The “Day of Infamy” speech

On Monday 8 December 1941, at 12.30 p.m. Washington time, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood before a joint session of Congress in the chamber of the House of Representatives. He spoke for less than seven minutes. The opening sentence of the speech became one of the best-known sentences in American history: “Yesterday, December 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.” The final sentence asked Congress to declare that since the “unprovoked and dastardly” attack of Sunday 7 December a state of war had existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire. Less than an hour later both houses passed the resolution: the Senate by 82 votes to 0, the House of Representatives by 388 to 1.

The American declaration of war was the most important of those days, but neither the first nor the only one. Within a week of the attack on Pearl Harbor a state of war with Japan had been proclaimed by Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the Free French, several states of Central America and the Caribbean, and finally China, which had been fighting Japan for more than four years without ever declaring war on it. Popular chronologies spread these acts over 7, 8, 9 and 12 December. These dates call for some qualification, all the more so because events were unfolding on both sides of the date line: Sunday morning, 7 December, in Hawaii was already Monday, 8 December, in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore.

War without a declaration

Japan began the war before declaring it. The note that Ambassador Kichisaburō Nomura and the special envoy Saburō Kurusu handed to Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Washington more than an hour after the first bombs fell was a reply to the Hull note and stated only that further negotiations could not lead to agreement. It did not break off diplomatic relations and did not announce war. The Japanese learned that the war had begun on the morning of 8 December from a communiqué of Imperial General Headquarters, dated 6 a.m. Tokyo time and broadcast by radio an hour later: the imperial army and navy had “entered today before dawn into a state of war with American and British forces in the western Pacific”. That same morning the foreign minister, Shigenori Tōgō, summoned the American and British ambassadors and handed them the text of the note delivered in Washington, while in Shanghai Japanese troops marched into the International Settlement, sinking the British gunboat moored there and capturing the American one.

The formal act was proclaimed by the emperor. Hirohito’s rescript declaring war on the United States and the British Empire was published on 8 December before noon Tokyo time (at about 11.40–11.45 a.m. according to most Japanese sources), that is, late in the evening of 7 December in Washington, many hours after the attack on Hawaii and the landing in Malaya. It appeared the same day in the afternoon editions of every Japanese newspaper, and thereafter, until the surrender in 1945, it was reprinted on the eighth day of every month. The rescript presented the war as an act of self-defence: the United States and Britain, by supporting “the regime that has survived in Chongqing”, had allegedly fomented unrest in East Asia, encircled Japan with armaments and, by severing economic relations, threatened its very existence, so that the empire had no choice but to “appeal to arms”. In the afternoon the government of Hideki Tōjō issued a statement on the opening of the war.

The order of events – first the blow, then the declaration – was neither an accident nor solely the result of sluggishness at the embassy in Washington. Documents of the Japanese General Staff and Foreign Ministry, found and described by historians only after the war, show that as early as November it had been decided to declare war only a day after hostilities began, and that the army and navy were reluctant to agree even to a brief advance warning in the form of a diplomatic note.

Canada first

The first state to answer Japan with a declaration of war was Canada. News of the attack reached Ottawa on the Sunday afternoon of 7 December. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King convened the cabinet that same evening, and the government decided, without waiting for either London or Washington, that Canada was at war with Japan. Late in the evening King announced the decision. The proclamation stating that a state of war with Japan “exists and has existed since 7 December 1941” was formally issued on 8 December. Unlike in September 1939, when Canada declared war on Germany only after a vote in parliament, this time the government acted alone: parliament was not sitting, and King took the view, as he noted in his diary, that it was “all part of the same war”. Canadians were directly concerned, for two of their battalions, the Winnipeg Grenadiers and the Royal Rifles of Canada, had been stationed for several weeks in Hong Kong, where on the morning of 8 December local time the battle for the colony began.

Chronologies also list Australia’s declaration of war under 7 December. In reality the Australian prime minister announced it on the evening of 8 December Australian time, and the formal act was signed on 9 December.

London does not wait for Congress

On 10 November, at the Mansion House in London, Winston Churchill had announced publicly that if the United States were drawn into war with Japan, a British declaration would follow “within the hour”. He heard the news of Pearl Harbor on the wireless at Chequers on the evening of 7 December and at once telephoned Roosevelt. At first he intended to wait until the president had obtained the consent of Congress, but during the night reports came in that the Japanese had landed on the coast of Malaya, bombed Singapore and attacked Hong Kong. British territory had thus been attacked, and London had nothing to wait for. In Britain, unlike in the United States, the decision to go to war lay with the government, not with parliament.

