Joseph Grew

Joseph Clark Grew (May 27, 1880 – May 25, 1965) was an American career diplomat and

On return to Washington, DC, he became the second official in the State Department as Under Secretary and sometimes served as acting Secretary of State. He successfully promoted a soft peace with Japan that would allow Emperor Hirohito to maintain his status, which facilitated the Emperor's decision to surrender in 1945.

Early life

Grew was born in

During his youth, Grew enjoyed the outdoors, sailing, camping, and hunting during his summers away from school. Grew attended Harvard College and graduated in 1902.^[2]

Career

After his graduation, Grew made a tour of the Far East and nearly died after he had been stricken with malaria. While recovering in India, he became friends with an American consul there. That inspired him to abandon his plan of following in his father's career as a banker, and he decided to go into diplomatic service. In 1904, he was a clerk at the consulate in Cairo, Egypt, and he then rotated through diplomatic missions in Mexico City (1906), St. Petersburg (1907), Berlin (1908), Vienna (1911), and again in Berlin (1912–1917). He became acting chief of the State Department's Division of Western European Affairs during the war (1917–1919) and was the secretary of the American peace commission in Paris (1919–1920).^[3][4][5]

Ambassador to Denmark and Switzerland

From April 7, 1920 to October 14, 1921, Grew served as the

During this period, Grew also served as chairman of the Foreign Service Personnel Board.[7] In 1924, the Rogers Act created a merit-based hiring process that enabled Clifton Reginald Wharton Sr. to later that year become the first Black member of the Foreign Service.^[8] Grew used his position to manipulate the oral part of the exam specifically to prevent further hiring of Black candidates.^[9] After Wharton, no other Black person was hired to join the Foreign Service for more than 20 years.^[10]

Ambassador to Turkey

In 1927, Grew was appointed as the American ambassador to Turkey. He served in Ankara until 1932, when he was offered the opportunity to return to the Far East.

Ambassador to Japan

In 1932, Grew was appointed by President

One major episode came on 12 December 1937. During the USS Panay incident, the Japanese military bombed and sank the American gunboat Panay while it was anchored in the Yangtze River outside Nanking in China. Three American sailors were killed. Japan and the United States were at peace. The Japanese claimed that they had not seen the American flags painted on the deck of the gunboat and then apologized and paid an indemnity. Nevertheless, the attack outraged Americans and caused US opinion to turn against the Japanese.^[12]

One of Grew's closest and most influential Japanese friends and allies was Prince Tokugawa Iesato (1863–1940), the president of Japan's upper house, the House of Peers. During most of the 1930s, both men worked together in various creative diplomatic ways to promote goodwill between their nations. The adjoining photograph showed them having tea together in 1937 after attending a goodwill event to commemorate the 25th anniversary Japanese gift of cherry blossom trees to the US in 1912. The Garden Club of America reciprocated by giving flowering trees to Japan.^{[13] [14]}

The historian Jonathan Utley argues in Before Pearl Harbor that Grew took the position that Japan had legitimate economic and security interests in Greater East Asia and that he hoped that President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull would accommodate them by high-level negotiations. However, Roosevelt, Hull, and other top American officials strongly opposed the massive Japanese intervention in China, and they negotiated with China to send American warplanes and with Britain and the Netherlands to cut off sales of steel and oil, which Japan needed for aggressive warfare. Other historians argue that Grew put far too much trust in the power of his moderate friends in the Japanese government.^[15][16]

On January 27, 1941, Grew secretly cabled the State Department with rumors passed on by

Grew served as ambassador until December 8, 1941, when the United States and Japan severed diplomatic relations during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.^[1] After the attack, all Allied diplomats in Japanese territory, including Grew, were interned. On April 18, 1942, Grew watched US B-25 bombers carry out the Doolittle Raid, bombing Tokyo and other cities after taking off from aircraft carriers in the Pacific. When he realized that the low-flying planes over Tokyo were American, not Japanese planes on maneuvers, he thought they may have flown from the Aleutian Islands, as they appeared too large to be from a carrier. Grew wrote in his memoirs that embassy staff were "very happy and proud."^[19]

