Against Communism and Fascism
At that time, the Vatican and the Catholic Church had to confront two totalitarian forces. One was communism, led by the Soviet Union, and the other was fascism, the Nazi Party in Germany and the Fascist Party in Italy. The Soviet Union was trying to spread communism all over the world.
In China the Communist Party of China, under the leadership of Mao Zedong and others, had built up a power comparable to that of the former Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party, and was cleverly trying to pit the KMT against the Japanese.
In the United States, too, it is known that spies from the Comintern, the Soviet-led international communist organisation, had infiltrated the Roosevelt administration and were involved in policy making. Of course, the domination of the world by atheistic communism was unacceptable to the papacy and would have meant the "death" of religion as a whole.
In contrast, Mussolini, the leader of the Italian Fascist Party, was initially favourable to the Vatican.
However, as soon as the Fascist Party began its dictatorship, he began to suppress all Catholic youth groups in the country, ordering them to seal their offices (Kiyoshi Kosakai, The Pope's Power and Warfare).
The Vatican and Germany were also quite friendly, with Benedict XV criticising the excessive retaliatory measures against Germany over the Treaty of Versailles. However, when the Nazi Hitler came to power, he made clear his anti-Jewish as well as anti-Christian views. Catholic clergy and Protestant ministers, along with Jews, were sent to concentration camps.
In this respect, Japan, one of the world's five great powers in the East, was a safe haven. Japan, one of the five great countries of the world in the East, was a safe country, where the Emperor and the Imperial Family were cherished. Most of its people could not accept communism, which would have slaughtered the Russian tsar and his family.
Through the handling of the February 26 Incident and other events, the military, both land and sea, had become a political force to be reckoned with, but as long as the Emperor was alive and well, this could not become a military dictatorship.
In 1940, the Tripartite Pact was concluded with Germany and Italy, but this was a very diplomatic move, not an immediate embrace of fascism. It was against this background that Pius XI showed such an affinity for Japan that he promised Yamamoto that he would "pray for the Emperor".
According to "The True Record of the Showa Emperor", Yamamoto had an audience with the Emperor on the afternoon of 19 December 1938, some 20 days after his return from Europe and the United States, and spent an hour expressing his impressions of the trip.
Naturally, it is safe to assume that Pius XI's message of "prayers for the Emperor" and goodwill towards Japan was also conveyed.
That is why, on October 13, 1941, when war with the United States and Great Britain seemed inevitable, the Showa Emperor said to his Minister of the Interior, Koichi Kido (Diary of Koichi Kido)
"In order to do this, it is necessary to establish measures for friendly relations, such as the exchange of envoys with the Holy See."
On several other occasions the Government was instructed to establish relations with the Vatican and to prepare the conditions for peace by Showa Emperor. But there was no sign of any action on the part of the government in response to these instructions.
Unfortunately, the Showa Emperor and Shinjiro Yamamoto may have been the only two people who knew exactly where the Vatican stood and what it wanted.
