United States History: 1870 - Modern Era

Pearl Harbor

In 1937, the Japanese empire invaded the city of Nanking, China which was the capital at the time. The invasion was terribly brutal. Under orders from the Japanese high command, soldiers massacred civilians and raped many women. Death estimates are as high of 300,000. As a result of that brutality, the US ended all oil shipments to Japan. At the time, the US was the largest oil exporter in the world and Japan had no oil reserves. Japan wanted, and needed that oil.

Pearl Harbor - December 7, 1941

A surprise - hardly!

The United States had expected an attack but their attention was on Germany and the Pacific was not even considered. The US expected the Germans to attack the East Coast. If an attack were to happen in the Pacific, the Americans expected that attack to occur at their base in the Philippines. This was not a surprise attack, it was a surprise location.

The details

Sunday, December 7, 1941 - just before 9:00 am Hawaii time (about 2:00 pm EST)- the attack began. Some important details:

the Japanese fleet left Japan about a week early but US lost their location - the vacant sea is an area in the Pacific between Hawaii and Japan. It's over 4,000 nautical miles. The entire land mass of Asia can fit in its boundaries.
Washington learned of the fleet on December 6th but there were delays in the messages.
The attack was planned and managed by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto and it was almost perfect. Aircraft carriers parked about 100 miles north of Hawaii and the planes flew below US radar. Pearl Harbor never saw it coming.
The attack lasted about 4 hours and by 1:00 pm, every battleship at Pearl was destroyed and two were sunk - the USS Arizona and the USS Oklahoma. About 2,400 sailers and army personnel were killed.

Results

Every ship destroyed at Pearl was put back in commission within 8 months except for two: the Arizona and the Oklahoma

The Japanese did not hit any of the US Aircraft Carriers - they were in San Diego...this was a mistake.

Declaration of War

The next day, December 8th, President Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war on Japan. Four days later, the Germans and the Italians declared war on the US (the first and only time the Germans declared war) and the US returned the favor.

The US is now officially in the war.

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