Dec 2, 2019 3 min read

This week (Dec. 8), in 1941, in the wake of the devastating Japanese surprise attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed Congress and the American people in what is now called his “Day of Infamy” speech.

The final draft of the speech reflected Roosevelt’s insistence that he sound outraged – he wanted to portray the Japanese as duplicitous and America as an innocent victim of a dastardly attack that came out of nowhere.

Which wasn’t quite accurate. Diplomatic relations between the two nations had been steadily deteriorating during the months of negotiations leading up to Pearl Harbor. Acutely aware of Japan’s imperial ambitions in East Asia, Roosevelt had ordered an embargo on oil, rubber, and other products necessary to this empire-building, but also necessary for Japan’s existence, thereby infuriating Japan. As a result, although they had no concrete evidence of an impending attack, U.S. government officials were aware that Japan’s military leaders were planning something, and in late November they sent the commander of Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband Kimmel, instructions to consider going to high alert (which Kimmel mostly ignored). They also knew the Japanese embassy had started burning volumes of written communications to and from the Japanese government, which was highly suspicious.

In sum, Roosevelt’s painting America as an innocent victim was as much propaganda as reality, and his edits to the original draft reinforced that aim. For example, he changed, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in history … ” to the more inflammatory “live in infamy.”

The draft stated that America and Japan had been conversing about “the maintenance of peace.” Roosevelt added that this was “at the solicitation of Japan,” the implication being that while Japan was ostensibly seeking peace, it was surreptitiously planning war. Whereas the draft said Japan had recently replied that diplomatic negotiations were now definitely ended, Roosevelt changed that to “[Japan’s] reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations,” suggesting Japan had not yet ended those negotiations, thereby implying that it had attacked Pearl Harbor while negotiations were ongoing.

Whereas the draft said, “these attacks were deliberately planned many days ago,” Roosevelt changed that to “the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks, ago,” thereby asserting that this attack was not spur-of-the-moment, or the result of a recent U.S. provocation, but had been planned for some time.

And putting the cherry on top, Roosevelt concluded, “I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”