1942 Franklin D. Roosevelt - Attack on Pearl Harbor

On December 7, 1941 at 7:48 a.m Hawaiian Time, United States naval base at Pearl Harbor was attacked by 353 Japanese fighter planes, bombers and torpedo planes.   They came in two waves launched from six different air carriers.  Besides damage to battle ships, cruisers and aircraft, 2403 Americans wer killed and 1178 were wounded.   America was in profound shock and on the following day, the United States declared war on Japan.   Franklin D. Roosevelt linked this attack not only to Japan, but to Hitler and the Axis alliance.   "The world is too small for both Hitler and God".  In his annual address on January 6th 1942, one month after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt named the enemy, and what we were fighting for.  FDR had been warning America to be prepared for war, and now that time had come.   

"Exactly one year ago today I said to this Congress: "When the dictators. . . are ready to make war upon us, they will not wait for an act of war on our part. . . . They—not we—will choose the time and the place and the method of their attack."

We now know their choice of the time: a peaceful Sunday morning— December 7, 1941.
We know their choice of the place: an American outpost in the Pacific.
We know their choice of the method: the method of Hitler himself. 

Destruction of the material and spiritual centers of civilization-this has been and still is the purpose of Hitler and his Italian and Japanese chessmen. They would wreck the power of the British Commonwealth and Russia and China and the Netherlands—and then combine all their forces to achieve their ultimate goal, the conquest of the United States.

They know that victory for us means victory for freedom.
They know that victory for us means victory for the institution of democracy— the ideal of the family, the simple principles of common decency and humanity.
They know that victory for us means victory for religion. And they could not tolerate that. The world is too small to provide adequate 'living room' for both Hitler and God. In proof of that, the Nazis have now announced their plan for enforcing their new German, pagan religion all over the world—a plan by which the Holy Bible and the Cross of Mercy would be displaced by Mein Kampf and the swastika and the naked sword.

Our own objectives are clear; the objective of smashing the militarism imposed by war lords upon their enslaved peoples the objective of liberating the subjugated Nations—the objective of establishing and securing freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear everywhere in the world.

Our enemies are guided by brutal cynicism, by unholy contempt for the human race. We are inspired by a faith that goes back through all the years to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis: "God created man in His own image. 

We on our side are striving to be true to that divine heritage. We are fighting, as our fathers have fought, to uphold the doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God. Those on the other side are striving to destroy this deep belief and to create a world in their own image—a world of tyranny and cruelty and serfdom. 

That is the conflict that day and night now pervades our lives. 

No compromise can end that conflict. There never has been—there never can be—successful compromise between good and evil. Only total victory can reward the champions of tolerance, and decency, and freedom, and faith."

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