LAD #36: FDR's Declaration of War

FDR's Declaration of War: Monday, December 8, 1941

• December 7, 1941: "a date which will live in infamy"
• The US had been at peace with Japan until this day
• The distance from Hawaii to Japan proved the attack was deliberately planned
• The attack caused severe damage to American naval and military forces, with several lives lost
• Japan also attacked Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippine Islands, Wake Island, and Midway Island
• Roosevelt explains how this declaration of war is in the US's best interest of defense and victory

• The lone no vote in both houses was cast by Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress
• Rankin was a committed and dedicated lifelong pacifist
• She cast the sole Congressional vote against the US declaration of war on Japan
• Rankin was the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. involvement in both World Wars
• She cared little about the damage her own personal beliefs caused her political career and, besides being a pacifist, believed that Roosevelt had provoked the Japanese to attack in order to give him an excuse to join the European war against Germany
• Her nickname, developed after she voted against the US joining WWII, became "Japanette Rankin," as people believed she was not loyal to the US because of her pacifist beliefs in peace

FDR's declaration of war was obviously similar to Wilson's, as they both concerned major world wars.  They were also very similar in that up until then, the US had been strictly neutral and isolationist, and Americans really didn't even want to be swept up into the messy European war.  In both cases, though, actions taken by other countries ultimately gave the US no choice but to enter the war.  With Wilson it was the sinking of the Lusitania and Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman Telegraph, and for Roosevelt, it was the bombing at Pearl Harbor.