A first draft of the Infamy Speech, with changes by Roosevelt
The
Presidential Address to Congress of December 8, 1941[1][2][3] (known as the
Infamy Speech or
Day of Infamy Speech[4][5]) was delivered at 12:30 p.m. that day to a
Joint Session of Congress by
United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, one day after the
Empire of Japan's
attack on
Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii. The name derives from the first line of the speech: Roosevelt describing the previous day as "
a date which will live in infamy."
Within an hour of the speech,
Congress passed a formal
declaration of war against Japan and officially brought the U.S. into
World War II. The address is regarded as one of the most famous American political speeches of the 20th century.
[6]
At 7:53 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, the first assault
wave of Japanese fighter planes attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii, taking the Americans completely by surprise.
The first wave targeted airfields and battleships.
The second wave targeted other ships and shipyard facilities. The air raid
lasted until 9:45 a.m. Eight battleships were damaged, with five sunk.
Three light cruisers, three destroyers and three smaller vessels were lost
along with 188 aircraft. The Japanese lost 27 planes and five midget submarines
which attempted to penetrate the inner harbor and launch torpedoes.
Three prime targets; the U.S. Pacific Fleet aircraft
carriers, Lexington, Enterprise and Saratoga, were not in the
harbor and thus escaped damage.
The casualty list at Pearl Harbor included 2,335 servicemen
and 68 civilians killed, and 1,178 wounded. Over a thousand crewmen aboard the
USS Arizona battleship were killed after a 1,760 pound aerial
bomb penetrated the forward magazine causing catastrophic explosions.
See also: Pearl Harbor Slide Show - 20 photos
News of the "sneak attack" was broadcast to
the American public via radio bulletins, with many popular Sunday afternoon
entertainment programs being interrupted. The news sent a shockwave across the
nation, resulting in a tremendous influx of young volunteers into the U.S. Armed
Forces. The attack also united the nation behind President Franklin D. Roosevelt
and effectively ended the American isolationist movement.
On Monday, December 8th, President Roosevelt appeared
before Congress and made this speech asking for a declaration of war against
Japan, calling the previous day "...a date which will live in infamy..."
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House
of Representatives:
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy -
the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by
naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation
of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its Emperor
looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing
in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States
and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to
a recent American message. And, while this reply stated that it seemed
useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained
no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes
it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks
ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately
sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions
of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage
to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many
American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported
torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against
Malaya.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has therefore undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout
the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves.
The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and
well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all
measures be taken for our defense, that always will our whole nation remember
the character of the onslaught against us.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion,
the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute
victory.
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people
when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but
will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again
endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people,
our territory and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination
of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly
attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed
between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt - December 8, 1941
|
The wreckage of the
USS Arizona ablaze after the attack.
The Infamy Speech was brief, running to just a little over seven minutes. Secretary of State
Cordell Hull had recommended that the president devote more time to a fuller exposition of
Japanese-American relations
and the lengthy but unsuccessful effort to find a peaceful solution.
However, Roosevelt kept the speech short in the belief that it would
have a more dramatic effect.
[7]
His revised statement was all the stronger for its emphatic
insistence that posterity would forever endorse the American view of the
attack. It was intended not merely as a personal response by the
president, but as a statement on behalf of the entire American people in
the face of a great
collective trauma.
In proclaiming the indelibility of the attack and expressing outrage at
its "dastardly" nature, the speech worked to crystallize and channel
the response of the nation into a collective response and resolve.
[8]
The first paragraph of the speech was carefully worded to reinforce
Roosevelt's portrayal of the United States as the innocent victim of
unprovoked Japanese aggression. The wording was deliberately passive.
Rather than taking the more usual active voice—i.e. "Japan attacked the
United States"—Roosevelt chose to put in the foreground the object being
acted upon, namely the United States, to emphasize America's status as a
victim.
[9]
The theme of "innocence violated" was further reinforced by Roosevelt's
recounting of the ongoing diplomatic negotiations with Japan, which the
president characterized as having been pursued cynically and
dishonestly by the Japanese government while it was secretly preparing
for war against the United States.
