Our Man In Tokyo
An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Dillon Book Award
"Gripping history, offering both drama and suspense." —Wall Street Journal
A riveting, behind-the-scenes account of the personalities and contending forces in Tokyo during the volatile decade that led to World War II, as seen through the eyes of the American ambassador who attempted to stop the slide to war.
In 1932, Japan was in crisis. Naval officers had assassinated the prime minister and conspiracies flourished. The military had a stranglehold on the government. War with Russia loomed, and propaganda campaigns swept the country, urging schoolchildren to give money to procure planes and tanks.
Into this maelstrom stepped Joseph C. Grew, America’s most experienced and talented diplomat. When Grew was appointed ambassador to Japan, not only was the country in turmoil, its relationship with America was rapidly deteriorating. For the next decade, Grew attempted to warn American leaders about the risks of Japan’s raging nationalism and rising militarism, while also trying to stabilize Tokyo’s increasingly erratic and volatile foreign policy. From domestic terrorism by Japanese extremists to the global rise of Hitler and the fateful attack on Pearl Harbor, the events that unfolded during Grew’s tenure proved to be pivotal for Japan, and for the world. His dispatches from the darkening heart of the Japanese empire would prove prescient—for his time, and for our own.
Drawing on Grew’s diary of his time in Tokyo as well as U.S. embassy correspondence, diplomatic dispatches, and firsthand Japanese accounts, Our Man in Tokyo brings to life a man who risked everything to avert another world war, the country where he staked it all—and the abyss that swallowed it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The high stakes of international diplomacy are revealed in this captivating history from journalist Kemper (A Splendid Savage). Appointed U.S. ambassador to Japan in 1932, Joseph Grew spent nearly a decade in a doomed effort to maintain peace between the two nations. Following the invasion of China in 1931, the hard-right tilt of Japanese politics urging military conquest became relentless, Kemper explains, infecting all levels of government and insinuating itself into Emperor Hirohito's court. Though he never learned to speak Japanese, Grew was popular in Japan, and grasped that neither the moderate, pro-Western politicians with whom he forged close relationships, nor the vast majority of Japanese people, desired the cataclysmic endgame promised by the country's rabid militarists. His diplomatic efforts were hamstrung, however, by U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull's "foreordained certainty that the Japanese were incapable of anything except treachery." Despite the tumult of Japanese politics, which included coup attempts, assassinations, and increasingly repressive domestic laws, Grew refused to give up on the idea that war could be averted, and made a "last-minute appeal" to the Japanese foreign minister just hours before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Expertly marshaled from Grew's diaries and reports, this is a poignant and profound look at diplomacy in action.
