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The Attack on Pearl Harbor
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The Road to War
Japan wanted an empire, but what it didn’t have were the resources to keep one running. Its islands were crowded and mountainous, with few of the raw materials a modern military needed. Oil, steel, coal, rubber—Japan had almost none.
Meanwhile, Western powers had carved up Asia like a Thanksgiving turkey. Britain controlled Malaya with its rubber. The Dutch ruled the East Indies with its oil. The United States held the Philippines and its trade routes. To Japan’s leaders, it felt unfair: why should Europeans and Americans control Asia’s riches while Japan, the only major Industrial power in Asia, was told to stay small?
Japan had already proven it was willing to use force to get what it wanted. In 1910, it annexed Korea, turning the peninsula into a colony and using its resources to fuel Japan’s growing power. Two decades later, the Japanese military went further. In 1931, they stormed into Manchuria, rich in coal and iron. Six years later, they pushed deep into China, leaving cities like Nanjing in ruins. By 1940, they had moved into French Indochina—modern Vietnam and Cambodia—eyeing its rice fields and rubber plantations.
The United States tried to pressure Japan into backing down by cutting off scrap metal exports. But when Japanese troops marched into Indochina, President Franklin Roosevelt went for the jugular: he froze Japan’s assets in the U.S. and cut off oil. Since 80 percent of Japan’s oil came from America, the empire’s fuel tank was suddenly running on fumes.
Japan’s leaders now faced a choice. Back down, shrink their ambitions, and risk looking weak—or gamble everything on one bold strike. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Japan’s top naval strategist, warned that America’s factories and manpower would crush Japan in a long war. But if Japan struck first—hard enough—it might just buy the time it needed.
After transforming its economy into a modern industrial power in the late 1800s, Japan followed the pattern set by European empires—seizing neighbors like Korea, Manchuria, and China to grab natural resources.
Japanese soldiers behind barricades during the Battle of Shanghai - 1937
Portrait of Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo
Show Steel Works was the showcase of Japanese military power
Japanese soldiers behind barricades during the Battle of Shanghai - 1937
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The Plan in Motion
In late November 1941, six Japanese aircraft carriers slipped out of northern Japan under the cover of winter storms. Radio silence kept them hidden as they steamed across the North Pacific, a route so remote that American patrols never saw them.
By December 6, the fleet was in position just 230 miles north of Oahu. Below decks, pilots traced routes on maps of Pearl Harbor, mechanics bolted bombs to wings, and deck crews fueled planes. At dawn on December 7, engines thundered to life. By 6:00 a.m., the first wave of 183 planes was airborne, followed soon after by 170 more. Their target: the American Pacific Fleet.
Japanese pilots receive instructions before setting off to attack Pearl Harbor
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Missed Warnings
Hints of danger were everywhere, but they never added up in time. American codebreakers had been intercepting Japanese diplomatic messages for months. On December 6, they cracked a chilling one: Japan planned to break off negotiations with the United States at 1:00 p.m. Washington time on December 7. It didn’t say where or how war would begin, but the timing suggested something big was about to happen.
That same week, Japanese diplomats in Washington quietly prepared to leave. The Japanese consulate in Los Angeles burned sensitive papers. Their embassy in D.C. was ordered to destroy code machines. Even the Japanese consulate in Honolulu had been sending detailed reports about the location of U.S. ships in Pearl Harbor. All the signals were there—but nobody in Washington believed Hawaii was the target.
On Oahu itself, two young radar operators picked up a massive formation of planes just after 7:00 a.m. Their screen glowed with blips. Excited, they phoned it in. But the duty officer dismissed it—it must be a group of American B-17s arriving from California. The warning never left the desk.
a Japanese midget submarine was spotted and sunk by the destroyer USS Ward (DD-139) at the entrance to Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. Unfortunately, it did not trigger an alarm to the naval base.
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December 7, 1941 – The Attack
At 7:55 a.m., the first wave struck. Torpedo planes skimmed just feet above the harbor’s surface, dropping specially modified torpedoes designed to run in shallow water—something American planners had thought impossible. Within minutes, explosions ripped through Battleship Row.
The USS Arizona was torn apart when a bomb detonated her forward magazines, lifting the ship out of the water before it sank in a fiery wreck. More than 1,100 men went down with her. The USS Oklahoma rolled completely onto her side after four torpedo hits, sailors trapped inside pounding on the hull while rescuers tried to cut them free. The California and West Virginia took multiple hits and sank slowly into the harbor mud, while the Nevada, billowing smoke, tried to steam for the open sea before being hammered back and grounded.
At the same time, dive bombers and high-altitude planes hit the airfields at Hickam, Wheeler, and Bellows. American planes had been parked wingtip to wingtip to prevent sabotage, but the neat lines turned into a shooting gallery. By the time the dust settled, nearly 200 American aircraft were destroyed on the ground.
By 8:10 a.m., chaos had spread across the island. Sailors dove into flaming water slicked with oil, clambering onto wreckage to survive. Crews used axes and torches to free shipmates trapped below decks. Nurses worked in improvised hospitals as stretchers jammed the halls. And amid the fire and panic, acts of courage emerged—like Doris Miller, a cook aboard the USS West Virginia, who abandoned his post, grabbed a machine gun he had never been trained to use, and fired at Japanese planes until he ran out of ammunition.
