WATCH: FDR’s ‘Date Which Will Live In Infamy’ Speech After Pearl Harbor Attack In 1941

80 YEARS AGO TODAY

ABOVE VIDEO: One day after Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japanese bombers, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress to declare war on Japan. 

The Infamy Speech was a speech delivered by President Roosevelt on December 8, 1941, one day after the Empire of Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the Japanese declaration of war on the United States and the British Empire.

The name derives from the first line of the speech: Roosevelt describing the previous day as “a date which will live in infamy.”

The speech is also commonly referred to as the “Pearl Harbor Speech.”

Within an hour of the speech, Congress passed a formal declaration of war against Japan and officially brought the U.S. into World War II. The address is one of the most famous of all American political speeches.

Similar Stories