Mitsumasa Yonai
On December 6, 1938, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, Foreign Minister Hachirō Arita, Army Minister Seishirō Itagaki, Naval Minister Mitsumasa Yonai, and Finance Ministry Shigeaki Ikeda met to discuss the dilemma at the "Five Ministers' Conference". They made a decision of prohibiting the expulsion of the Jews in Japan, Manchuria, and China. On the one hand, Japan's alliance with Nazi Germany was growing stronger, and doing anything to help the Jews would endanger that relationship. On the other hand, the Jewish boycott of German goods following Kristallnacht showed the economic power and global unity of the Jews.