At 8:50 a.m., the second wave arrived. Dive bombers pounded smaller ships and repair facilities, but fuel tanks and drydocks—prime targets that could have crippled the U.S. for months—were left untouched. Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, leading the strike force, debated a third attack but called it off, worried that the missing American carriers might return and trap his fleet.
By 9:45 a.m., the raid was over. In less than two hours, 2,403 Americans were dead and more than 1,000 wounded. Eight battleships were damaged or sunk, alongside cruisers, destroyers, and countless aircraft. The harbor was littered with burning oil and twisted steel, but the Pacific Fleet wasn’t gone—America’s aircraft carriers had been away at sea.
Japan lost 29 planes and 64 men, a small price for the destruction they caused. Yet in sparing the fuel tanks and repair yards, and in failing to catch the carriers, they had missed the knockout blow Yamamoto had hoped for.
Map of Japan and the pacific attack force headed to Pearl Harbor
Photo captured of an incoming Japanese plane attacking Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Photo of anti aircraft guns firing on Japanese planes above Pearl Harbor
Photograph of Battleship Row taken from a Japanese plane at the beginning of the attack. The explosion in the center is a torpedo strike on USS West Virginia. Two attacking Japanese planes can be seen: one over USS Neosho and one over the Naval Yard. Credit: Wikimedia
USS West Virginia (BB-48) afire forward, immediately after the Japanese air attack. USS Tennessee (BB-43) is on the sunken battleship’s opposite side. Photo and Caption: Naval History & Heritage Command.
Photo of anti aircraft guns firing on Japanese planes above Pearl Harbor
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Voices from the Harbor
Survivors remembered the sky choked with smoke, flames racing across oil-slicked water, and shipmates pounding on hulls from inside capsized vessels. Sailors dove through fire to escape, some clinging to debris in the harbor. Nurses worked without pause, turning dining halls into makeshift operating rooms. Civilians on Oahu grabbed rifles, certain an invasion was coming next.
Hubert “Dale” Gano, a Navy man stationed at Pearl City, recalled the moment with startling clarity: “We were still in bed at 8:00 on Sunday morning … loud explosions … I could see the ‘Rising Sun’ emblem that decorated the side of the airplane which identified them as Japanese!”
From a different vantage point, missionary Charles Maddry described the scene as he watched the harbor erupt: “At exactly 7:55 Sunday morning the treacherous and murderous attack began … wave after wave of Japanese bombers diving out of the clouds … I saw the battleship U.S.S. Arizona ablaze and its sailors swimming through burning oil.”
Even after the last Japanese planes disappeared, the smell of burning oil hung in the air, thick and heavy as grief.
Hubert Dale Gano
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America Responds
News spread in minutes, carried by radio across the nation. Families huddled in living rooms, stunned at what they were hearing. The next day, President Roosevelt addressed Congress, calling December 7 “a date which will live in infamy.” His words electrified the country. Congress declared war on Japan almost unanimously—only Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a committed pacifist, voted no.
Within three days, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. What had been a distant conflict was suddenly America’s fight on two fronts. For years, many Americans had hoped to stay out of the war, but Pearl Harbor ended that debate in a single morning. The United States, once a reluctant observer, was now fully in the fight—a nation transformed into a global power almost overnight.
In February 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced relocation of over 110,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast. They were sent to internment camps in isolated areas of the interior United States, where they lived under guard for the duration of the war.
Readers in New York City trying to get a newspaper about the Pearl Harbor attack.
Government notice ordering all people of Japanese ancestry to report to internment camps.
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Life on the Home Front
Pearl Harbor flipped American life upside down. Recruiting stations overflowed as young men lined up to enlist. Trains carried new soldiers to boot camps, while families crowded platforms to wave them off.
Industry shifted gears at breakneck speed. Detroit stopped making cars and started churning out tanks, jeeps, and airplanes. Shipyards launched new vessels so quickly it seemed they slid off the line one after another. Airplane factories mushroomed into sprawling complexes that ran day and night.
At home, ration books became part of everyday life. Sugar, coffee, gasoline, and rubber were strictly limited. Housewives turned yards into “victory gardens,” while kids hauled wagons of scrap metal to collection drives. Even bacon grease was saved for explosives. In coastal cities, blackout curtains covered windows, and civil defense wardens prowled neighborhoods making sure no light gave enemy bombers a target.
The war wasn’t something happening only “over there.” It reached into kitchens, schools, and factories. Pearl Harbor didn’t just launch America into the fight abroad—it reshaped daily life at home.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addresses Congress and the nation about the Pearl Harbor attack.
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Why It Matters
For years, the United States had tried to avoid being drawn into World War II. Pearl Harbor changed that in a single morning. The attack ended America’s isolation and thrust the nation into a global conflict it had resisted joining. From that point on, the U.S. was no longer watching the war from the sidelines—it was fully engaged, fighting in both Europe and the Pacific.
The white memorial stretched across the USS Arizona marks the resting place of those lost that morning. Oil still seeps from her wreck in slow black ribbons known as the “tears of the Arizona.” Each drop is a reminder that Pearl Harbor didn’t just damage ships and kill sailors—it reshaped America’s role in the world.
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