Bankrupting the Enemy
Subtitle: The U.S. Financial Siege of Japan Before Pearl Harbor
Publisher: United States Naval Inst.; Naval Institute Press
Published: October 15, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9781591145202
Subjects: Warfare & Defence; History; History - U.S.; History: World; Asia - Japan; Economic History; United States - 20th Century; United States - 20th Century (1900-1945); History / United States; General; Military - World War II; Modern - 20th Century; 20th century; Economic sanctions, American; Foreign economic relations; Japan; United States
Description: Award-winning author Edward S. Miller contends in this new work that the United States forced Japan into international bankruptcy to deter its aggression. While researching newly declassified records of the Treasury and Federal Reserve, Miller, a retired chief financial executive of a Fortune 500 resources corporation, uncovered just how much money mattered. Washington experts confidently predicted that the war in China would bankrupt Japan, not knowing that the Japanese government had a huge cache of dollars fraudulently hidden in New York. Once discovered, Japan scrambled to extract the money. But, Miller explains, in July 1941 President Roosevelt invoked a long-forgotten clause of the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 to freeze Japan's dollars and forbade it to sell its hoard of gold to the U.S. Treasury, the only open gold market after 1939. Roosevelt s temporary gambit to bring Japan to its senses, not its knees, was thwarted, however, by opportunistic bureaucrats. Dean Acheson, his handpicked administrator, slyly maneuvered to deny Japan the dollars needed to buy oil and other resources for war and for economic survival. Miller's lucid writing and thorough understanding of the complexities of international finance enable readers unfamiliar with financial concepts and terminology to grasp his explanation of the impact of U.S. economic policies on Japan. His review of thirty-seven studies of Japan's resource deficiencies begs the question of why no U.S. agency calculated the impact of the freeze on Japan's overall economy. His analysis of a massive OSS-State Department study of prewar Japan clearly demonstrates that the deprivations facing the Japanese people were the country to remain in financial limbo buttressed its choice of war at Pearl Harbor. Such a well-documented study is certain to be recognized for its significant contributions to the historiography of the origins of the Pacific War.
Table of contents: title: List of Illustrations; title: Prologue: War Plan Orange; title: Sources and Technical Notes; title: Acknowledgements; label: Introduction:
title: Bankruptcy; label: 1
title: Trading with the Enemy; label: 2
title: The 1930s: Financial Power Slumbering; label: 3
title: Hanging by a Silken Thread; label: 4
title: Japan's Failed Quest for Dollars through Manufacturing; label: 5
title: Anticipating Japan's Bankruptcy, 1937-1940; label: 6
title: Birth of an Embargo Strategy: The Alternative to Bankrupting Japan; label: 7
title: Export Controls, 1940 to Mid-1941; label: 8
title: The Japanese Financial Fraud in New York; label: 9
title: An Aborted Financial Freeze, Early 1941; label: 10
title: Japan's Vulnerability in Strategic Resources; label: 11
title: The Vulnerability of the Japanese Economy and People; label: 12
title: The Vulnerability of Japanese Exports to the United States; label: 13
title: The Vulnerability of Japan in Petroleum; label: 14
title: Momentum for the Financial Freeze, May-July 1941; label: 15
title: The Fictitious U.S. Oil Shortage; label: 16
title: Freeze: The Crucial Month of August 1941; label: 17
title: Barter and Bankruptcy; label: 18
title: Calamity: The Economy under Siege; label: 19
title: Furtility: The Final Negotiations; label: Epilogue:
title: Bankruptcy and War Crimes; label: Appendix 1:
title: The U.S. Oil Shortage that Never Was; label: Appendix 2:
title: Details of the OSS/State Department Study of Japanese Foreign Trade and Finance; title: Notes; title: Bibliography; title: Index