Pearl Harbor Speech

“Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God” (Franklin D. Roosevelt). Franklin D. Roosevelt said this during his speech on December 8, 1941, addressing the Pearl Harbor attack. During his speech he explains how the United States of America will defend itself, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. Furthermore, says no matter how long it takes to overcome this invasion, the American people will win through absolute victory (“American Rhetoric”). On December 7, 1941, a total of 18 naval vessels heavily

On March 27,1941 Tadashi Morimura, stepped foot onto the island. In reality, the newcomer was Takeo Yoshikawa, a naval reserve ensign. He briefly served aboard a Japanese battleship, then underwent submarine and pilot training. Retired after only two years, Yoshikawa was contemplating suicide when the Japanese navy offered him a job with its general staff’s intelligence division. He looked just like any other Japanese American that lived on the island; he fit in real well. In 1940 he was told he would be posted to American territory of Hawaii. There, posing as a junior diplomat. He was told to keep current on the status of the U.S. fleet and its anchorages, reporting his observations to Tokyo by coded telegraph messages (“Takeo Yoshikawa”). While his boss, Yamamoto Isoroku; perhaps Japan’s greatest strategist and the officer who would contrive the surprise air attack on U.S. naval forces at Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto meticulously planned and carried out the Japanese air strike on the U.S. naval base on Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii (“Yamamoto Isoroku History”). “In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success (“Isoroku Yamamoto Quotes”)”. Yoshikawa was to become his country’s only military spy in the islands and Yamamoto’s most valuable source

The Japanese had weapons that the Americans have yet to see before. The secret weapons that hit pearl harbor include, shallow-water aerial torpedoes and the Japanese fleet’s ability to escape detection from the U.S.. Pearl Harbor was too shallow for conventional torpedoes; they would have just dived in and stuck to the bottom of the ocean floor. So a few months before the attack, Japanese designers created finned torpedoes that could perform “ a feat like that of an acrobat high-diving shallow water.” By the fall of 1941, they had perfected the weapon. Japan’s fleet of ships managed to stay undetected throughout the journey to Hawaii that began in November of 1941. Braving gales, high seas, and fog, the fleet took a far-northern course beyond range of island-based U.S. patrol planes, and remote from shipping lanes. Should and American merchantman be encountered, orders were explicit and ruthless--sink it on sight, before it could radio an alarm (“The Secret Weapons”). Thus if the U.S. would have had the technology to find out about these weapons sooner, Pearl Harbor could have been