[10]
Roosevelt consciously sought to avoid making the sort of more abstract appeal that had been issued by President
Woodrow Wilson in his own speech to Congress
[11] in April 1917, when the United States entered
World War I.
Wilson laid out the strategic threat posed by Germany and stressed the
idealistic goals behind America's participation in the war. During the
1930s, however, American public opinion turned strongly against such
themes and was wary of, if not actively hostile to, idealistic visions
of remaking the world through a "just war". Roosevelt therefore chose to
make an appeal aimed more at the gut level—in effect, an appeal to
patriotism rather than to idealism. Nonetheless, he took pains to draw a
symbolic link with the April 1917 declaration of war; when he went to
Congress on December 8, 1941 he was accompanied by
Edith Bolling Wilson, President Wilson's widow.
[12]
The "infamy framework" adopted by Roosevelt was given additional
resonance by the fact that it followed the pattern of earlier narratives
of great American defeats. The
Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 and the sinking of the
USS Maine
in 1898 had both been the source of intense national outrage and a
determination to take the fight to the enemy. Defeats and setbacks were
on each occasion portrayed as being merely a springboard towards an
eventual and inevitable victory. As Professor Sandra Silberstein
observes, Roosevelt's speech followed a well-established tradition of
how "through rhetorical conventions, presidents assume extraordinary
powers as the commander in chief, dissent is minimized, enemies are
vilified, and lives are lost in the defense of a nation once again
united under God."
[13]
The overall tone of the speech was one of determined realism.
Roosevelt made no attempt to paper over the great damage that had been
caused to the American armed forces, noting (without giving figures, as
casualty reports were still being compiled) that "very many American
lives have been lost" in the attack. However, he emphasized his
confidence in the strength of the American people to face up to the
challenge posed by Japan, citing the "unbounded determination of our
people". He sought to reassure the public that steps were being taken to
ensure their safety, noting his own role as "Commander in Chief of the
Army and Navy" (the
United States Air Force was at this time
part of the US Army) and declaring that he had already "directed that all measures be taken for our defense".
Roosevelt also made a point of emphasizing that "our people, our
territory and our interests are in grave danger" and highlighted reports
of Japanese attacks in the Pacific between Hawaii and
San Francisco. In so doing, he sought to silence the
isolationist
movement which had campaigned so strongly against American involvement
in the war in Europe. If the territory and waters of the continental
United States—not just outlying possessions such as the Philippines—was
seen as being under direct threat, isolationism would become an
unsustainable course of action. Roosevelt's speech had the desired
effect, with only one Representative voting against the declaration of
war he sought; the wider isolationist movement collapsed almost
immediately.
The speech's "infamy" line is often misquoted as "a
day that will live in infamy". However, Roosevelt quite deliberately chose to emphasize the
date—December 7, 1941—rather than the
day
of the attack, a Sunday, which he mentioned only in the last line when
he said, "...Sunday, December 7th, 1941,...". He sought to emphasize the
historic nature of the events at Pearl Harbor, implicitly urging the
American people never to forget the attack and memorialize its date.
Ironically, the misquoted term "day of infamy" has become widely used by
the media to refer to any moment of supreme disgrace or evil.
[14]
Impact and legacy
Roosevelt's speech had an immediate and long-lasting impact on
American politics. Thirty-three minutes after he finished speaking,
Congress declared war on Japan, with only one Representative,
Jeannette Rankin,
voting against the declaration. The speech was broadcast live by radio
and attracted the largest audience in US radio history, with over 81
percent of American homes tuning in to hear the President.
