This indicated they had succeeded in a surprise attack. Over 2,400 U.S. military servicemen were dead, and 2,000 more were wounded. Days later, smoke still billowed from the sunken Arizona, its smokestacks visible above the water line. The next day, December 8, President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke before a joint session of Congress. The United States was at peace with that nation and . . .
Japan has .
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire. The shock of the Pearl Harbor attack, both its apparent unprovoked nature and its destructive effect on America's military might in the Pacific Ocean, resulted in an outcry that the guilty parties be brought to justice. The defeat of Japan would see to it that the perpetrators would be made to pay for this infamous day. These questions have come up over and over again, both during the war and over the last half century since the end of the war. Captain Beach argues that Admiral Kimmel, as commander of the Pacific Fleet, and Lt. General Walter Short, commander of the Hawaiian department of the U.S. Army, were made the scapegoats for the Pearl Harbor disaster.