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Franklin D. RooseveltDay of Infamy Speech
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1941A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Sociohistorical Context: Anti-Japanese Racism and Wartime Incarceration
FDR’s speech portrays the War as a Fight Between Good and Evil, characterizing the Empire of Japan (and by implication its people) as uniquely untrustworthy. This messaging had direct consequences for Japanese Americans. WWII marked a major realignment in American racial relations, especially when it came to East Asians. While the situation of ethnically Chinese US citizens and residents improved because China was a wartime ally, Japanese immigrants and citizens alike were vilified. Within months of Pearl Harbor, FDR had signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the government to detain and remove anyone deemed to be a national security threat. While some German and Italian Americans were also detained, most of those incarcerated were of Japanese ancestry. The majority of those incarcerated were also natural-born US citizens who were presumed to remain loyal to Japan despite never having lived there. One of the few ways for US citizens of Japanese dissent to escape incarceration was to enlist in the military.
While FDR does not directly mention American-born Japanese citizens, his “Day of Infamy” address uses “Japan,” “Japanese forces,” “the Japanese Government,” and “the Japanese” interchangeably. This slippage erases the difference between Japanese civilians and the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces who carried out the attack, implicitly categorizing all people of Japanese descent as enemies of the United States, regardless of their status or sympathies. It further reinforces the pre-existing racist stereotype that people of Japanese descent could never truly be integrated into American identity because they would inevitably remain loyal to the Japanese Emperor. These ideas draw on a persistent othering of Asian Americans, beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which (like the wartime rhetoric about the Japanese) operated from the bedrock assumption that Asian people were uniquely and indelibly foreign. Throughout the war, the idea that the Japanese worshiped their emperor as a god remained a popular assumption among white Americans because it justified Japanese Americans’ further exclusion, as well as the massive property theft that occurred when internees were forced to abandon most of their possessions.
The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans had lasting consequences. Those held in concentration camps collectively lost approximately $400 million in property. In 1948, two years after the close of the war, the US paid $38 million in reparations—or less than a tenth of what had been lost. In addition to the loss of homes and businesses, Japanese Americans faced intense discrimination upon returning to their communities. Restrictive covenants kept Japanese Americans from accessing housing even if they could afford it, and—as Bradford Pearson details in The New York Times Magazine—many recent returnees from the concentration camps found themselves living in temporary trailer camps whose conditions were even worse than those in the concentration camps (Pearson, Bradford. “For Japanese-Americans, Housing Injustices Outlived Internment.” The New York Times Magazine, 2020).
Historical Context: Lead Up to WWII
By the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, WWII had been underway for two years. Indeed, many argue that WWII was actually a continuation of World War I (1914-1918); while the Treaty of Versailles had imposed an uneasy peace in Europe, it did little to alleviate the tensions that had led to World War I (WWI). Furthermore, the harshly punitive conditions the treaty imposed on Germany helped set the stage for the rise of Germany’s nationalist Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler. WWII officially began in September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. By that point, Germany had already invaded Austria and Czechoslovakia, and Japan had invaded Manchuria and China. By September 1940, France had surrendered to German forces and Germany, Japan, and Italy had joined together to form the Axis powers, who were eventually opposed by the Allies (Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union). Europeans, and especially Great Britain, begged the United States to join the fray. However, despite the kinship that many Americans felt with European countries threatened by Axis forces, many in the United States were initially reluctant to intervene in another foreign war. FDR’s “Day of Infamy” speech was broadcast live in order to appeal directly to the American public, which had long been ambivalent about sending soldiers to fight in WWII.
WWI, which the US had entered in 1917, had been an unprecedentedly destructive event. Scholars estimate that at least 8.5 million members of various national militaries died in the conflict (Showalter, Dennis E. and Royde-Smith, John Graham. “World War I.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2023), which introduced machine guns, poison gas, and trench warfare for the first time. A further 6.8 million civilians died from genocide, starvation, and other illnesses. At least 116,708 American fighters died in one year of fighting, and isolationist policies prevailed through the 1920s and 1930s as a result. Moreover, many prominent Americans, including famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, publicly supported the Nazi cause. Between 1935 and 1939, Congressional isolationists passed three Neutrality Acts meant to prevent the US from exporting weapons or lending money to nations at war (“The Neutrality Acts, 1930s.” Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations. Office of the Historian, United States Department of State, 2017).
FDR, on the other hand, believed that the United States’ involvement in WWII was inevitable, and he had been working to support the nation’s European allies and prepare the US for war for years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. While he knew that Congress would not declare war on Germany in 1939, he managed to create loopholes to send weapons and other war materials to European allies early on. When Britain ran out of money to pay for weapons in 1940, he convinced Congress to pass the Lend-Lease Act, which allowed the US to “lend” weapons, food, and other crucial supplies to allies. Throughout the period before the US officially entered WWII, FDR also negotiated in secret with his counterparts, especially UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, to find additional ways to aid the war effort and prepare for the United States’ eventual entry.
