7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7

Yet it was in the Pacific rather than the Atlantic that

war came to the United States. The Japanese bombed Pearl

Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941, destroying nearly the

entire U.S. Pacific fleet and hundreds of airplanes and kill-

ing about 2,500 military personnel and civilians. On

December 8, at Roosevelt’s request, Congress declared

war on Japan; on December 11 Germany and Italy declared

war on the United States.

From the start of American involvement in World War

II, Roosevelt took the lead in establishing a grand alliance

among all countries fighting the Axis powers. He, Joseph

Stalin, and Winston Churchill seemed to get along well

when they met at Tehrān in November 1943. The Big Three

met again at the Yalta Conference in the Crimea, U.S.S.R.,

in February 1945.

Declining Health and Death

Roosevelt had been suffering from advanced arterioscle-

rosis for more than a year before the Yalta Conference. His

political opponents had tried to make much of his obviously

declining health during the campaign of 1944, when he ran

for a fourth term against Governor Thomas E. Dewey of

New York. But Roosevelt campaigned actively and won the

election. By the time of his return from Yalta, however, he

was weak. On the afternoon of April 12, he suffered a mas-

sive cerebral hemorrhage, and he died a few hours later.

Eamon de Valera

(b. Oct. 14, 1882, New York, N.Y., U.S.—d. Aug. 29, 1975, Dublin, Ire.)

E

amon de Valera was a Irish politician and patriot

who served as prime minister of Ireland in the years

1932–48, 1951–54, and 1957–59, and president from 1959