| rdfs:comment | - The day after the attack, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed a joint session of United States Congress. Roosevelt called December 7 "a date which will live in infamy". Congress declared war on the Empire of Japan amid outrage at the attack and the late delivery of the note from the Japanese government breaking off relations with the U.S. government, actions considered treacherous. Pacifist Representative Jeannette Rankin, a Republican from Montana, cast the only dissenting vote. Roosevelt signed the declaration of war later the same day. Continuing to intensify its military mobilization, the U.S. government finished converting to a war economy, a process begun by provision of weapons and supplies to the Soviet Union and Great Britain.
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| abstract | - The day after the attack, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed a joint session of United States Congress. Roosevelt called December 7 "a date which will live in infamy". Congress declared war on the Empire of Japan amid outrage at the attack and the late delivery of the note from the Japanese government breaking off relations with the U.S. government, actions considered treacherous. Pacifist Representative Jeannette Rankin, a Republican from Montana, cast the only dissenting vote. Roosevelt signed the declaration of war later the same day. Continuing to intensify its military mobilization, the U.S. government finished converting to a war economy, a process begun by provision of weapons and supplies to the Soviet Union and Great Britain. The Pearl Harbor attack immediately galvanized a divided nation into action. Public opinion had been moving towards support for entering the war during 1941, but considerable opposition remained until the attack. Overnight, Americans united against Japan in response to calls to "Remember Pearl Harbor." American solidarity in the war effort probably made possible the unconditional surrender position later taken by the Allied Powers.[citation needed] Some historians, among them Samuel Eliot Morison, believe the attack doomed Japan to defeat simply because it awakened the "sleeping giant", regardless of whether the fuel depots or machine shops had been destroyed or even if the carriers had been caught in port and sunk. U.S. industrial and military capacity, once mobilized, was able to pour overwhelming resources into both the Pacific and Atlantic theaters. Others, such as Clay Blair, Jr., and Mark Parillo believe Japanese trade protection was so incompetent that American submarines alone might have strangled Japan into defeat. The closest friend Roosevelt had in the developing Allied alliance, Sir Winston Churchill, stated that his first thought regarding American assistance to the United Kingdom was that "We have won the war" very soon after the United States had been attacked. Perceptions of treachery in the attack before a declaration of war sparked fears of sabotage or espionage by Japanese sympathizers residing in the U.S., including citizens of Japanese descent and was a factor in the subsequent Japanese internment in the western United States. Other factors included misrepresentations of intelligence information (none) suggesting sabotage, notably by General John DeWitt, commanding general of Western Defense Command on the Pacific Coast, who had personal feelings against Japanese Americans. In February 1942, Roosevelt signed United States Executive Order 9066, requiring all Japanese Americans to submit themselves for an internment. Propaganda made repeated use of the attack, because its effect was enormous and impossible to counter. "Remember Pearl Harbor!" became the watchwords of the war. The American government understated the damage inflicted, in hopes of preventing the Japanese from learning it, but the Japanese had, through surveillance, a good estimate.
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