2026 is America’s 250th birthyear. To celebrate, I’m highlighting 50+ significant American documents from our history. Find them all under the American Documents tab!
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On December 7th, 1941, the Empire of Japan decided that it was tired of waiting to find out what nukes tasted like, so they launched simultaneous attacks on several targets in the Pacific. For the United States, the impact was felt most acutely at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, where bombs and torpedoes sank most of our navy and killed roughly thirty-five hundred men and women.
It would take a few years before America could serve up that delectable Carolina Reaper Of The Sky but you can guarantee that sucker was cooked to perfection when it got there in the summer of ‘45. In our limitless generosity we even gave them seconds. Some of you are laughing at this and some of you are incensed at my audacity. I want you to know that I agree with both sides.
But long before the Manhattan Project, or the mobilization in the Pacific, there came a declaration of war from Congress. And that was granted almost immediately after President F.D. Roosevelt requested it on December 8th.
The full text of the “Day That Will Live In Infamy” speech is here. FDR laid out the case for war simply by stating the facts of the attack, and how the Japanese must have been planning it even as diplomatic efforts broke down. They were already getting ready to strike despite America’s good faith efforts to avoid armed conflict.
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…
We remember that they hit Pearl. We should also remember that they hit several others. Gutsy, but misguided in the end.
Roughly six weeks later, FDR gave a State of the Union address that focused a lot on how that effort was going. He recapped the previous fifty years of Japanese imperialist schemes, which ran concurrent with Fascist Italy’s expansion throughout Africa and the Mediterranean, and Nazi Germany’s march across Europe. Shortly after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on America, something FDR had warned the nation would happen in 1941’s SOTU address. Thus, war was upon us from all sides.
The militarists of Berlin and Tokyo started this war. But the massed, angered forces of common humanity will finish it.
Read the speech. It’s a good one. I bust FDR’s chops for his monarchical ambitions but when the war landed in his lap, he handled it right and the nation was more than happy to look to him for direction. (Yes there were protests and objectors, it wasn’t universal, it never is.) You don’t win the White House four times in a row for nothing.
(But it doesn’t hurt to run right after the stock market crashed, right after the Dust Bowl, and right after Pearl Harbor. Dude rolled a nat 20 on timing.)
Our task is hard- our task is unprecedented—and the time is short. We must strain every existing armament-producing facility to the utmost. We must convert every available plant and tool to war production. That goes all the way from the greatest plants to the smallest—from the huge automobile industry to the village machine shop.
The speech was a rallying call, and also a call to guard against spiritual woes. FDR specifically called out defeatism, complacency, and divisions amongst ourselves. Nobody could coast and nobody could blackpill. Above all else, one flag and one people. Fight the enemies abroad, then we can focus on the real enemies: our neighbors who voted different from us. Wait…
Anyways.
Our enemies are guided by brutal cynicism, by unholy contempt for the human race. We are inspired by a faith that goes back through all the years to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis: “God created man in His own image.”
We on our side are striving to be true to that divine heritage. We are fighting, as our fathers have fought, to uphold the doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God. Those on the other side are striving to destroy this deep belief and to create a world in their own image—a world of tyranny and cruelty and serfdom.
That is the conflict that day and night now pervades our lives.
No compromise can end that conflict. There never has been—there never can be—successful compromise between good and evil. Only total victory can reward the champions of tolerance, and decency, and freedom, and faith.
I miss the days when there were leaders in both parties that I could be tempted to vote for. I wonder what happened…
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