Day of Infamy ~ Part 1: The True Story

“Yesterday, December 7^th, 1941—a date that will live in infamy—the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” Thus began President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s appeal to Congress for a declaration of war.  Those words launched this nation into the greatest armed conflict of modern times.  FDR appealed to the people and the Congress to react with vengeance to the premeditated and apparently unprovoked attack on U.S. soil, and the response was colossal.  However, correspondence and other evidence surrounding the months prior to the attack, and first-hand testimonies written years later, tell a more sinister story—they reveal that our president harbored secretive and possibly nefarious ulterior motives for inciting an attack against the United States.  Before you dismiss me as a crazy conspiracy theorist, hear me out; I have done my research.  If you follow the links that you will find throughout these posts and read everything I have read, you will draw the same conclusions.  My purpose in writing is not to contest the fact that Nazi Germany was committing atrocious acts and Japan was indeed their ally, albeit a weak one.  It is not even to question the wisdom of the U.S. entry into the war; it is simply to examine the means which FDR undertook to initiate U.S. involvement, and the changes wrought on America as a result of his actions.  Today—December 7, 2014—finds America in a vastly different situation than before the events of 73 years ago.  This is the first of five posts; we will investigate FDR’s lawlessness and deception (the stark differences between his apparently beneficent intentions and his blatantly unconstitutional actions, particularly in his agreements with Winston Churchill) as well as some of his specific foreknowledge and planning.  We will also consider the situation from Admiral Kimmel’s perspective, and then examine the trajectory set by FDR’s choices.  In his determination to enter the war, FDR deceived the American people, evaded the law, and forever altered America’s role in the international community.

FDR Delivering his "Day of Infamy" Speech

After World War I, the U.S. retreated into its shell and focused on rebuilding itself.  Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, America as a whole was not inclined to fight against either Germany or Japan.  In May of 1937, FDR signed the Neutrality Act, a joint resolution of Congress that prohibited “the export of arms, ammunition, and implements of war to other states as and when they may become involved in such war,” and otherwise closed America’s doors and kept resources from warring nations.  The goal was to avoid being associated with any belligerent parties and becoming more deeply involved in the conflict.  The president elaborated on this sentiment in a foreign policy statement in October of 1937 in which he compared war and international lawnessness to an “epidemic of physical disease” and suggested that, in light of America’s determination to stay out of the war, they should “quarantine” the nations at fault while pursuing “a policy of peace.”  A Gallup poll in June of 1941 recorded that only 21% of Americans believed the U.S. should go to war; the rest resisted involvement in what they viewed as merely another European war.  During his 1940 presidential campaign FDR promised repeatedly that “your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” 

The facts of history withstand the tests of time and argument, outliving the many faulty theories that are presented across the years; and in this case the facts tell a behind-the-scenes story that is vastly different than the tale FDR was proclaiming to the people.  

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