World War II Day by Day

Tokyo, Japan · October 13, 1940

On this date in 1940 Japan’s foreign minister Yōsuke Matsuo­ka, who had grown up in Ore­gon and Cal­i­for­nia (1893–1902), in­vited the United States and other non­aligned nations to join the Tri­par­tite Pact, which Axis powers Ger­many, Italy, and Japan had ini­ti­aled in Berlin the pre­vious month (Septem­ber 27). The Pact was an out­growth of the “Rome-Berlin Axis” cele­brated by the Italo-Ger­man “Pact of Steel,” which Adolf Hitler’s foreign minis­ter Joachim von Rib­ben­trop and Benito Musso­lini’s foreign minis­ter (and son-in-law) Count Galeazzo Ciano had signed in Berlin in late May 1939.

The “new world order” en­vi­sioned by Tri­par­tite founding mem­bers, said Matsuo­ka, was one in which eco­no­mic bar­riers would be broken down and the natural geo­graphic divi­sions of the world estab­lished in com­ple­men­tary fash­ion to bring pros­per­ity to all peo­ples. Leading the nations into the new nirvana were the signa­tories them­selves: Article 1 of the Tri­par­tite Pact stip­u­lated that Japan “recog­nizes and respects the leader­ship of Ger­many and Italy in the estab­lish­ment of a new order in Europe.” Article 2 stip­u­lated that Ger­many and Italy “recog­nize and respect the leader­ship of Japan in the estab­lish­ment of a new order in Greater East Asia.” Ten days after Foreign Minis­ter Matsu­oka had floated his invi­ta­tion to the U.S. and other non­aligned nations, the leader of the Pact, Hitler him­self, on a whirl­wind tour of van­quished-foe France, appealed in per­son to Spanish dic­ta­tor Fran­cisco Franco and Vichy presi­dent Marshal Philippe Pétain to join the three signatories. Neither did.

Starting in late Novem­ber 1940, how­ever, the Tri­par­tite Pact swiftly ex­panded: Hun­gary, to which Hitler had gen­er­ously given half of Roma­nia’s Tran­syl­va­nia in late August, signed up on Novem­ber 20; Roma­nia, threatened by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union on its northeastern border, joined on the 23rd; and the Slo­vak Republic, formed from a por­tion of dis­mem­bered Czecho­slo­va­kia, came aboard the next day. By the time Bul­garia, recipient of Roma­nia’s southern Dobruja, joined the Tri­par­tite Pact in March 1941, the entire Bal­kans and Eastern Europe were either in treaty relation­ship with the Axis powers or, like Yugoslavia was soon to be, under Axis occu­pa­tion. Urged on by Japan, Japanese-occu­pied Thai­land and the Chinese pup­pet state of Manchu­kuo and the col­lab­o­ra­tionist “Republic of China” (led by Wang Jingwei) became unofficial signatories of the Tripartite Pact on February 15, 1942.

Germany and Japan During Axis Heyday, 1940–1941

Left: On September 27, 1940, the Axis Powers (Germany and Italy) grew by one when Japan’s ambas­sador Saburō Kurusu (left in pic­ture), Italy’s foreign minis­ter Galeazzo Ciano (to Kurusu’s left), and Germany’s foreign minis­ter Joachim von Rib­ben­trop (standing at podium at right) signed the three-way Tri­par­tite Pact. Adolf Hitler (slumping in chair) wit­nessed the gala pro­ceedings. Despite signing a ten‑year mili­tary and com­mer­cial con­ven­tion in 1940, Ger­many, Italy, and Japan for the most part fought sepa­rately during World War II and sur­ren­dered sepa­rately less than five years into the pact: Italy in Septem­ber 1943, Ger­many in May 1945, and Japan in Septem­ber 1945. Amer­i­cans remem­ber Kurusu as one of two Japa­nese envoys who tried to nego­ti­ate peace and under­standing with the Roosevelt adminis­tra­tion in Novem­ber and Decem­ber 1941 while their coun­try was secretly preparing the attack on U.S. military installations at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Right: Japanese foreign minis­ter Yōsuke Matsu­oka paid a visit to Hitler in Ber­lin in March 1941. In the back­ground between Matsu­oka and Hitler is Ger­man foreign minis­ter Rib­ben­trop. Matsu­oka, who in 1933 led Japan’s walk­out of the League of Nations, was a major advo­cate of Japan’s alli­ance with Ger­many and Italy, whose assis­tance he saw as a per­fect balancing force against U.S. inter­ests in the Asia Pacific region. Following Japan’s defeat in 1945, Matsu­oka was arrested by Gen. Douglas Mac­Arthur, Supreme Com­man­der of the Allied Powers, and held at Sugamo Pri­son (near Tokyo), where he died in 1946 prior to his trial on war crimes charges before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trials).

Japan Joins Germany and Italy in Tripartite Pact, September 27, 1940 (Skip first 20 seconds)