The day that then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared would “live in infamy” has been reduced, for many in America’s younger generations, to a vaguely familiar phrase they had to recall for an American History exam.
But it’s important for all of us to remember that day — that moment — that pushed a largely non-committal United States into global conflict, especially as conflicts arise in the present day that threaten to become global.
The Empire of Japan’s surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, lasted just over an hour and marked the beginning of U.S. involvement in the Pacific. It was that attack — along with the threat of alliance between Japan and Nazi Germany — that led Roosevelt to also call for the United States’ official entry into the war already raging in Europe as well.
Several key events foreshadowed the attack in the…
