In an era when renewed cries of “America First” and calls for retrenchment from international engagement are once again part of American political discourse, Roger Jeans's examination of pre–World War II American isolationism is timely and relevant. Aimed at historians of twentieth-century American-Japanese relations, Jeans's work effectively sheds light on a hereto understudied part of the pre–World War II landscape. Eschewing the well-trod ground of the America First Committee and its celebrity luminaries, Jeans focuses on pro-Japan American isolationists, who in the year leading up to Pearl Harbor made a concerted effort to organize through the aegis of the Committee on Pacific Relations. Utilizing personal correspondence between the members and reports from a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) probe of their activities, Jeans paints a rich and textured picture of the motivations and interactions of this unlikely group of allies as the clock silently ticked down to war in the Pacific.
At the center of these pro-Japan isolationists was an otherwise little-known Missouri politician, O. K. Armstrong. A journalist and an avowed pacifist who counted antiwar activists such as Charles Lindbergh and Richard Byrd among his friends, the outbreak of the war in Europe provoked Armstrong to dive headfirst into field organizing for the America First Committee. However, even as he spoke at America First rallies, he contemplated splitting off to create his own organization, which, unlike America First, would focus on preventing war with Japan. Jeans argues that in addition to his pro-Japan leanings, Armstrong and those who would eventually constitute his committee saw the American entry into the European War as unlikely. In contrast, they believed that a war with Japan constituted a much more realistic “backdoor” through which Franklin D. Roosevelt and his cronies would seek to pull the United States. To combat this possibility, in 1941, Armstrong began efforts to create the Committee on Pacific Relations, with the objective to advise and hopefully shape US foreign policy.
Jeans devotes the majority of his book to documenting Armstrong's attempts to rally this committee of unlikely allies, sorting them into “businessmen and generals,” “the professoriat,” “pacifists and former missionaries,” and “journalists.” Their ranks included people with such disparate motives as pro-Japan economist Elizabeth B. Schumpeter to the almost rabidly anti-Chinese former missionary John Cole McKim. Using a rich body of sources, including correspondence between members and potential members of the committee, Jeans showcases a range of motivations for the pro-Japan and antiwar beliefs of its membership. In this, he shines a spotlight on the ultimate failure of the American anti-interventionist movement. While they could claim that a third of the population shared their views, their rationales for avoiding war varied tremendously, ultimately undermining the unity of the group.
For example, the so-called professoriat, represented by figures like Schumpeter and Whitney Griswold, generally were Asian studies academics with anti-imperialist leanings. However, the extent to which they were pro-Japan, and their willingness to blame the United States for provoking Japanese imperial expansion, ranged significantly in this group—let alone compared to the broader membership of Armstrong's committee. Another factor that varied considerably was the level of anti-Chinese bias, with some individuals completely rejecting the American public's widespread sympathy for the Chinese, to more measured sentiment that held neither the Japanese nor Chinese at fault for the conflict in the East. However, whatever their starting point, all members shared a belief that war in the Pacific would be disastrous for the United States, and that maintaining peace with Japan was most beneficial for all.
Jeans's profession-driven examination of the committee's membership helps underscore the different motives its members had for supporting it. However, the decision to view it through this lens may have erected artificial boundaries at points in his analysis. This potential shortcoming is showcased in chapter 2, where one figure under study, James G. Harbord, is both a military man and a businessman—ultimately resulting in a chapter that has less thematic coherence than the others. While the other categorizations seem more neatly defined, the professional distinctions may have detracted more than they added when most of the committee members were already significant enough pariahs on the whole to render viewing them as representative of their profession irrelevant.
Moreover, in considering Jeans's emphasis on “elites,” room is left for future research to explore how more everyday Americans perceived groups like the Committee on Pacific Relations. Did the committee reflect the views of Americans outside the relatively small academic and upper-class circles? How many Americans opposed war with Japan, as well as war in Europe? While it seems unlikely that their number was similar, given the racial animus that would ultimately drive much of the Pacific conflict, the question remains tantalizing and provides an opportunity to build on Jeans's work in American Isolationists.
Jeans winds down with the short career of the committee, which recommended making concessions and requesting simply that Japan adhere to the Nine-Power Treaty (of which it was already a signatory). Indeed, as Jeans points out, one cannot escape the feeling that the committee members were hopelessly naive in the extent to which they were unwitting accomplices to Japanese militarism. Armstrong would proudly tout his endorsement by the Japanese embassy, with only the failure of the Japanese ambassador to follow through on a funding promise preventing the Missouri firebrand from likely prosecution as an unregistered foreign agent. Other committee members would not be so fortunate, with one arrested and briefly imprisoned for his financial ties to Japan. These ties would ultimately provoke the opening of an FBI investigation into much of the committee's membership as possible fifth columnists. It is this source base that provides the second wealth of material upon which Jeans draws; in doing so, he illuminates that regardless of how marginal the committee's activities were in the end, they were seen to constitute a clear and present threat to national security at the time.
In examining the efforts to pro-Japan antiwar activists in the United States, Jeans has illuminated a minor but fascinating angle—a distinct story from the better-documented efforts of the America First Committee. He invites the reader to consider the full breadth of discourse that accompanied the lead-up to America's entrance into the Second World War and highlights just how varied the groups that opposed America's entrance into that war were. Finally, in confronting American nativism in the present, Jeans implicitly asks the reader to ponder the range of motivations and rationales that have characterized this resurgence of American isolationism in the twenty-first century.
