Word: matsuoka
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Last week Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka ended his flying visit to Japan's Axis partners and started home from Berlin via Moscow. It had been an untimely junket. No sooner had the trip been announced than the U.S. Congress passed the Lend-Lease Bill. No sooner had Minister Matsuoka arrived in Berlin than Yugoslavia rose against politicians who had sold out to Adolf Hitler. Before he had arrived in Rome, the British, without losing a life, gave the Italian Navy its worst beating of the war. As he started for home he heard of ominous events in Manila...
...fact that the Yugoslav news overshadowed the arrival of Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka in Berlin also had its importance. Last week Washington opinion was that the Yugoslav coup had tipped the scales against a Japanese move toward Singapore and the South Pacific. Said hopeful Senator George, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "Japan will not make the mistake made by Italy in assuming a prompt end to the war, and a termination altogether favorable to Germany, in view of the events of the last 30 days." U. S. foreign policy was at any rate beginning to take...
Little had happened, up to the night of March 26, to dissipate this fear. It had grown with each day's events. That very day Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka had arrived in Berlin, to be greeted by the envoys of all the little countries which had succumbed to the Fascist Alliance-the latest of them Yugoslavia. Though Great Britain had dared to send a big expeditionary force to the Balkans, that night the Balkans seemed lost with the capitulation of Yugoslavia...
Hitler had lost the initiative at last; at last he faced a dilemma. In Berlin these four days was the little Japanese, Yosuke Matsuoka, whose nation makes much of "face." If Hitler backed down before a Government of what his press called "democratic thickskulls," he would lose face in the eyes of Japan. If he went ahead, he might lose the war. Yosuke Matsuoka, gentleman that he is, refrained from discussing the week's news with his hosts, and at week's end set out for Rome, where there would be little to talk about either...
German spokesmen also predicted surprises as a result of Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka's visit to Berlin (see col 1). But in Berlin, as in Rome, it was admitted that U. S. aid to Britain would probably prolong the war. One German broadcaster verified Germany's concern and coined a phrase in the same sentence: he called President Roosevelt "the hangman of the young nations...