Background
Kichisaburō Nomura was born on 16 December 1877 in Wakayama. He was the son of a former samurai of the domain of Wakayama.
Kichisaburō Nomura was born on 16 December 1877 in Wakayama. He was the son of a former samurai of the domain of Wakayama.
He graduated from the Naval Academy and Naval Staff School and in 1900 was commissioned as an ensign.
By 1922 he had advanced to the rank of rear admiral. During the period from 1908 to 1911 he was stationed in Austria and Germany and from 1914 to 1918, during the First World War, was a military officer attached to the Japanese embassy in the United States, at which time he became very friendly with Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1912 he was a member of the Japanese delegation to the Washington Conference. In 1925 he became chief of the Bureau of Naval Affairs in the Ministry of the Navy and in 1926 assistant chief of the Naval General Staff, advancing to the rank of vice admiral. Thereafter he served in succession as commander of the Kure and Yokosuka naval yards, and in 1932, as commander of the Third Fleet, was dispatched to deal with the Shanghai Incident. At the celebration of the emperor’s birthday in the Shanghai New Park, he was wounded by a bomb and lost the sight in one eye.
In 1937 he entered the reserve and the same year became head of the Peers’ School. In 1939 he became minister of foreign affairs in the cabinet of Abe Nobuyuki and carried on talks with US ambassador Grew. With the outbreak of the Second World War, he strove to maintain friendly relalions between Japan and the United States. In 1940 he was appointed ambassador to the US. In 1941 he arranged for Kurusu Saburo to come as a special envoy to Washington to try to resolve Japanese and American differences and continued negotiations with Secretary of State Hull up until the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack in an effort to avoid conflict, but with the outbreak of the Pacific War he returned to Japan.
In 1944 he became an advisor to the Privy Council. After the war, in 1953, he became president of Japan Victor Company, and in 1954 was elected to the Upper House of the Diet.
