Attack on Pearl Harbor

On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise military strike on the United States Pacific Fleet at its naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii. At the time, the US was a neutral country in World War II. The air raid on Pearl Harbor, which was launched from aircraft carriers, prompted the US to declare war on Japan the next day. The Japanese military leadership referred to the attack as the Hawaii Operation and Operation AI, and as Operation Z during its planning.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was preceded by months of negotiations between the US and Japan over the future of the Pacific. Japanese demands included that the US end its sanctions against Japan, cease aiding China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, and allow Japan access to the resources of the Dutch East Indies. Japan dispatched its naval attack group on November 26, 1941, just before receiving the Hull note, which stated the US desire that Japan withdraw from China and French Indochina. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, planned the attack as a pre-emptive strike on the Pacific Fleet, which had been based at Pearl Harbor since 1940 in order to prevent it from interfering with Japan's planned actions in Southeast Asia. Yamamoto hoped that the strike would enable Japan to make rapid territorial gains and negotiate peace. In addition to Pearl Harbor, over seven hours Japan launched coordinated attacks on the US-held Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island, as well as on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

The attacking force, commanded by Chūichi Nagumo, launched its attack at 7:48a.m. Hawaiian time (6:18p.m. GMT) on December 7, 1941. The base was struck by 353 fighters, level and dive bombers, and torpedo bombers in two waves launched from six aircraft carriers. Of the eight US battleships present, all were damaged and four were sunk. All but the USS Arizona and the USS Utah were later refloated, and six were returned to service during the war. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and a minelayer. More than 180 US aircraft were destroyed. A total of 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded. Japanese losses totaled 29 aircraft, five midget submarines, and 130 personnel. The three US carriers assigned to Pearl Harbor were at sea at the time, and important base installations, including its oil storage and naval repair facilities, were not attacked.

Japan declared war on the US and the British Empire later that day (December 8 in Tokyo), but the declarations were not delivered until the next day. On December 8, both the United Kingdom and the US declared war on Japan. On December 11, though they had no formal obligation to do so under the Tripartite Pact with Japan, Germany and Italy each declared war on the United States, which responded by declaring war on Germany and Italy. While there were historical precedents for unannounced military action by Japan, the lack of a formal warning and perception that the attack had been unprovoked led US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to famously label December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy". The attack was the deadliest event ever in Hawaii, and the deadliest foreign attack on the US until the September 11 attacks of 2001.

Background

Diplomacy

thumb|[[Pearl Harbor on October 30, 1941, a month before the attack, with Ford Island visible (in the center)]]

War between the Empire of Japan and the United States was seen as a possibility since the 1920s. Japan had been wary of American territorial and military expansion in the Pacific and Asia since the late 1890s, followed by the annexation of islands, such as Hawaii and the Philippines, which were close to or within Japan's perceived sphere of influence.

At the same time, Japanese strategic thinkers believed that Japan needed economic self-sufficiency in order to wage modern war. The experiences of World War I had taught the Japanese that modern wars would be protracted, require total mobilization, and create vulnerabilities for trade embargoes and encirclement. As a consequence, Japan needed access to strategically important resources (e.g., iron, oil) that could not be extracted at sufficient levels in the home islands.

Although Japan had begun to take a hostile stance against the United States after the rejection of the Racial Equality Proposal, their relationship was cordial enough to remain trading partners. Tensions did not seriously grow until Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Over the next decade, Japan expanded into China, leading to the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Japan spent considerable effort trying to isolate China and endeavored to secure enough independent resources to attain victory on the mainland. The "Southern Operation" was designed to assist these efforts. Nevertheless, Japan would still rely heavily on US oil imports, including to Japanese forces in Japan-occupied Manchuria.

In a memorandum dated October 24, 1934, Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs Stanley K. Hornbeck discussed his meeting with Standard Oil New Jersey head Walter C. Teagle to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The memo described that Teagle was uncooperative with US recommendations and how Standard Oil was given special treatment by the Japanese government, which made the company less subject to Japan's national business regulation policies than other companies. In 1938, following an appeal by President Roosevelt, American companies stopped providing Japan with implements of war.

In 1940, Japan invaded French Indochina, attempting to stymie the flow of supplies reaching China. The United States halted shipments of airplanes, parts, machine tools, and aviation gasoline to Japan, which Japan perceived as an unfriendly act. The United States did not stop oil exports, however, partly because of the prevailing sentiment in Washington that given Japanese dependence on American oil, such an action was likely to be considered an extreme provocation.

