Eloise Ogden/MDN This is the front page of the Monday, Dec. 8, 1941, edition of The Minot Daily News, the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

The headline of the Monday, Dec. 8, 1941, edition of The Minot Daily News, the day following the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, announced Congress had promptly declared war on Japan.

Eighty-four years ago on Sunday, Dec. 7, the Imperial Japanese Navy led a surprise attack on the U.S. Navy base in Hawaii on Sunday, December 7, 1941. This resulted in the United States entering World War II.

The attack began at 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time with a wave of Japanese dive-bombers, torpedo planes and bombers, followed by a second wave of aircraft launching at 8:50 a.m.

Monday, Dec. 8, 1941, was the first publication of The Minot Daily News following the attack.

Its editorial led with:

“The United States is at war today.

When we say ‘at war’ we use that expression in a sense which all Americans understand.

An attack by Japan without warning on outposts of United States territory in the Pacific, followed by Tokyo’s announced declaration, took us clearly into armed conflict with no alternative. The sudden crystallization of the Far Eastern situation ended months of uncertainty and difference of opinion as to whether our status in opposition to the Axis powers was really that of a belligerent.”

The Minot newspaper reported that Monday the news of military action in the Pacific was brought especially close to Minot for many Magic City families have sons and relatives who are on active duty in the Pacific region. The newspaper listed a dozen or more Minot and area men who are stationed at bases in the Philippine and Hawaiian islands and on the Pacific Coast.

The newspaper also reported that telegrams were arriving in Minot Sunday night, the day of the attack, and Monday, canceling furloughs of soldiers home from Army camps, and a number of reservists were waiting to be called up for active duty.

“Several Minot national guardsmen discharged in recent weeks because of the 28 year old age limit law or because of dependency at the time of their induction, reported they expect calls to report back to camp,” the newspaper reported.

Minot’s approximately dozen adult Japanese men residents, all of them longtime residents of the city, issued a statement that Monday, reaffirming their loyalty to the United States, and expressed hope that the military machine of Japan would be crushed, the newspaper reported.

“What were they thinking about to attack the United States?” said one of the Japanese residents.

One spokesman said to the best of his knowledge the longest time a Japanese resident of Minot had been here was for more than 40 years and none less than about 20 years. Some of them were born in this country.

The statement they issued included saying, “The United States is OUR HOME, OUR COUNTRY. She must and will win this war, which was not of her choosing.”

With news of the war on their minds, Minot and area residents went on with their work, including work at the Red Cross headquarters in the federal building, where women cut garments and sewed, including completing a consignment of nearly 100 baby layettes, according to the newspaper.