In accordance with diplomatic treaties, the US and Japan negotiated the repatriation of their diplomats via

I know Japan; I lived there for ten years. I know the Japanese intimately. The Japanese will not crack. They will not crack morally or psychologically or economically, even when eventual defeat stares them in the face. They will pull in their belts another notch, reduce their rations from a bowl to a half bowl of rice, and fight to the bitter end. Only by utter physical destruction or utter exhaustion of their men and materials can they be defeated.[21]

Grew became a member of a committee, along with War Secretary

He was also the author of an influential book about Japan, titled Ten Years in Japan. Grew advocated a soft peace that would be acceptable to the Japanese people and would maintain an honorable status for the Emperor. He successfully opposed treating the Emperor as a war criminal and thereby prepared the way for a speedy Japanese surrender and the friendly postwar relations during which Japan was closely supervised by American officials.[22]

Forcible return of Soviet prisoners-of-war

By May 1945, the U.S. held a number of Soviet prisoners-of-war (POWs) who had been captured while serving voluntarily or involuntarily^[23] in some capacity in the German Army, mostly as rear area personnel (ammunition bearers, cooks, drivers, sanitation orderlies, or guards).

Unlike the German prisoners, who were looking forward to release at war's end, the Soviet prisoners urgently requested asylum in the United States or at least repatriation to a country not under Soviet occupation, as they knew they would be shot by Stalin as traitors for being captured (under Soviet law, surrender incurred the death penalty).^[24][25]

The question of the Soviet POWs' conduct was difficult to determine but not their fate if repatriated. Most Soviet POWs stated that they had been given a choice by the Germans: volunteer for labor duty with the German army or be turned over to the Gestapo for execution or service in an Arbeitslager (a camp used to work prisoners until they died of starvation or illness). In any case, in Stalin's eyes, they were dead men, as they had been captured alive, "contaminated" by contact with those in bourgeois Western nations, and found in service with the German Army.^[23]

Notified of their impending transfer to Soviet authorities, a riot at their POW camp erupted. No one was killed by the guards, but some POWS were wounded, and others hanged themselves. Truman granted the men a temporary reprieve, but Grew, as Acting Secretary of State, signed an order on July 11, 1945 forcing the repatriation of the Soviet POWs to the Soviet Union. Soviet co-operation, it was believed, would prove necessary to remake the face of postwar Europe. On August 31, 1945, the 153 survivors were officially returned to the Soviet Union; their ultimate fate is unknown.^[25]

Other work

Grew's book Sport and Travel in the Far East was a favorite one of Theodore Roosevelt's. The introduction to the 1910 Houghton Mifflin printing of the book features the following introduction written by Roosevelt:

My dear Grew,— I was greatly interested in your book "Sport and Travel in the Far East" and I think it is a fine thing to have a member of our diplomatic service able both to do what you have done, and to write about it as well and as interestingly as you have written.... Your description, both of the actual hunting and the people and surroundings, is really excellent;...

In 1945, after Grew left the State Department, he wrote two volumes of professional memoirs, published in 1952.

Personal life

Grew married Alice de Vermandois Perry (1883-1959), the daughter of premier

• Lilla Cabot Grew (1907–1994), who married
  American Ambassador to Canada, in 1927, and later married former judge Albert Levitt
  , in 1956.
• Elizabeth Sturgis Grew (1912–1998), who married Cecil B. Lyon.

He died two days before his 85th birthday on May 25, 1965.

Descendants

Grew's grandson,

In popular culture

In the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, a historical drama about the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the part of US Ambassador Joseph Grew was played by Meredith Weatherby.

Published works

• Sport and Travel in the Far East, 1910
• Report From Tokyo, 1942
• Ten Years in Japan, 1944
• Turbulent Era, Volume I, 1952
• Turbulent Era, Volume II, 1952

See also

• Japan–United States relations

References