Remembering Pearl Harbor Attack By Honoring The Truth

Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, left, gave his famous “Infamy Speech” shortly before Congress declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, in response to the surprise morning attack on Pearl Harbor, right, on December 7, 1941.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese bombers launched an early morning surprise attack on Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii, which destroyed 188 U.S. aircraft, killed 2,403 Americans and injured 1,178. Presidential Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed Congress on December 8, 1941, in what became known as the famous Infamy Speech delivered at 12:30 P.M. ET. The address is regarded as one of the most famous American political speeches of the 20th century.

That very day, just one day after the attack, the U.S. Congress declared war on the Empire of Japan, ushering in U.S. involvement in World War II.

But many Americans have a distorted version of history, one which even the Discovery Channel and History Channel specials have perpetuated with little mainstream pushback. America’s entry into the war was long underway before Japanese pilots ever took off from their assaulting aircraft carriers.

The importance of the Anglo-American alliance, a 20th century progressive worldview held by former Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, enabled him to reason leading Americans into World War I. In the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt’s agreement with this worldview made him inclined to favor U.S. intervention in the war in Europe, and he made policy decisions in accordance with this inclination.

Modern progressives reconcile the real historical record by distorting it further, just as long as it fits with their modern-day cause. “Few people realize that it was oil — the shortage of oil — that precipitated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,” the liberal-progressive outlet Salon published last year on this very day.

Because big oil is now the enemy of the left, which has moved in an increasingly radical direction, they highlight this part of the story and leave out — well — the other 99 percent.

While a multitude of so-called “moderate” Democrats have been sacrificed on the altar of global warming by party leadership — including, in part, their House and Senate majorities, i.e. most recently Sen. Mary Landrieu — there haven’t been too many facing defeats over scrap metal.

That’s right, scrap metal. U.S. embargo policies on scrap metal, steel and various other items — one being oil, which only came much later — prompted the fascist empire to attack Pearl Harbor. In October of 1940, a year before the oil embargo, Secretary of State Cordell Hull wrote to Roosevelt regarding his meeting with Japanese Ambassador Kensuke Horinouchi, who at that time made it very clear “conquest by force of all worthwhile territory in the Pacific Ocean area” would only be moved up if the U.S. insisted on the embargo policy.

However, while conservative “America First” Republicans such as Henry Stimson, who was appointed to head up the War Department, held out hope that the Japanese were bluffing, progressives like Mr. Hull hoped they were not. For Mr. Hull, who ironically was more restrained toward Japan than other progressives in the Roosevelt Administration, believed Japan was “a challenge to international order, civilized behavior, and the open door.”

The “open door” referred to U.S. and European big business interests in China and greater Indochina, hardly an industry confined to oil. The idea that Oil led to Pearl Harbor, as Slate declared, is an oversimplified and borderline bogus interpretation.

But progressive internationalists, who wanted a global body to keep the world stable for their business partners, couldn’t actually tell the public their intentions. That just wouldn’t have been an easy sell to the American people, who still favored conservative “America First” isolationism.

Former President Wilson justified U.S. intervention in World War I by calling it an American duty to preserve freedom, arguing “the world must be made safe for democracy.” He didn’t say “the world must be made safe for” my multinational corporate cronies.

President Roosevelt went one step further, belittling the fact “our people like to believe that wars in Europe and in Asia are of no concern to us” in his national radio address on December 29, 1940. In his radio remarks — which were made both before the oil embargo and almost exactly one year before the fateful attack — he argued that the U.S. must play a greater role in the world to further the cause of freedom.

“We must be the great arsenal of democracy,” he said. (As a side note, the once great city of Detroit, which took the nickname “Arsenal of Democracy” for its role in World War II, is now broke.)

Yet, the attack on Pearl Harbor was sold to the American public as an unprovoked attack, as was the Lusitania. In reality, Wilson’s and Roosevelt’s worldview led to policy decisions that left Germany — and then the Empire of Japan — with little choice but to launch such attacks.

New York World-Telegram dated December 8, 1941, was one of many around the nation printing headlines of the Pearl Harbor attack and the subsequent congressional vote to declare war.

While each of these tragedies are horrific and public outrage over them more than just, we would be fooling ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge the truth. Allowing progressive politicians, or any group of politicians who believe they are smarter than us to pull the wool over our eyes, isn’t patriotism — it’s blind ignorance.

That said, I not only support the eradication of fascism and all its horrors, but recognize what an equally horrific world dominated by fascists would look like. As a result, I also support President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan rather than invade, costing hundreds of thousands if not a million American lives.

However, I do so with the realization that sometimes “better them than us” truly does make sense. I do so with the full knowledge that both Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt did what proponents of big government do best — create crisis to expand government and further crony interests. I do so with the sad understanding that cronyism was infinitely furthered by the post-World War II world order, an order they promised the “Greatest Generation” was meant to protect their freedom.

If we are to truly honor those who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor, as well as the 407,000 American lives lost as a result of direct military action in World War II, then we must recognize the whole story, not just the parts that fit political agendas or appeal to nationalistic fervor.

Richard D. Baris is the editor of People’s Pundit Daily and author of Our Virtuous Republic: The Forgotten Clause in the American Social Contract.

View Roosevelt’s Entire Infamy Speech Below: