The U.S. Congress declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941, in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor the previous day. On December 8, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his “Day of Infamy” speech to a joint session of Congress at 12:30 p.m. (the address was reprinted on page 7 of that day’s Pantagraph, shown here) Immediately afterward, the declaration of war was brought to vote in the Senate and House. Roosevelt then signed the declaration at 4:10 p.m., although by that time the final afternoon edition of The Daily Pantagraph had gone to press.
More than 330 Mclean County men would lose their lives in the war against Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, 1941-1945.
