| Details for American Muggles Enter War; MACUSA Still Neutral |
| Summary: | The Wizarding World looks on the Pearl Harbor Attack |
| Date: | December 8, 1941 |
| Location: | Pearl Harbor |
| Related: | Plot: For the Greater Good |
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WASHINGTON — The Muggle world was stunned today, as the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise air raid on the United States-held territories of the Hawaiian Islands, Guam, the Philippines, and Wake Island, and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. It immediately declared war on the British Empire and the United States. It is believed that the Japanese leadership has no territorial interest in America, but wants to maintain total dominance of the Pacific.
While it has been no secret that the United States has been tacitly against Germany and its allies in Europe, the attack comes as a shock even to many Japanese wizards; apparently diplomats were still present in the United States capital to protest economic embargoes that the Americans were enacting on Japan. Those diplomats are not expected to be successful in their endeavors to remove the embargoes.
Relations with the United States began to crumble in 1931 when Japan occupied Manchuria in northern China. Over the last decade conflict has intensified into a full-scale war between Japan and China. Last year, the US imposed trade sanctions on Japan. Then in September 1940 Japan signed a Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. It became a formal member of the Axis alliance fighting the European war but continued to negotiate with America for trade concessions until today.
The Hawaiian attack was focused on Oahu, the third-largest and most populous island in the chain. The muggles used incendiary and high explosive ordnance based on a type of non-magical alchemy similar to the bombs which have been dropped on London during the so-called Blitz. While it is possible for well-built shield charms to deflect these attacks, the Magical Congress of the United States (MACUSA) has released a statement that it has authorized no such barriers to be put up around wizarding communities in the territories struck.
Local wizarding authorities which still maintain primary control due to the cultural and physical distance from the Eastern United States have not made a statement, but it is believed there were no significant witch or wizard casualties, with the attack primarily targeted on the muggle naval base.
The muggle president of the US, Franklin D Roosevelt, has mobilised all his forces and has asked the national legislature, the United States Congress, to declare war on Japan. Germany and Italy's muggle militaries are expected to declare war on the United States later today; if they do so, the United States Congress will certainly return the favor.
MACUSA and the Japanese Ministry of Magic both say they have no intention of following their muggle counterparts, although tensions remain high with the Japanese Ministry's aggressive colonization of smaller wizarding areas that have been conquered by their muggle countrymen.