Immerwahr focused on three specific dates in illustrating this thesis. Drawing from his recent book on the subject, How to Hide an Empire, Prof. Not long afterward, a group of Michigan 7th graders wrote to Rand McNally, publisher of the wartime atlas they were using to dutifully oblige FDR’s request that the public follow along with the events of WW II, asking why Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines were listed in the atlas’ index of “foreign places.” Rand McNally wrote back that these islands belonged to the U.S., yes, but were not integral to the nation, a rejoinder that drew stern pushback not only from the 7th graders but also the Department of the Interior, to whom the aghast students forwarded Rand McNally’s response.īoth the President’s rhetorical choices and the publisher’s specious logic speak to the larger point driving Northwestern Associate Professor of History Daniel Immerwahr’s April 26 talk at the Kinder Institute: though we have consistently, often actively, failed to acknowledge it, the telling of the story of the United States’ becomes far, far richer-not to mention far more candid-when the history of its overseas holdings factor into the narrative. Territories also targeted in the same offensive against the backbone of the Allied Forces’ air defense.
In the final version of Roosevelt’s famous “A Date Which Will Live in Infamy” speech, the President mourns the bombings on “the American island of Oahu,” a turn of phrase significant here for how it consummates FDR’s behind-the-scenes resistance to editorial suggestions that he place equal emphasis on the tragic bombing of the Philippines and Guam, U.S.
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