Nomura and the Hull Note: Diplomacy on the Brink

Washington, 26 November 1941. In the Secretary of State's office, Ambassador Kichisaburō Nomura receives from Cordell Hull's hands a ten-point document. The tone is courteous, but the demands are uncompromising: total withdrawal of Japanese troops from China and Indochina, recognition of Chiang Kai-shek's government alone, the effective abandonment of the Tripartite Pact. An old sailor appointed to this post for his honesty and his American friendships, Nomura grasps at once the effect this text will have in Tokyo. For months, assisted by special envoy Saburō Kurusu, he has worn himself out trying to keep alive a thread of dialogue that the hardliners of the Japanese general staff already consider broken.

Yet the ambassador is unaware of the worst: fate is being decided elsewhere. At the other end of the Pacific, the decision for war has matured during the autumn's imperial conferences, and a fleet is setting sail in silence, beyond the reach of any watching eyes. The negotiations Nomura conducts with stubborn sincerity are, without his knowledge, drained of all substance. His superiors keep him in the dark, using his good faith as a screen. Every dispatch he sends, every approach he attempts, will play out in a game whose dice have already been cast.

What remains to the man of flesh and blood is a narrow margin, almost derisory, but real: that of his conscience and his actions. Faced with this text that rings like a rupture, the moment demands a decision.