Pearl Harbor Address ("A Date Which Will Live in Infamy")

Summary

On Sunday morning, 7 December 1941, Japanese carrier aircraft struck the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, damaging or sinking all eight battleships in the harbor, destroying much of the aircraft on the island, and killing more than 2,400 Americans. That evening Roosevelt dictated a short draft to his secretary Grace Tully and then revised it by hand. Shortly after noon on Monday, 8 December, he spoke to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber, with a radio audience that was the largest of its time. The address takes about seven minutes. It opens with the date and the charge: the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked, and the day will live in infamy, a word Roosevelt substituted in his own hand for world history. He then lays out the case for treachery. The nation was at peace and still negotiating at Japan's request; an hour after the bombing began, Japan's ambassador delivered a reply that contained no hint of war; and the distance from Japan to Hawaii proves the attack was planned days or weeks before, while Tokyo deceived Washington with expressions of hope for peace. Next comes a bare litany of the wider offensive: Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippine Islands, Wake Island, and Midway, each in its own short paragraph. The facts, Roosevelt says, speak for themselves. As Commander in Chief he has ordered all measures for defense; the nation will remember the character of the onslaught; and the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. Hostilities exist, he states flatly. He closes with confidence in the armed forces and the people, so help us God, and with the formal request that Congress declare a state of war with the Japanese Empire. The Senate voted 82 to 0 and the House 388 to 1, with Representative Jeannette Rankin the only dissent. Roosevelt signed the declaration that afternoon. Three days later Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

Top Lessons

• Letting facts carry the argument

  Roosevelt makes his case for war almost without adjectives in the middle of the speech. The list of places attacked overnight, one per sentence, does the persuading, and he says so: the facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. Restraint at the center makes the moral words at the beginning and end weigh more.

• Treachery and the just cause of war

  The address rests the justice of war on the manner of the attack as much as its damage: Japan struck while negotiating and sought to deceive the United States with talk of peace. Roosevelt frames the declaration as a response to an unprovoked wrong already done, so that Congress recognizes a war that already exists.

• Memory as a national duty

  Roosevelt tells the nation that the date will live in infamy and that the whole nation will always remember the character of the onslaught. The speech does not only ask for a declaration; it fixes how the event will be remembered, joining resolve to remembrance.

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