The Pittsburgh Press (October 16, 1942)
Japs date war beginning with Konoe ouster
That’s two months before sneak attack on Pearl Harbor
By the United Press
Japan all but admitted today that it dated the start of the Pacific War from Oct. 16, 1941, when Premier Fumimaro Konoe, a civilian, was dismissed in favor of his War Minister, Gen. Hideki Tōjō.
Long propaganda broadcasts reviewed the year since Konoe’s dismissal and implied strongly that Japan began preparing Oct. 16 for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor which opened the war Dec. 7, 1941.
The broadcasts disclosed the death in action of a vice admiral, two rear admirals and two major generals.
None in big battles
The admirals were among 908 Navy men killed up to Feb. 20. None of these casualties was among those in the real Pacific fighting which includes the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway and the Solomon Islands, in addition to many U.S. submarine and airplane sinkings of Jap warcraft in isolated actions.
Posthumous awards were made to the Navy men, to 3,096 Army men killed in the Pacific War and in China, and to 3,031 Army men killed in China.
The high officers killed were:
- Vice Adm. Yukichi Yashiro,
- Rear Adms. Toshio Otake and Yukio Katō,
- Maj. Gens. Tateo Katō and Shigeki Ushi.
Pearl Harbor ‘heroes’
Among Navy men posthumously honored were 55 naval aviators and nine men of the special attack flotilla killed in Pearl Harbor.
In a revealing review of the year ended today, the official Dōmei News Agency said that when Tōjō took office Oct. 18, two days after Konoe’s fall:
…the uppermost issue was negotiations between Japan and the United States for solution of Pacific questions which had reached a most acute stage because of the failure of the United States to see the Japanese position.
Tōjō took office ready to “act with dispatch and cope with any emergency,” the broadcast said, and in his first statement, said Japan was faced with an unprecedented crisis which he was prepared to meet with unflinching determination.
Kurusu mission noted
It was said that America and Britain through Japan was weakened by the Chinese war and embarked on a program of “undisguised provocation.”
It told how special envoy Saburō Kurusu had gone to Washington in November and said that:
Meanwhile, the Japanese government, while seeking an amicable settlement, made preparations against any emergency.
It was added:
Diplomatic negotiations were conducted with French Indochina and Thailand that Japan might be prepared against hostile America and Britain.
Then, the agency said, negotiations broke down in Washington:
…owing to the United States’ insistence on unreasonable demands.
The dispatch said:
Once Japan rose in self-defense and war broke out, she mobilized her full force and scored brilliant results – Pearl Harbor, Guam, Wake, Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila, Corregidor, Malaya, Burma, the Netherlands East Indies – and won decisive advantages… a year ago today, who among Anglo-Americans would have foreseen that the Japanese today would be in control of the Southwest Pacific Area?
No word was mentioned of the naval battles in which the Jap fleet has suffered the greatest defeats in its history.