President Franklin D Roosevelt's Fireside Chat Following The Declaration Of War On Japan,

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. My fellow Americans, the sudden criminal attacks perpetrated by the Japanese in the Pacific provide the climax of a decade of international immorality, banded together to make war upon the whole human race.

Their challenge has now been flung at the United States of America. The Japanese have treacherously violated the long standing peace between us. Many American soldiers and sailors have been killed by enemy action. American ships have been sunk.

American airplanes have been destroyed. The Congress and the people of the United States have accepted that challenge. Together with other free peoples, we are now fighting to maintain our right to live, among our world neighbors in freedom, in common decency, without fear.

I have prepared the full record of our past relations with Japan, and it will be submitted to the Congress. It begins with the visit of Commodore Perry to Japan 88 years ago. ends with a visit of two Japanese emissaries to the Secretary of State last Sunday. And now, after Japanese forces had loosed their bombs and machine guns, I can say with that

most confidence that no Americans today or a thousand years hence need feel anything but pride in our patience and in our efforts through all the year Pacific, which would be fair and honorable to every nation, large or small. And no honest person today or a thousand years hence will be able to suppress a sense of indignation and horror at the treachery committed by the

military dictators of Japan under the very shadow of the flag of peace. Of course the Japan has followed for the past ten years in Asia as parallel the course of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and in Africa. Today it has become far more than a parallel. It is collaboration, actual collaboration, so well calculated that all the continents of the world and all the