FDR: “December 7th, 1941, A date which will live in infamy.
The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air
forces of the Empire of Japan…”
The relationship between Japan and the United States had soured in the years leading up
to Pearl Harbor.
This began with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and expansion throughout the Chinese
mainland that led to The Second Sino-Japanese war between China and Japan in 1937.
Japan then joined the Berlin or Tripartite pact, forming an alliance with Germany and
Italy in 1940.
The War in Europe had opened up strategic opportunities for the Japanese conquest of
European colonial holdings, such as French Indochina, British Malaysia and Singapore,
Dutch Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Following the invasion of French Indochina in 1941, the US froze Japanese assets in the
United States and declared an embargo on petroleum shipments.
US oil accounted for 80% of Japan’s oil imports.
By late 1941 the United States had severed practically all commercial and financial relations
with Japan.
Japanese military strategy was based on the peculiar geography of the Pacific Ocean and
on the relative weakness of the Allied military presence there.
The western half of the Pacific is dotted with many islands, while the eastern half
of the ocean is almost devoid of landmasses and hence usable bases, except for Hawaii.
The British, French, American, and Dutch military forces in the entire Pacific region west of
Hawaii amounted to only about 350,000 troops.
Allied air power in the Pacific was weak and consisted mostly of obsolete planes.
The Japanese believed that they could quickly launch coordinated attacks from their existing
bases on certain Pacific Islands and overwhelm the Allied forces, planning to establish a
strongly fortified defensive perimeter.
They believed that any American and British counteroffensives against this perimeter could
be repelled, after which those nations would eventually seek a negotiated peace that would
allow Japan to keep this newly acquired empire.
On the morning of December 7th, at 6:10 AM, The first wave of Japanese planes launched.
At 6:45 AM the USS Ward spotted and opened fire on a Japanese submarine off the coast
of Hawaii At 6:53 AM the Ward reported sinking the sub,
but decoding the message took time.
At 7:02 A radar station on Oahu spotted unidentified aircraft headed towards the island.
However, radar systems were less than a month old, and the lieutenant who received the warning
thought it was a false alarm.
By 7:40 AM the first wave of Japanese aircraft reaches Oahu, having evaded American early
warning systems.
Shorty thereafter, the Japanese aerial commanded ordered the attack.
The Japanese aircraft flew in two waves – the first wave attacked airfields and anti-air
defenses on the west side of the island, while the second wave, almost an hour later, concentrated
on the eastern side.
Both waves met over Pearl Harbor.
In the harbor, anchored ships made perfect targets for the Japanese bombers.
Most of the damage to the battleships occurred in the first 30 minutes of the assault.
The Arizona was completely destroyed and the Oklahoma capsized.
The California, Nevada, and West Virginia sank in shallow water.
However, the Pacific Fleet’s three aircraft carriers were at sea during the attack, and
the Japanese failed to destroy the important oil storage facilities on the island.
All but two of the battleships were returned to service during the war, and overall US
naval strategy in the pacific shifted to rely on aircraft carriers over battleships as a
result.
Japan’s fleet of 67 ships was located about 200 miles north of Oahu.
They launched dive bombers, torpedo bombers, and fighter planes.
There were 353 Japanese aircraft involved in the attack, 29 of which were shot down.
Only one Japanese ship that participated survived to the end of the war.
In total, 2,404 US military personnel and civilians were killed. 1,177 of those casualties
were aboard one ship – the USS Arizona, where an armor-piercing bomb struck and ignited
over a million pounds of gunpowder within the ship.
The Arizona sank in less than nine minutes.
68 US civilians were killed.
After the battle, 15 individuals were awarded the Medal of Honor and 51 were awarded a Navy
Cross for their actions in battle.
The following day, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the United States, and
the US congress declared war against Japan.
Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, and the previously
reluctant nation entered the Second World War.
The attack on pearl harbor is credited with uniting the US population behind the war effort.
It is estimated that between 35 and 65 million people died during the Second World War, including
civilians killed as a result of war, those who died from disease, and those killed during
the Holocaust.
The Second World War resulted in the expansion of the Soviet Union’s power throughout eastern
Europe, the spread of communism to China, the advent of nuclear weapons, and the decisive
shift of world power away from the states of western Europe and toward the United States
and the Soviet Union