Churchill, who in the absence of Anthony Eden, then on his way to Moscow, was also in charge of the Foreign Office, signed a letter to the Japanese embassy in London on 8 December. In it he wrote that, in view of “wanton acts of unprovoked aggression” committed without a declaration of war or an ultimatum, in flagrant violation of international law and in particular of Article 1 of the Third Hague Convention, the British ambassador in Tokyo had been instructed to inform the Japanese government that a state of war existed between the two countries. The letter ended with the traditional formula “I have the honour to be, with high consideration, Sir, your obedient servant”. When some criticised this ceremonious tone, Churchill later replied in his memoirs that when you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite. On the afternoon of 8 December the prime minister informed the House of Commons that Britain was at war with Japan. This happened several hours before Roosevelt addressed Congress.

In his memoirs Churchill also described what he felt that night. Since the United States was in the war “up to the neck and in to the death”, then, he wrote, “so we had won after all”. From that moment he regarded the fate of Britain, which had hung by a thread since the fall of France, as settled, even though the empire’s heaviest defeats still lay ahead.

“A date which will live in infamy”

Roosevelt spent Sunday afternoon and evening in consultations with his advisers, the cabinet and the leaders of Congress. He dictated the first draft of the speech himself. In the working draft 7 December was “a date which will live in world history”. Roosevelt crossed out these words and wrote in their place “a date which will live in infamy”. Cordell Hull advised a longer speech setting out the whole history of the negotiations with Japan. The president refused: he judged that a short text would sound more powerful, and that the country did not need a lecture on diplomacy.

The speech was built around a single idea: the United States was the victim of treachery. Roosevelt recalled that America had been at peace with Japan and, at its request, had been holding talks on maintaining peace in the Pacific, and that the Japanese ambassador had handed the Secretary of State a reply to an American note an hour after the bombing of Oʻahu had begun, and that this reply contained “no threat or hint of war”. The distance of Hawaii from Japan proved that the attack had been planned “many days or even weeks ago”, and that throughout that time the Japanese government had deliberately sought to deceive the Americans. He then listed, one after another, the places attacked: yesterday Malaya, last night Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippines and Wake Island, and that morning Midway. Japan, he said, had opened a surprise offensive across the whole of the Pacific.

The ending was a pledge: however long it took to overcome this planned invasion, the American people, strong in the justice of their cause, would prevail until they had won “absolute victory”. The fighting was under way, and no one could pretend that the nation, its territory and its interests were not in serious danger. The United States would not only defend itself to the last but would do everything to ensure that “this form of treachery” never threatened it again.

Roosevelt deliberately spoke differently from Woodrow Wilson, who in April 1917 had asked Congress for war on Germany in the name of democracy and a new world order. After the disillusionment of the First World War, grand slogans aroused mistrust in America, so the president appealed to the sense of injury and to patriotism rather than to ideals. At the same time he underlined the continuity: in the chamber he was accompanied by Wilson’s widow, Edith Wilson. More than 80 per cent of American adults listened to the speech on the radio, the largest audience in the history of American broadcasting.

82 to 0 and 388 to 1

Congress voted at once. The resolution was short: the state of war “thrust upon” the United States by the Imperial Government of Japan was formally declared, and the president was authorised to employ the entire armed forces and all the resources of the nation to bring the conflict to a successful end. The Senate passed it unanimously, by 82 votes. In the House of Representatives the Speaker, Sam Rayburn, announced the result of 388 to 1 at about 1.10 p.m.

The only vote against was cast by Jeannette Rankin, a Republican from Montana, the first woman elected to Congress and an avowed pacifist. In April 1917 she had been one of fifty members of the House who voted against war with Germany. This time she stood alone. Colleagues urged her at least to abstain and allow the resolution to pass unanimously, and part of the chamber hissed when she refused. According to words attributed to her, she said that as a woman she could not go to war and would not send anyone else. After the vote, pursued by reporters, she took refuge in a telephone booth in the Republican cloakroom, from which the Capitol Police escorted her out. Her political career ended there; in 1942 she did not stand for re-election.

At 4.10 p.m. Roosevelt signed the resolution. The isolationist movement, which only a week earlier had been powerful in America, collapsed within a single day. Charles Lindbergh, its most prominent spokesman, declared that since the country had been attacked by force of arms, it must respond by force of arms, and after a few days the America First Committee decided to dissolve itself.

The Netherlands, New Zealand, the Free French

On 8 December war on Japan was also declared by governments that were not obliged to respond by force of arms at once, and yet did not hesitate. The Netherlands acted most boldly. Japan, hoping to capture the oil wells of the Dutch East Indies intact, had decided to treat the Dutch as a “quasi-enemy” and not to attack them at once. The government-in-exile in London, led by Pieter Gerbrandy and supported by Queen Wilhelmina, who had been in London since May 1940, had no intention, however, of waiting until Java’s turn came. On the morning of 8 December the Governor-General in Batavia announced on the radio that the Netherlands “accepts the challenge and takes up arms against the Japanese Empire”. The Dutch ambassador in Tokyo was able to hand the formal note to Tōgō only on 10 December, and Japan issued no separate declaration of war; instead, on 11 January 1942, as its troops were landing on Borneo and Celebes, it announced that it was in a state of war with the Netherlands. After the war the Japanese defence before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East argued that, since the Dutch had been the first to declare war, Japan had not waged a war of aggression against them. The tribunal ruled the Dutch declaration an act of self-defence.

