Speech

Speeches are as much about the words that are spoken as they are about the person speaking them and the context within which they're said.

In the case of FDR's Pearl Harbor speech, the context was this: the U.S. had just been attacked, on its own soil, out of left field, by someone it had thought it was having peace chats with.

Talk about unexpected.

In times like these, a letter doesn't quite do the subject justice. Nor does an op-ed piece in the Times or, if Twitter had existed, an indignant series of tweets.

Nope, something like this deserves a speech. And not just any speech by just any person off the street, but a Congressional address by a U.S. President.

Being attacked is not something that should be taken lightly, and if the American people were looking for a sign that this Pearl Harbor malarkey wasn't going to fly, a speech by President Roosevelt asking for a declaration of war definitely did the trick.

How it Breaks Down

Sentences 1-4

Betrayed

The intro lines of this speech are all about transmitting to Congress and the American people, quickly and with efficiency, what went down in Pearl Harbor the day before. It goes something like this:

• The United States was attacked by Japan…and betrayed.
• The United States thought it was at peace with Japan…until this betrayal.
• The whole memo thing Japan tried to pull only underlined its…betrayal.

It's not too hard to sum up how President Roosevelt was feeling about recent events.

Sentences 5-16

Blindsided

This section gives us all the specific details about what, exactly, Japan got up to over the weekend. Was it a keg party? Was it a camping trip? Was it a vacay at the spa?

Nope, it was a coordinated, multi-pronged blitz attack on the U.S. and a bunch of its friends, and it was clearly thought out well in advance of its execution.

Sentences 17-26

Bitter

Now that we've covered what happened and how wrong it was, FDR turns our attention to what America plans to do about it. And just in case the rest of the speech didn't communicate this clearly enough, Roosevelt makes sure we understand that the U.S. feels totally betrayed and is really, really angry about it.

So angry, in fact, that it's going to abandon its previous isolationist position and jump into this international skirmish that's been going on with both feet. War, consider yourself declared.