December 8

Well, if you didn't catch the news yesterday, you might be surprised to hear that it was "a date which will live in infamy".  And today is the date that FDR said so!  In front of Congress, when he asked them to state the obvious- that the US and Japan were at war.  The Declaration was almost unanimous- one lone holdout, if I recall correctly.  The holdout was Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, a Republican from Montana.  She was a pacifist, and the story goes that after her "no" vote, she ran from the room, hid in a phone booth, and wept.  Not surprisingly, she caught a crap-ton of flak for it, but refused to change her vote, based on her beliefs and also on her opinion that, "As a woman, I can't go to war and I refuse to send anyone else."  (She voted "present" a few days later when the question arose of war with Italy and Germany)  Oh, and she also voted, in her one previous term, against entering WWI.  A courageous woman, who valued her integrity.  She was also a cofounder of the ACLU, which no longer possesses anywhere near her integrity.  I've always found her principled stances admirable, but they did cost her- she essentially was ignored by all her peers in Congress from December 1941 until her term ended a year or so later.  But anyhow, the vote passed, and the game was afoot!  It didn't end well for Japan, of course.  Too bad her leaders- the ones whose opinions mattered, at least- didn't see things as clearly as Admiral Yamamoto; who saw the outcome even as he prepared to start the shooting. 

Oh, and meanwhile, Japanese forces were attacking all over the western Pacific at the same time.  They also attacked there the day before, which was December 8 local time.  So this paragraph technically deals with December 9 local time, or December 8 US time.

I have a headache now, so I'll stop. 

Wow.  Nothing else of interest shows up for this date, at least until we get to births and deaths.  So we'll discuss that later, and focus on Pearl Harbor and its aftermath.