U.S.S. Shaw, image courtesy of the U.S. National Archives

• “A date which will live in infamy.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt
• On Dec. 8, the United States declares war on Japan
• Dec. 11, Germany declares war on the United States

Dennis Kux, Estranged Democracies (1992).

• “US entry into the war in December 1941 vastly raised India’s strategic importance in Washington as well as American willingness to express its views on the Indian political situation to the British” (10)–manpower, geographic proximity to China
• Roosevelt brought up the issue on Churchill’s Christmas visit to Washington, where the Prime Minister “reacted so strongly and at such length that he [Roosevelt] never raised the issue [India] verbally again” (Churchill, The Hinge of Fate, 208-209)

Gould, Sikhs, Swamis, Students, and Spies (2006)

• “With America’s own strategic situation directly affected by political conditions in India, and with the resulting new political atmosphere which this evoked in Washington–that the South Asian activists significantly escalated their lobbying and propaganda effort (315-16).

Aldrich, Intelligence and the War Against Japan (2000)

• An opportunity for William Donovon to expand the reach and size of the OSS (140)