Ep 63: Steve Kemper on Interwar Japan

Steve Kemper, author most recently of Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor, joins the show to talk about the political chaos in Tokyo in the years leading up to WWII and the man that tried to keep the peace, U.S. AmbassadorJoseph C. Grew.

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Times 

• 01:18 Introduction 

• 01:50 Who was Joseph C. Grew? 

• 04:36 Japanese politics in the ’30s 

• 07:30 Imperial Army vs Imperial Navy

• 11:00 First impressions

• 17:31 Insurrection 

• 22:12 Drifting towards war 

• 26:08 Dynamics in D.C. 

• 28:24 Appeasement 

• 35:05 Japan’s plans

• 37:40 Embargoes and FDR

• 42:48 Distinct parallels