Full Speech Audio:December 7,1941-A Date Which Will Live in Infamy:

Rsdio Chemistry ^

[lbryce]

"DAY OF INFAMY" Franklin D. Roosevelt - December 8, 1941 Full audio speech, "Yesterday, Dec. 7, 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." ...

Full Speech:A Date That Will Live In Infamy

[lbryce]

A solemn day in our history. Sneak attack by the Imperial Navy of Japan on Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt's speech reverberates down through history as indeed a date which forever lives in infamy as will September 11, 2001.

[caver]

As much as I dislike FDR, he did pull the country together. Can you imagine what would happen with a similar event today with Obama in the White House? We would all be speaking Japanese or German.

[ClearCase_guy]

If Obama had been president in 1941, and had to make a speech on that occasion, either the first or second sentence would have included a slap at the foreign policy mess Herbert Hoover had left him with nine years ago.

[chuck_the_tv_out]

..or something about how the Japanese were mentally ill

[chuck_the_tv_out]

..or a shout out to his pals

[left that other site]

I had the honor of providing the music for the 55th reunion of a local chapter of Pearl Harbor Survivors.

What a wonderful bunch of guys.

And yes, even 55 years later, there was not a single Mitsubishi or Toyota in the parking lot.
:-)

[TonyInOhio]

One of the most compelling broadcasts of the day came from a reporter with KGU Radio in Honolulu. You can hear the excitement and a tinge of fear in his voice as he reports to NBC via telephone. Visit the Internet Archive to hear the broadcast.

[TonyInOhio]

Here's how the rest of the U.S. navy found out about the attack:

[jamaksin]

The last paragraph is:

"I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, Dec. 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

The "unprovoked" element has long been at issue.

See, for example, "Bankrupting the Enemy: The U.S. Financial Siege of Japan before Pearl Harbor, by Edward S. Miller. (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2007, ISBN 978-1-59114-520-2.)

Or, from a July 3, 1944 speech given in London, by British Minister of War Production, Oliver Lyttelton: "Japan was provoked into attacking the Americans at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty on history ever to say that America was forced into the war. Everyone knows where American sympathies were. It is incorrect to say that America was ever truly neutral even before America came into the war."

So it goes - this history thing, especially for Americans on this National Day of mourning.

[Thermalseeker]

My mother was a telephone operator working a switchboard for Bell in Atlanta on December 7, 1941. She said it was the only time anyone had ever seen the entire board, every circuit, light up “like a Christmas tree”....

[Vaduz]

Wonder how many government buildings will have flag at half staff today?.

[tenthirteen]

This Government building does.

[andy58-in-nh]

When (not if) this country is again attacked, and if Obama is still President (Heaven help us), his address to the nation will be composed of at least two elements: (1.) how it was really America’s fault that it happened, and (2.) extensive use of the first person singular tense to demonstrate how the event is really all about him.

[lbryce]

I am quite shocked that the British Minister spoke so openly about the Japanese being provoked into an attack in such grotesque caricature of history. It's every bit as felonious as our modern day version of "root causes" for 9/11.

The war at the time seemed to be what Churchill might have said to be at "the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end" making the statement quite inflammatory and in total diametric opposition to the British government point of view, for sure.

I wonder what if any consequences he might have been subjected to speaking with such animus towards the country that literally saved the limey bastards from certain conquest.

It just seems to me that the egregiously prejudicial perspective otherwise known as historical revisionism began even before the war seemed winnable, I suppose.

[PghBaldy]

Here are links to the first radio reports (several to choose from) I listening to one now. http://library.umkc.edu/spec-col/ww2/pearlharbor/ph-txt.htm

[Eric in the Ozarks]

There was a subculture in the UK who claimed the US stayed out of the war long enough to allow Britain to lose her empire. The claim that we coerced Japan into attacking us fits into the same sort of thinking...

[jan in Colorado]

ping

[jamaksin]

Historical revisionism is on-going as newer materials are revealed. It is natural; the essence of the "truth" however, is often wanting.

There will certainly be several now "definitive" Pearl Harbor histories as time passes.

In the US, the period between WWI and WWII was often thought of as the "golden" age of said historical revisionism.

On Churchill, see Reynold's In Command of History for another aspect of those six volumes. Ismay was the lead filter then.

[NavyCanDo]

Compare how the two most popular search engines honor the day.

First Google. (Nothing, zilch, nada, zero)

www.google.com

Now BING (Wow!, breathless photo of Battleship Roll)

www.bing.com

[manc]

will president bozo be there?