REACHING OUT FOR SOLUTIONS: AMERICAN DIPLOMACY DURING THE MANCHURIAN CRISIS, 1931-1933 (JAPAN, CHINA, UNITED STATES)

The failure of American diplomacy to halt Japan's occupation of Manchuria frustrated statesmen, diplomats, and foreign service officers at the time. It also generated considerable debate among those who studied the origins of World War II in later years. One school of thought holds that the United States should have taken a more forceful stand against Japanese aggression in 1931; another that the United States could have done little to stop Japan at that early date. Yet unpublished despatches and journals of those who dealt with the crisis indicate that the Hoover Administration missed diplomatic opportunities to resolve it by responding narrowly to what was happening in the Far East while overlooking the reasons why it was happening.;Despite early warnings of impending crisis, Americans had little interest in Manchuria, and the Mukden Incident took the Department of State by surprise. Reacting to events of the moment, the Administration saw no justification for Japan's military operations and judged that Sino-Japanese negotiations should not be encouraged until Japan withdrew her troops. Efforts to secure the troop withdrawal failed, however, leaving little choice but to accept a military fait accompli or condemn Japan's breach of international law.;Only after American policy was firmly set did American observers in the field begin to challenge it as too narrow and inflexible to influence Japan. On the basis of conditions prior to the Mukden Incident, they argued that Japan had real grievances as well as China. If China feared the loss of Manchuria to Japanese imperialism, Japan feared the loss of vital economic interests to Chinese repudiation of past agreements. Americans overseas saw possibilities and proposed plans for a negotiated settlement, provided Japan and China received help from a third party willing and able to see both sides of the dispute. The tragedy is that they spoke too late to change the course of American diplomacy, and the challenge of the Manchurian crisis to the principle of a world community governed by international law and peaceful means was not met. Sino-Japanese relations continued to fester, and American-Japanese relations drifted toward war.