Q: Ambassador Shigemitsu

Churchill was crit­i­cized for his extreme­ly respect­ful let­ter to the Japan­ese Ambas­sador to Britain in Decem­ber 1941, when inform­ing him that their coun­tries were at war. Churchill’s response to crit­ics was, “After all, when you have to kill a man it costs noth­ing to be polite.” Was Shigemit­su acual­ly killed?  —W.H., New York

A: No, he lived on

Churchill was writ­ing in the abstract, so did not actu­al­ly pro­pose to slay the Ambas­sador. Mamoru Shigemit­su  was Japan­ese ambas­sador to the Sovi­et Union 1936–38 and to Britain 1938–41. Fol­low­ing Japan’s attacks of Decem­ber 1941 he received unham­pered pas­sage home. As Japan’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs at the end of World War II, he signed the instru­ment of sur­ren­der on USS Mis­souri in Tokyo Bay on 2 Sep­tem­ber 1945. This was the for­mal end of the Sec­ond World War.

Con­vict­ed of war crimes, Shigemit­su received a sen­tence of sev­en years’ impris­on­ment, but was paroled in 1950. In 1954-56 he served as Japan’s For­eign Min­is­ter, and he died in 1957 at the age of 70.

Churchill’s letter to the Ambassador…

…caused a flut­ter in Par­lia­ment for exces­sive flow­er­i­ness and diplo­mat­ic niceties. Churchill decid­ed to men­tion this in his war mem­oirs, but more as a humor­ous note than a seri­ous defense of it.  But decide for  yourself—here is the pas­sage from The Sec­ond World War, vol­ume III, The Grand Alliance, pages 542-43:

Sir,

On the evening of Decem­ber 7th His Majesty’s Gov­ern­ment in the Unit­ed King­dom learned that Japan­ese forces with­out pre­vi­ous warn­ing either in the form of a dec­la­ra­tion of war or of an ulti­ma­tum with a con­di­tion­al dec­la­ra­tion of war had attempt­ed a land­ing on the coast of Malaya and bombed Sin­ga­pore and Hong Kong.

In view of these wan­ton acts of unpro­voked aggres­sion com­mit­ted in fla­grant vio­la­tion of Inter­na­tion­al Law and par­tic­u­lar­ly of Arti­cle 1 of the Third Hague Con­ven­tion rel­a­tive to the open­ing of hos­til­i­ties, to which both Japan and the Unit­ed King­dom are par­ties, His Majesty’s Ambas­sador at Tokyo has been instruct­ed to inform the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Gov­ern­ment in the name of His Majesty’s Gov­ern­ment in the Unit­ed King­dom that a state of war exists between our two countries.

I have the hon­our to be, with high consideration,

Sir,

Your obe­di­ent servant,

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL.

Reference

For this and oth­er quo­ta­tions on the sub­ject see Churchill by Him­self, Chap­ter 20, “Nations…Japan.”