How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

In the Introduction, Daniel Immerwahr dissects an important event in US history: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. That day, Japan attacked Hawaii and other American territories: Wake and Midway Islands, Guam, and the Philippines. In fact, unlike Pearl Harbor, Japan invaded and controlled the Philippines until 1945. The author thus argues that “Pearl Harbor” is, first, a misleading name of the event and, second, the disregard for the other targets highlights the hidden American Empire.

In fact, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech changed his “Infamy” speech about the bombing to prioritize Oahu, Hawaii, and demote the Philippines by mixing “US and British territories together, giving no hint as to which was which” (5). The author argues that Roosevelt “felt a need to massage the point” about Hawaii because he “was clearly worried that his audience might regard Hawaii as foreign” (6). At that stage, Americans interpreted mainland America as more American than the islands, so Roosevelt emphasized “the American island of Oahu” (6).

Until the early 20th century, leaders like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson explicitly called the US overseas possessions “colonies” (7). However, that language began to change in favor of “territories” around 1914 because the government believed that “[t]he word colony must not be used to express the relationship which exists between our government and its dependent peoples” (6).