Free The World at War by Richard Holmes

train from Tokyo to Yokosuka, and then he would take a warship from Yokosuka to the United States. We knew of his route on the other side of the bay from Yokosuka beforehand so our plan was to blow up a bridge half-way between Tokyo and Kamagawa. Our plan was to blow up the train together with the bridge with the help of Colonel Masanobu Tsuji, later Chief of Staff to General Tomoyuki Yamashita in the lightning conquest of Malaya of the Japanese Army.
    TOSHIKAZU KASE
    The Soviet Union had always been thought a threat to Japanese security and the Army was itching for a showdown with the Soviet Union, if and when the latter suffered defeat in the European theatre, and the Army wanted to take the advantage of the Russian weakness. But in order to move north the climatic conditions come into play. After October the military operations against the north became rather more difficult, technically speaking. The Navy, on the other hand, wanted to advance further south because the resources our country lacked were largely in South Seas. And so Japan was pointing apart between the Army ambition and Naval design. But when the time for an attack against the north passed, the Army naturally joined the Navy.
    MARQUIS KIDO
    In 1941 there was still no proposal that Japan should advance southwards because Japan's hypothetical enemy was still Russia. I think the southward idea came somewhat later.
    DR NOBLE FRANKLAND
    Historian and post-war Director of the Imperial War Museum
    The Japanese war was really a separate war to that against Hitler. The struggle between Hitler and the Western Alliance gave the Japanese the opportunity to secure what they believed was their right – an overseas empire which was based upon the view that they must have natural resources, as Japan is not a self-supporting country rather like Britain, and they sought an empire which would give them access to oil, rubber and all the commodities which great industrial nations need. And the Germany/ Britain/America struggle gave the Japanese the opportunity; it was the Japanese who projected the Americans into the war against Germany. But the opportunity was created for Japan by Hitler.
    LEWIS BUSH
    They were building up to the Rome – Tokyo – Berlin Axis and so quite naturally they did their best to sell their people on the merits of Hitler and Mussolini as opposed to the America of Roosevelt and the Britain of Chamberlain, two decadent, weak nations. *7
    IAN MUTSU
    Even before Pearl Harbor, during the time of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Italy, you were asked to refer in certain ways to theAxis Powers. I noticed that the Japanese press was quite willing to cooperate with this, to be unfree, to convert themselves into printing shops for what came down to them from the High Command.
    COMMANDER YUZURU SANEMATSU
    Naval Attaché at Japanese Embassy in Washington
    The Army took Prussia, later Germany, as its teacher and the Navy learnt from Great Britain and the United States. So there was naturally a great gap of thinking between theArmy and the Navy. This was the biggest cause of the clash of interests. As a result of this the Navy wanted to maintain friendship as much as possible with Great Britain and the United States, while on the other hand the Army wanted to maintain friendship with Germany. This, then, was the biggest difference between the two.
    ANTHONY EDEN
    British Foreign Secretary 1935–38
    Cadogan and I had been working with the Foreign Office for two years trying to improve our relations with the United States, particularly in respect to the Far East, and we had made some progress. **1 Rather remarkably when we opened the new dock atSingapore the United States offered to send two cruisers to attend the ceremony, which was quite an unusual gesture for those days, and then later Roosevelt offered to send a senior naval officer across to London to discuss how we would coordinate our naval policies in the Far East.
    LEWIS BUSH
    InHong Kong in 1940 when I