[7] The response was overwhelmingly positive, both within and outside of Congress. Judge
Samuel Irving Rosenman, who served as an adviser to Roosevelt, described the scene:
| “ |
It was
a most dramatic spectacle there in the chamber of the House of
Representatives. On most of the President's personal appearances before
Congress, we found applause coming largely from one side—the Democratic
side. But this day was different. The applause, the spirit of
cooperation, came equally from both sides. ... The new feeling of unity
which suddenly welled up in the chamber on December 8, the common
purpose behind the leadership of the President, the joint determination
to see things through, were typical of what was taking place throughout
the country.[15] |
” |
The White House was inundated with telegrams praising the president's
stance ("On that Sunday we were dismayed and frightened, but your
unbounded courage pulled us together."
[16]).
Recruiting stations were jammed with a surge of volunteers and had to
go on 24-hour duty to deal with the crowds seeking to sign up, in
numbers reported to be twice as high as after Woodrow Wilson's
declaration of war in 1917. The anti-war and isolationist movement
collapsed in the wake of the speech, with even the president's fiercest
critics falling into line.
Charles Lindbergh, who had been a leading isolationist, declared:
| “ |
Now
[war] has come and we must meet it as united Americans regardless of our
attitude in the past toward the policy our Government has followed. ...
Our country has been attacked by force of arms, and by force of arms we
must retaliate. We must now turn every effort to building the greatest
and most efficient Army, Navy and Air Force in the world.[17] |
” |
Roosevelt's framing of the Pearl Harbor attack became, in effect, the
standard American narrative of the events of December 7, 1941.
Hollywood enthusiastically adopted the narrative in a number of war
films.
Wake Island, the
Academy Award-winning
Air Force and the films
Man from Frisco (1944), and
Betrayal from the East
(1945), all included actual radio reports of the pre-December 7
negotiations with the Japanese, reinforcing the message of enemy
duplicity.
Across the Pacific (1942),
Salute to the Marines (1943), and
Spy Ship
(1942), used a similar device, relating the progress of US–Japanese
relations through newspaper headlines. The theme of American innocence
betrayed was also frequently depicted on screen, the
melodramatic aspects of the narrative lending themselves naturally to the movies.
[18]
The President's description of December 7 as "a date which will live
in infamy" was borne out; the date very quickly became shorthand for the
Pearl Harbor attack in much the same way that September 11 became
inextricably associated with the
2001 terrorist attacks.
The slogans "Remember December 7th" and "Avenge December 7" were
adopted as a rallying cry and were widely displayed on posters and lapel
pins.
[19] Prelude to War (1942), the first of
Frank Capra's
Why We Fight film series (1942–1945), urged Americans to remember the date of the
Japanese invasion of Manchuria, September 18, 1931, "as well as we remember December 7th 1941, for on that date in 1931 the war we are now fighting began."
[20] The symbolism of the date was highlighted in a scene in the 1943 film
Bombardier,
in which the leader of a group of airmen walks up to a calendar on the
wall, points to the date ("December 7, 1941") and tells his men:
"Gentlemen, there's a date we will always remember—and they'll never
forget!"
[21]
Sixty years later, the continuing resonance of the Infamy Speech was demonstrated following the
September 11, 2001 attacks, which many commentators compared with Pearl Harbor in terms of its impact and deadliness.
[22] In the days following the attacks, author Richard Jackson notes in his book
Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics and Counter-terrorism that "there [was] a deliberate and sustained effort" on the part of the
George W. Bush administration to "discursively link September 11, 2001 to the attack on Pearl Harbor itself",
[23] both by directly invoking Roosevelt's Infamy Speech
[24] and by re-using the themes employed by Roosevelt in his speech. In Bush's speech to the nation on
September 11, 2001,
he contrasted the "evil, despicable acts of terror" with the "brightest
beacon for freedom and opportunity" that America represented in his
view.
[25] University of Washington
Professor and author Sandra Silberstein draws direct parallels between
the language used by Roosevelt and Bush, highlighting a number of
similarities between the Infamy Speech and Bush's presidential address
of September 11.
[13]
Similarly, Emily S. Rosenberg notes rhetorical efforts to link the
conflicts of 1941 and 2001 by re-utilizing Second World War terminology
of the sort used by Roosevelt, such as using the term "axis" to refer to
America's enemies (as in "
Axis of Evil").
[12]
