Tojo's expansive reading of imperial approval

Tojo treated anything short of an explicit imperial refusal as approval, allowing military plans to acquire an aura of imperial sanction without a clear command. Roosevelt had indicated that Washington might tolerate a Japanese position in China, but expansion into Indochina combined with alignment with Hitler was unacceptable. Konoe's admission that troop transports bound for Indochina could not be recalled illustrates how little operational control the cabinet possessed. The oil embargo then exposed the strategic cost: the United States had supplied 93 percent of Japan's oil in 1940, and the navy warned Hirohito that the remaining stockpile would be exhausted within roughly two years. Civil-military dysfunction had now fed directly into the fuel crisis that narrowed Japan's strategic choices.