also renounced its shaky claim
to the Shantung Peninsula and pledged that henceforth it would ad-
here to the principle of the "Open Door," disclaiming any exclusive
rights for the potentially vast Chinese market. It agreed to terminate
the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the union which had been referred to by
a noted journalist, Soho Tokutomi, as "the marriage of a peasant girl
( Japan) to a noble prince (Great Britian)." However, Japanese poli-
ticians saw the Washington Conference in an entirely different light.
The reduction in naval armament would save the national treasury
some 117 milion yen annually. Through amicable settlement of dif-

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