On the same day a state of war with Japan was proclaimed by the New Zealand government of Prime Minister Peter Fraser, and by Charles de Gaulle on behalf of the Free French, even though Indochina, the French colony most threatened by Japan, remained under Vichy rule and had been under Japanese military occupation since the summer of 1941. Over 8 and 9 December war on Japan was also declared by Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Cuba, while Panama, through which the canal ran, had already done so on 7 December.

China, Australia and South Africa

On 9 December China formally declared war on Japan. It had been fighting Japan since the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in July 1937 and had lost Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan and Canton, yet for four and a half years neither side had proclaimed a state of war. Japan called the war the “China Incident”, because it did not wish to recognise the government of Chiang Kai-shek as an equal adversary and wanted to avoid the legal consequences of war. Both sides were also anxious that the United States should not regard them as belligerents within the meaning of the Neutrality Acts, which would have cut them off from American supplies and credit. Pearl Harbor swept these calculations away. The declaration of the government in Chongqing, proclaimed in the name of the Chairman of the National Government, Lin Sen, stated that all treaties, conventions, agreements and contracts concerning relations between China and Japan were null and void. China later invoked this when demanding the return of Taiwan, ceded to Japan by the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895. On the same day China declared war on Germany and Italy, with which it had broken off diplomatic relations in the summer of 1941, when both states recognised the puppet government of Wang Jingwei.

Australia, which in September 1939 had entered the war with Germany following Britain, acted differently this time. The Labor prime minister John Curtin, head of the government for two months, announced in a radio address on the evening of 8 December that Australia was at war with Japan. The government decided to declare war itself rather than by adopting the British declaration. The formal act was signed on 9 December at Victoria Barracks in Melbourne, and the Governor-General, Lord Gowrie, read the proclamation. It was the first independent declaration of war in Australia’s history, and Curtin’s radio address was preceded by “Advance Australia Fair” rather than “God Save the King”. Behind this gesture lay a conviction that Curtin stated openly in a newspaper article at the end of December: Australia, most of whose troops were fighting in the Middle East and in Malaya, would look to America, not to Britain, for support.

Chronologies also place under 9 December the Union of South Africa of Prime Minister Jan Smuts, who in September 1939 had taken the country into the war against Germany in the face of opposition from some Afrikaners. Most tallies date the South African decision to 8 December, and in any case the state of war with Japan was reckoned from that day.

India and 12 December

Some chronologies state under 12 December that India declared war on Japan. British India, however, did not conduct its own foreign policy: in September 1939 the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, had proclaimed a state of war with Germany without consulting Indian politicians, and in December 1941 India found itself at war with Japan together with Britain, by virtue of a decision taken in London. No separate act of 12 December is known. Indian soldiers, in any case, had been fighting from the very first hours: Indian battalions defended Kota Bharu and Hong Kong, and in the following months the Indian Army supplied the largest share of the troops fighting the Japanese in Malaya and Burma. The war with Japan, which now stood at India’s borders, sharpened the dispute over its future between the British government and the Indian National Congress.

Place in the war

Roosevelt’s speech and the avalanche of declarations of 7–9 December turned two separate wars – the European war and the Sino-Japanese war – into a single world war. One link was still missing: the Tripartite Pact did not oblige Germany to help Japan, which had itself been the attacker. On 11 December Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini nevertheless declared war on the United States, and Congress responded the same day, this time without a dissenting vote; Rankin abstained. Also on 11 December the Polish government-in-exile proclaimed a state of war with Japan. Following Germany’s lead, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia declared war on the United States and Britain in the days that followed.

The only great power of the coalition that did not go to war with Japan was the Soviet Union. Bound to Tokyo by the Neutrality Pact and fighting for survival outside Moscow, Stalin refused the Americans bases in the Far East and declared war on Japan only in August 1945. Meanwhile, on 22 December, Churchill arrived in Washington to agree a common strategy with Roosevelt, and on 1 January 1942 twenty-six nations signed the Declaration by United Nations, pledging to fight the Axis powers until victory and not to make a separate peace with them.

The “day of infamy” became for Americans what 1 September 1939 was for Poles. The slogan “Remember December 7th” appeared on posters throughout the war, and Roosevelt’s language – treachery, an unprovoked attack, absolute victory – set the tone of the war in the Pacific, which was fought until Japan’s unconditional surrender. Japan, which had hoped that swift victories would induce the Americans to compromise, found itself facing an opponent more united than ever before in the twentieth century.