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Joseph Clark Grew (May 27, 1880 – May 25, 1965) was an American career diplomat and Foreign Service officer. He is best known as the ambassador to Japan from 1932 to 1941 and as a high official in the State Department in Washington from 1944 to 1945. He opposed American hardliners, sought to avoid war, and helped to ensure the soft Japanese surrender in 1945 that enabled a peaceful American occupation of Japan after the war.
After numerous minor diplomatic appointments, Grew was the Ambassador to Denmark (1920–1921) and Ambassador to Switzerland (1921–1924). In 1924, Grew became the Under Secretary of State and oversaw the establishment of the US Foreign Service. Grew then became Ambassador to Turkey (1927–1932). As Ambassador to Japan (1932–1941), he opposed American hardliners and recommended negotiation with Tokyo to avoid war until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). He was interned until American and Japanese diplomats were formally exchanged in 1942.
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.
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.Heinrichs, Waldo. American Ambassador: Joseph C. Grew and the Development of the American Diplomatic Tradition, Oxford University Press, 1986. .
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.Douglas Peifer, Choosing War: Presidential Decisions in the Maine, Lusitania, and Panay Incidents (Oxford UP, 2016). Online review (PDF).
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. The biography The Art of Peace by Stan S. Katz highlights the friendship and the alliance between both men.
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.Jonathan G. Utley, Going to War With Japan, 1937–1941 (2005).Stephen Pelz, 1985, p. 610.
On January 27, 1941, Grew secretly cabled the State Department with rumors passed on by the Peruvian Minister to Japan: "Japan military forces planned a surprise mass attack at Pearl Harbor in case of 'trouble' with the United States." Grew's own published account of 1944 stated, "There is a lot of talk around town Tokyo to the effect that the Japanese in case of a break with the United States, are planning to go all out in a surprise mass attack on Pearl Harbor." Grew's report was provided to Admiral Harold R. Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, and Admiral Husband Kimmel, Commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, but it was discounted by everyone involved in Washington, D.C., and Hawaii.
Grew served as ambassador until December 8, 1941, when the United States and Japan severed diplomatic relations during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. 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."
In accordance with diplomatic treaties, the US and Japan negotiated the repatriation of their diplomats via neutral country. In July 1942, Grew and 1,450 other American and foreign citizens went via steamship from Tokyo to Maputo in Portuguese East Africa aboard the Japanese liner Asama Maru and her backup, the Italian liner . In exchange, the US sent home the Japanese diplomats, along with 1,096 other Japanese citizens."Yank Free from Japan Reports 600 Tokyo Raid Deaths, Army Suicides", The Fresno Bee, July 24, 1942, p. 2.
Grew was again appointed as Under Secretary of State and served from December 20, 1944 to August 15, 1945. He served as the Acting Secretary of State for most of the period from January to August 1945, while Secretaries of State Edward Stettinius and James F. Byrnes were away at conferences. Among high-level officials in Washington, Grew was the most knowledgeable regarding Japanese issues.
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. Julius W. Pratt, "Grew, Joseph Clark" in John A. Garraty, ed. Encyclopedia of American Biography (1975). pp. 455–456.
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).Tolstoy, Nikolai, Stalin's Secret War, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston (1981), Blackwell, Jon, "1945: Prisoners' dilemma", The Trentonian
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.
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.
In 1945, after Grew left the State Department, he wrote two volumes of professional memoirs, published in 1952.
He died two days before his 85th birthday on May 25, 1965.
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