12/07/2021
Pearl Harbor is a United States Naval base on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. It was considered to be geographically perfect for the United States to have their Pacific fleet based there. The island had a narrow entrance and shallow water. This made it an ideal and impenetrable location. Sadly this was not the case.
On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy bombed the Pearl Harbor Naval base by way of a surprise attack. Prior to the attack, the Japanese Naval forces practiced the attack on one of their own bases due to it being structured almost exactly the same as Pearl Harbor. The goal of this attack was to destroy ships. They were instructed to target any aircraft carriers, but if they couldn’t they were to target battleships. The Japanese attacked from the north of the island. They were able to do so because the mountains on the island blocked radar and it was a Sunday morning and there were no surveillance planes in the air.
During the first wave of the attack, the USS Arizona was hit and the battleship sunk in less than nine minutes. The death toll from the sinking of that ship alone was over 1,100 men. The USS Oklahoma was also sunk. It was hit by 10 torpedoes and over 400 men died after being trapped when it sank. The Japanese did a second wave that included 78 dive bombers. This wave caused continued destruction.
The Japanese had planned three waves of attacks, but after the first two waves they decided to call off the third because they did not know where the battleships were and did not want to risk their forces. By the end of the attack, 19 ships had been sunk, 2 U.S. Navy aircraft had been destroyed, and 128 additional aircraft had been damaged. In total there were 2,403 service members killed and 1,178 were injured. The Japanese only lost 29 aircraft and 5 submarines.
Despite inflicting heavy casualties, the Japanese failed to achieve the goal of disabling the U.S. fleet. There were no U.S. aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor, and they were unable to destroy vital pieces of infrastructure, such as repair shops and fuel tanks.The only thing that the Japanese were able to do was anger the United States.
Prior to the attack, the United States did not want to intervene in the war. After the war began in Europe the United States government decided that it would remain an outside influence in the war unless they were threatened or attacked. This all changed after the attack on Pearl harbor. On December 8th, 1941, President Roosevelt asked congress to declare war on Japan. The declaration passed and soon after Germany and Italy allied with Japan and declared war on the United States. The United States had officially joined World War II.
