SEVEN Efforts for Peace: Ayukawa and Hoover in 1941

Although by 1941 Ayukawa's role in U.S.~Japan relations had become peripheral, he continued his efforts to avoid war between the two nations. Although his activities were ineffective at the time, he and like~minded per~ sons on both sides of the Pacific foreshadow the types of people who played important roles in nurturing strong bilateral relations during the immediate postwar years. In the years right before the Pacific War, the activities and thinking of people around Ayukawa-Takasaki Tatsunosuke, Kurusu Saburo, and Miho Mikitaro-intersected and paralleled in significant ways the activities and thinking of people around Herbert Hoover-Raoul E. Desvernine, William R. Castle, Jr., Lewis Strauss, and H. Foster Bain. Both Ayukawa and Hoover wanted to avoid war between the two countries.

Ayukawa, Bain, T akasaki, and Hoover

The geologist H. Foster Bain, who was hired in 1938 by Ayukawa to survey the mineral resources of Manchuria (see Chapter 3), probably made his greatest contribution to Ayukawa's efforts by putting him into indirect con~ tact with former president Herbert Hoover. Ayukawa reminded Bain of Hoover because, like Hoover, Ayukawa had "a view to results (rather] than to building up a further fortune, much as Hoover felt" during his London Efforts for Peace: Ayukawa and Hoover in 1941 139 years, when he was a leading businessman in mining. Bain believed Ayu~ kawa had "reached about the same stage of development that Hoover had then." Ayukawa had "a high admiration for Hoover" and wanted Hoover "to come over here and help straighten things out.''1 Furthermore, Hoover's world trade strategy for the United States resembled that of Japan; he, too, advocated maximum benefits from world trade through high tariffs at home and maximum local market access (most~favored~nation treatment) over~ seas.2 Hoover's view of U.S.~Japan relations centered around economic in~ terdependence, which is precisely what Ayukawa hoped to achieve through a u.s.~Japan rapprochement after 1937· Bain met Hoover in New York City on May 9, 1938; by that time Hoover had already received and read Bain's letters from Manchuria/ which de~ scribed Ayukawa in a positive way: Aikawa [Ayukawa] is one of the most interesting men I have ever met and one of the ablest. He is a business man with vision and is very practical ... though of course achievement usually falls far short of the objective and this is a most difficult situation. The real objective is to bring about as nearly as that is ever possible permanent peace in the Far East by producing the conditions under which the economic condi~ tion of the people will be bettered. [Ayukawa) has captured the imagination of the 'young officer' group who distrusted the old houses of Japan but feel the need of business leadership.4

In a long conversation with Hoover, Bain explained what Ayukawa had in mind. Bain reported to Ayukawa that he found Hoover "keenly inter~ ested in the Far Eastern situation and well informed." On the other hand, "whether or not he would care to take any part in Far Eastern matters would ••• depend very largely on the exact nature of the particular project and how it came up.'' The good news was that "at least he did not tell me to take steps to kill the whole possibility.'' Bain encouraged Ayukawa to meet Hoover if he had a chance to visit the United States because "each of you will meet an interesting man, and I think you will like each other.''5 Although one may question the wisdom of approaching a leading figure in the anti-New Deal camp to solicit American economic cooperation in Manchukuo, it did make sense that Ayukawa wanted to communicate with Hoover because the former president not only had lived for several years in China at the turn of the twentieth century as director of the Kaiping coal