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Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor

Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor united America behind President Franklin D. Roosevelt who mobilized the nation’s military and industrial might to defeat the Axis Powers in World War II.

The World Situation

Between 1931 and 1939, totalitarian nations in Europe and Asia embarked on paths of aggression and military conquest.

When war erupted in Europe on September 1, 1939, Americans were divided about how to respond. They sympathized with the victims of aggression but, remembering the horrors of World War I, most wanted to stay out of the conflict. The country’s military was also woefully unprepared. Isolationists argued that America should look to its own defenses rather than aid other nations. Neutrality laws passed by Congress during the 1930s prohibited American arms sales to warring nations.

From the war’s outbreak through the fall of 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pursued a cautious, but deliberate policy of aiding Britain and, later, the Soviet Union, in their war with Germany and Italy. He also had to manage a growing crisis in the Pacific, where Japan was expanding its empire into China and threatening Southeast Asia.

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The Attack

In their quest to secure natural resources for their island nation, the Japanese advanced into southern French Indo-China in July 1941. President Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the United States and banned the sale of oil. Without American oil, Japan’s economy would soon grind to a halt.

Japan’s leaders faced a choice—end their aggression or confront the United States. During the summer of 1941, they began secret preparations for war. Their plan called for seizing oil-rich territories in Southeast Asia and striking a crippling blow against U.S. military installations in the Pacific.

In the early hours of December 7, 1941, Japan unleashed a devastating surprise attack throughout the Pacific. The worst blow came at Hawaii, site of the giant Pearl Harbor naval base and other American military installations. In just two hours, Japanese bombers destroyed or damaged 21 American naval vessels and over 300 aircraft. The attacks killed 2403 military personnel and civilians, and shattered the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

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FDR’s Day: December 7, 1941

It was a Sunday and President Roosevelt had a light schedule—a meeting with the Chinese ambassador at 12:30 followed by a quiet lunch with Harry Hopkins. At 1:40 PM Navy Secretary Frank Knox telephoned with the grim news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. By 3:05 PM Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and three advisors joined Roosevelt, Hopkins, and the President’s secretary, Grace Tully, for the first of a series of high-level meetings that would run until nearly 12:30 the next morning.

Shortly before 5:00 PM, the President began dictating a speech to be delivered to a Joint Session of Congress the next day. Tully typed the draft and returned it to FDR for handwritten revisions—including the famous declaration, “December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy.” These words would galvanize the nation.

But it was Eleanor Roosevelt who first spoke about the attack when she calmed the nation during her regularly scheduled Sunday night radio program from Washington.

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War!

On December 8, 1941, President Roosevelt delivered his war message before a Joint Session of Congress, calling the attack “a date which will live in infamy.” Roosevelt asked Congress to declare that a state of war existed between the United States and the Empire of Japan. Congress quickly passed a war resolution which Roosevelt signed later that day at the White House.

Japan’s shocking attack unified Americans. Isolationist sentiment disappeared and the nation emerged determined to, in Roosevelt’s words, “win through to absolute victory.”

Four days after Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy—allied with Japan under the 1940 Tripartite Pact— declared war on the United States. In one stroke, Hitler and Mussolini solved a strategic dilemma for President Roosevelt, who had long believed that Germany posed the greatest long-term threat to America’s national security. America now had to fight a war on two fronts.

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Allies Abroad and Mobilization at Home

Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, reporters at the White House were ushered into the Oval Office for a press conference. There they found a smiling President Roosevelt and a special guest—Winston Churchill, who had come to Washington to plot strategy. On January 1, 1942, the two leaders and representatives of 24 other Allied countries signed the United Nations Declaration pledging “to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice. . . .”

On the Home Front, an enormous mobilization effort touched nearly every aspect of American life. The armed services grew from an unprepared force of 334,473 active duty personnel in 1939 to 12,123,455 in 1945. Wages and prices were controlled; food, fuel, and other needed materials were rationed; and Federal defense spending skyrocketed. The scale of American wartime production was staggering. It ended the Great Depression and opened the door to employment opportunities for women and minorities.

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