Pearl Harbor Day commemorates the unprovoked attack
in 1941 of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii by Japanese forces. The attack marked the
US entry into World War II. The attack took place on Sunday morning at 7:55
AM. It lasted just over an hour. The harbor was the homeport for the US Pacific
fleet. Most of the ships in the harbor were damaged or destroyed. 2,400 Americans
were killed and nearly 1,200 wounded. The greatest tragedy was the loss of the
Battleship USS Arizona with its crew of nearly 1,200 men.
At the dawn on Sunday, December 7, 1941, the naval
aviation forces of the Empire of Japan attacked the United States Pacific Fleet
center at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and other military targets. The goal of this
attack was to sufficiently cripple the US Fleet so that Japan could then attack
and capture the Phillipines and Indo-China and so secure access to the raw materials
needed to maintain its position as a global military and economic power.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack on
the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii on the morning
of Sunday, 7 December 1941, which brought the U.S. into World War II. Aircraft
from the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyed five U.S. Navy battleships, along
with 188 aircraft, one minelayer, and three destroyers and inflicting over 4,000
casualties. The Japanese losses were minimal at 29 aircraft and five midget
submarines with 65 Japanese servicemen killed or wounded.
The 7 December 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was
one of the great defining moments in history. A single carefully-planned and
well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy's battleship force as a
possible threat to the Japanese Empire's southward expansion. America, unprepared
and now considerably weakened, was abruptly brought into the Second World War
as a full combatant. The intent of the pre-emptive strike was to protect Imperial
Japan's advance into Malaya and the Dutch East Indies — for their natural
resources such as oil and rubber — by neutralizing the U.S. Pacific Fleet
(in the fashion of War Plan Orange as practiced by both sides).
This would enable Japan to further extend the empire
to include Australia, New Zealand, and India (the ultimate boundaries planned
for the so-called "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere"). The prevailing
belief within the Japanese military and political establishment was that eventually,
with the then expected German defeat of Great Britain and Soviet Russia, the
United States' non-involvement in the European war, and Japan's control of the
Pacific, that the world power structure would stabilize into three major spheres
of influence:
1.) The Empire of Japan controlling East, Southeast,
and South Asia and the entire Pacific Ocean.
2.) The combined powers of Germany and Italy controlling
Great Britain, all of Europe, Western and central Asia, the Middle East, and
Africa.
3.) The United States, controlling North and South
America.
The Japanese high command was (mistakenly) certain
any attack on Britain's colonies would inevitably thrust the U.S. into the war.
By contrast, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had moved the fleet to Hawaii,
and ordered a buildup in the Philippines, to deter Japanese aggression against
China, or European colonies in Asia.
The attack was one of the most important engagements
of World War II. Occurring before a formal declaration of war, it spurred the
U.S. into World War Two against Japan and then Germany which declared war on
the U.S. a few days later, creating a conflict that encircled the world. Roosevelt
called December 7, 1941 "a date which will live in infamy".
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