FDR and Pearl Harbor: Seventy-Five Years of Reflection

4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Main Library
Community Room

Event Details

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks - "A day which will live in infamy" - on December 7th, 1941. Join us today for a special lecture presented by Dr. Robert Saunders, Jr - a professor of history/political science at Troy University-Dothan Campus. 

Dr. Saunders is speaking on the controversial accusation that Franklin D. Roosevelt was aware of the attacks before they occurred. A ludicrous charge, of course, but one that remains as one of the leading myths surrounding the Pearl Harbor attacks.

Nearly from the moment when the Japanese dive bombers began destroying much the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, speculation began in terms of who within the US government should be held accountable for America so obviously being caught “flat foot.”  Some of of FDR’s contemporary critics charged that the president knew long beforehand that the Japanese would attack in Hawaii.  Others went so far as to suggest the he allowed the attack to occur as a means of rattling the American people out of their nonintervention mindset.  Such conspiracies abounded in 1941 (and continue to abound in some circles today).

But historians have found no irrefutable evidence to show that such a heinous conspiracy unfolded in December 1941.  It was true that, as early as mid-November 1941, FDR and the War Department knew fully well that the Japanese would most certainly go on the offensive—and that might even include attacking US installations in SE Asia or perhaps in the Philippines.  But they did not know where and they placed all US forces on high alert.

Though FDR did not know beforehand where the Japanese would attack, it is clear that he was relieved when the attack finally came as it indeed impacted American public opinion and resolve just as FDR had projected.  The president knew that the United States would have to go to war—and he saw Nazi Germany as the greatest threat to world stability.  His concern, though, (and one that he shared with Winston Churchill) was that a Japanese attack in the Pacific would not be sufficient to draw the US into war against Germany.  That issue was settled for both FDR and Churchill when Hitler declared war on the US just two days after the Japanese sneak attack at Pearl.


Event Type(s): Adult
Age Group(s): Adults, Seniors
Joni Wood
(334) 793-9767 ext. 4212