The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project is a university-chartered research center
associated with the Department of History of The George Washington University
Eleanor Roosevelt's Remarks
December 7, 1941
Pan American Coffee Bureau (ER's regular weekly radio broadcast)
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I am speaking to you
tonight at a very serious moment in our history. The Cabinet
is convening and the leaders in Congress are meeting with
the President. The State Department and Army and Navy officials
have been with the President all afternoon. In fact, the
Japanese ambassador was talking to the president at the
very time that Japan's airships were bombing our citizens
in Hawaii and the Phillippines and sinking one of our transports
loaded with lumber on its way to Hawaii.
By tomorrow morning the members of Congress
will have a full report and be ready for action.
In the meantime, we the people are already prepared for
action. For months now the knowledge that something of this
kind might happen has been hanging over our heads and yet
it seemed impossible to believe, impossible to drop the
everyday things of life and feel that there was only one
thing which was important - preparation to meet an enemy
no matter where he struck. That is all over now and there
is no more uncertainty.
We know what we have to face and we know that we are ready to face it.
I should like to say just a word to the women in the country
tonight. I have a boy at sea on a destroyer, for all I know
he may be on his way to the Pacific. Two of my children
are in coast cities on the Pacific. Many
of you all over the country have boys in the services who
will now be called upon to go into action. You have friends
and families in what has suddenly become a danger zone.
You cannot escape anxiety. You cannot escape a clutch of
fear at your heart and yet I hope that the certainty of
what we have to meet will make you rise above these fears.
We must go about our daily business more determined than
ever to do the ordinary things as well as we can and when
we find a way to do anything more in our communities to
help others, to build morale, to give a feeling of security,
we must do it. Whatever is asked of us I am sure we can
accomplish it. We are the free and unconquerable people
of the United States of America.
To the young people of the nation, I must speak a word
tonight. You are going to have a great opportunity. There
will be high moments in which your strength and your ability
will be tested. I have faith in you. I feel as though I
was standing upon a rock and that rock is my faith in my
fellow citizens.
Now we will go back to the program we had arranged......
ER goes into a script in which she interviews a
young soldier. This program was scheduled before the attack
on Pearl Harbor.