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Day of Infamy Just before eight a.m. on December 7, 1941, Japan led a deadly attack on American soldiers at Pearl Harbor. The attack lasted less then two hours, but within that time frame the Japanese planes managed to drop so many bombs and torpedoes that “the United States sustained 3,435 casualties and loss or severe damage to 188 aircraft, eight battle ships, three light cruisers, and four other vessels”(Pearl). A few hours later President Franklin D. Roosevelt would find himself, “finishing lunch in his oval study on the second floor of the White House, [and] preparing to work on his stamp album”(Heritage) when he received an urgent call from Frank Knox, the Secretary for the Navy. Knox informed Roosevelt of the deadly attacks. Roosevelt began his speech almost immediately. Roosevelt knew what he had to do he had to go before congress and declare war. He dictated his first draft to his secretary saying "I'm going before Congress tomorrow, and I'd like to dictate my message. It will be short”(Heritage). In his first draft, his opening sentence did not even have the word infamy in it. It read, “"Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in world history,"(Heritage), he later changed the phrase, “world history” to “infamy” and so the speech is born. Where as his first draft has many hand written corrections on it, his second draft does not, however there are three drafts.
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