World War II
Kawai warned Curtin at the conclusion of the American–Japanese talks in Washington, D.C. that "the momentum may have gone too far" to prevent war, prompting Curtin to recall his War Cabinet on December 5, 1941. Kawai was kept under house arrest at the Japanese embassy at the outbreak of the Pacific War and deported to Japan in August 1942, taking with him the ashes of four of the Japanese submariners killed in the attack on Sydney Harbour.
Kawai was ostracised in Japan when he called on Japanese not to hate Australians and was sacked from the Foreign Ministry. Towards the end of the war he secretly worked for peace with Shigeru Yoshida. Immediately after the war he became vice foreign minister under Yoshida.
Read more about this topic: Tatsuo Kawai
Famous quotes containing the words world war, world and/or war:
“Surely there is not a capitalist or well-informed person in this world today who believes that [World War I] is being fought to make the world safe for democracy. It is being fought to make the world safe for capital.”
—Rose Porter Stokes (1879–1933)
“The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium. What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of barbarism.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)