By midsummer 1941 few could doubt that the United States and Japan were
headed for collision. In April Tokyo concluded a treaty of nonaggression with
Moscow. Treaties being the uncertain things they are, and especially were in
those deceitful days, the pact hardly secured Japan's position in northeastern Asia
against Russian assault. But Hitler's double-cross of Stalin in June--the German
invasion of Russia--did. Japan now felt free to move south. On July 25, following
the landing of Japanese troops in Saigon, Tokyo announced the establishment of
a Japanese protectorate over Indochina, to which the Vichy government of
France acquiesced. Because the United States had cracked Japan's diplomatic
code, Roosevelt had time to weigh his response. On July 26 the administration
announced the freezing of Japan's financial assets in the United States. The
action lacked the publicity and provocativeness of a formal embargo, yet it
amounted to the same thing. Japan's reliance on American products, especially
oil, left Tokyo two choices: to cease and desist in Southeast Asia, or to strike out
farther in an effort to end Japan's economic dependence on America and the
west. "If the present condition is left unchecked," General Teiichi Suzuki of
Tokyo's military planning board told his colleagues, "Japan will find herself
totally exhausted and unable to rise in the future." Suzuki predicted that the
American blockade, which Britain and the Netherlands joined, would result in
Japan's collapse within two years. Unwilling to accept such a fate, the Japanese
high command laid preparations for war. ¹

Washington also made ready. In June Secretary of War Henry Stimson had
decided to recall MacArthur to active service as American army commander for

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