While Congress restricted its declaration of war on December 8, 1941 to only Japan, it declared war on the other Axis powers of Germany and Italy just three days later, on December 11, 1941. Congress had only waited to do this until Germany and Italy declared war on the US.
Cultural Context: Radio News in Wartime
WWII was the first war fought in a period of widespread radio broadcasting. While radio equipment had been available during WWI, the Department of the Navy commandeered the airwaves for wartime purposes early in that conflict. After WWI, broadcasting returned to civilian control, and the commercial, advertising-supported system that exists to the present day began to develop. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) were both formed in 1927 and quickly dominated national broadcasting through a series of inter-connected radio stations.
While much network programming was entertainment-based, news broadcasting became increasingly important in the lead-up to WWII. The national networks carried updates from the European war even before the US entered the fray. Broadcasts like famed journalist Edward R. Murrow’s live updates from London during the Battle of Britain kept Americans updated on international events. Broadcasters like Murrow took advantage of radio’s ability to capture events live to give audiences in the US a more intimate experience of the war. Instead of seeing newspaper pictures of London buildings destroyed by German bombers after the fact, listeners were able to hear the sounds of bombs dropping around Murrow as he stood on the roof of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) London facilities.
FDR also used radio’s intimacy and immediacy to his advantage, both in his regular Fireside Chats (a series of radio addresses in which he spoke directly to the public about matters of national concern) and his “Day of Infamy” speech, which was directed both at Congress and the American public listening at home. FDR was a practiced radio broadcaster. Beginning in September 1939, he addressed the expanding conflict—then known as the European War or “the emergency”—in Fireside Chats that occurred approximately every six months. These chats, along with the constant influx of radio news from Europe and Asia, kept residents of the United States well-informed on the war and helped gradually turn the tide of public opinion away from isolationism and toward war. After nearly a decade of using his Fireside Chats to generate support for his New Deal governmental reforms, FDR had become an effective speech writer.
For example, FDR’s speech “On the Arsenal of Democracy,” delivered December 29, 1940, is exemplary of the strategies he used to generate support for the United States’ allies even before public will would sanction direct military intervention. Instead of railing against isolationists, FDR framed his desire to sell weapons to the UK and China as a way of keeping US soldiers out of the battle. Citing touchstones in the United States’ founding mythos, including the first British settlements around Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, he argued that “our American civilization [has never] been in such danger as now” (Roosevelt, Franklin Delano. “On the Arsenal of Democracy.” Fireside Chat, 1940). These historical touchstones appealed to Americans’ sense of Patriotism and National Identity by invoking cultural myths of American ingenuity, hard work, and determination.
Because a message is more effective when it comes from a range of different voices, FDR’s administration split its wartime messaging into several channels. In addition to the president and his wartime speeches and Fireside Chats, other members of the administration spoke frequently on the radio about Patriotism and National Identity, as well as other elements of the war effort. The most prominent of these was FDR’s wife and political partner, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor was even better known on the radio than her husband at the time, and she was the first member of the administration to address the country after Pearl Harbor. On December 7, 1941, shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack was reported on the national news, she appeared to provide a brief update on the president’s actions and promise rapid action. In this talk, she framed the beginning of hostilities as a moment of clarity for the nation and a chance for Americans to prove their mettle. Despite the anxiety of war, she asserted her faith in her fellow Americans to accomplish “whatever is asked of us” because “we are the free and unconquerable people of the United States of America” (Roosevelt, Eleanor. “Radio Address, December 7, 1941”).
During WWII, the radio networks’ nightly news broadcasts expanded and became a dominant source of news. However, the immediacy of radio broadcasting also meant that it was easier for misinformation to spread. One of the most famous examples of a panic caused by a misunderstanding of radio programming was the famous “War of the Worlds” incident of 1938. The fictional adaptation of H. G. Wells’s alien invasion novel was said to be so believable that some listeners thought that aliens had landed in New Jersey. However, later studies found that many listeners who had tuned into the broadcast late and therefore missed the introduction mistook the “breaking news” format for a real news bulletin describing a German invasion of the US.
Throughout the war, both the Axis and Allied powers used radio broadcasts to inform their domestic publics and as propaganda meant to demoralize their enemies. FDR was very concerned about radio’s ability to spread misinformation and Axis propaganda, and many of his wartime Fireside Chats emphasized the need for Americans to be discerning when listening to the radio. In 1943, FDR established the Office of War Information (OWI) via Executive Order. As the war progressed, the OWI became an important part of this effort. The OWI was tasked with coordinating war information and propaganda distribution within the US and around the world. In the US, the OWI coordinated with radio broadcasters, Hollywood producers, newspapers, and other media to distribute messages intended to sustain wartime morale and promote programs like rationing, scrap metal collection, and the treasury bond sales that helped fund wartime production. Messages were integrated into everything from news shows to children’s radio serials to big-budget movies. These programs also spread anti-Japanese racism, to the point where, once the war was over and Japanese Americans were being reintegrated into their communities, the OWI had to encourage radio producers to produce programs promoting the patriotism of US citizens of Japanese descent.