In mid-1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the Pacific Fleet from San Diego to Hawaii. He also ordered a military buildup in the Philippines, taking both actions in the hope of discouraging Japanese aggression in the Far East. Because the Japanese high command was mistakenly certain any attack on the United Kingdom's Southeast Asian colonies, including Singapore, would bring the United States into the war, a devastating preventive strike appeared to be the only way to prevent American naval interference. An invasion of the Philippines was also considered necessary by Japanese war planners. The American War Plan Orange had envisioned defending the Philippines with an elite force of 40,000 men; this option was never implemented due to opposition from Douglas MacArthur, who felt he would need a force ten times that size. By 1941, American planners expected to have to abandon the Philippines at the outbreak of war. Late that year, Admiral Thomas C. Hart, commander of the United States Asiatic Fleet, was given orders to that effect.

The United States finally ceased oil exports to Japan in July 1941, following the seizure of French Indochina after the Fall of France, in part because of new American restrictions on domestic oil consumption. Because of this decision, Japan proceeded with plans to take the oil-rich Dutch East Indies. On August 17, Roosevelt warned Japan that America was prepared to take opposing steps if "neighboring countries" were attacked.

thumb|Political Map of the Asia-Pacific Region, 1939

Japan and the United States engaged in negotiations during 1941, attempting to improve relations. In the course of these negotiations, Japan offered to withdraw from most of China and Indochina after making peace with the Nationalist government. It also proposed to adopt an independent interpretation of the Tripartite Pact and to refrain from trade discrimination, provided all other nations reciprocated. Washington rejected these proposals. Japanese Prime Minister Konoe then offered to meet with Roosevelt, but Roosevelt insisted on reaching an agreement before any meeting. The American ambassador to Japan repeatedly urged Roosevelt to accept the meeting, warning that it was the only way to preserve the conciliatory Konoe government and peace in the Pacific. However, his recommendation was not acted upon. The Konoe government collapsed the following month when the Japanese military rejected a withdrawal of all troops from China.

Japan's final proposal, delivered on November 20, offered to withdraw from southern Indochina and to refrain from attacks in Southeast Asia, so long as the United States, United Kingdom, and Netherlands supplied of aviation fuel, lifted their sanctions against Japan, and ceased aid to China.

The Japanese intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with their planned military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. Over the course of seven hours, there were coordinated Japanese attacks on the American-held Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Midway Atoll and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. He won assent to formal planning and training for an attack from the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff only after much contention with Naval Headquarters, including a threat to resign his command. Full-scale planning was underway by early spring 1941, primarily by Rear Admiral Ryūnosuke Kusaka, with assistance from Commander Minoru Genda and Yamamoto's Deputy Chief of Staff, Captain Kameto Kuroshima. The planners studied the 1940 British air attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto intensively.

Over the next several months, pilots were trained, equipment was adapted, and intelligence was collected. Despite these preparations, Emperor Hirohito did not approve the attack plan until November 5, after the third of four Imperial Conferences called to consider the matter. At first, he hesitated to engage in war but eventually authorized the Pearl Harbor strike despite dissent from certain advisors. Final authorization was not given by the emperor until December 1, after a majority of Japanese leaders advised him the Hull note would "destroy the fruits of the China incident, endanger Manchukuo and undermine Japanese control of Korea". Before the attack, he became more involved in military matters, even joining the Conference of Military Councillors, which was considered unusual for him. While American Pacific bases and facilities had been placed on alert on many occasions, officials doubted Pearl Harbor would be the first target; instead, they expected the Philippines to be attacked first. This presumption was due to the threat that the air bases throughout that country and the naval base at Manila posed to sea lanes, as well as to the shipment of supplies to Japan from territory to the south. They also incorrectly believed that Japan was not capable of mounting more than one major naval operation at a time.

Objectives

thumb|The route followed by the Japanese fleet to Pearl Harbor and back

thumb|An Imperial Japanese Navy [[Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter on the aircraft carrier Akagi]]

The Japanese attack had several major aims. First, it intended to destroy important American fleet units, thereby preventing the Pacific Fleet from interfering with the Japanese conquest of the Dutch East Indies and Malaya and enabling Japan to conquer Southeast Asia without interference. The leaders of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) subscribed to Alfred Thayer Mahan's "decisive battle" doctrine, especially that of destroying the maximum number of battleships. Second, it was hoped to buy time for Japan to consolidate its position and increase its naval strength before shipbuilding authorized by the 1940 Vinson-Walsh Act erased any chance of victory. Third, to deliver a blow to America's ability to mobilize its forces in the Pacific, battleships were chosen as the main targets, since they were the prestige ships of navies at the time. Reconnaissance aircraft flights risked alerting the Americans, and were not necessary. Fleet composition and preparedness information in Pearl Harbor were already known from the reports of the Japanese spy Takeo Yoshikawa. A report of the absence of the American fleet at Lahaina anchorage off Maui was received from the Tones floatplane and the fleet submarine . Another four scout planes patrolled the area between the Japanese carrier force (the Kidō Butai) and Niʻihau, to detect any counterattack.

Submarines

Fleet submarines , , , , and each embarked a Type A midget submarine for transport to the waters off Oahu. The five I-boats left Kure Naval District on November 25, 1941. and launched their midget subs at about 01:00 local time on December 7. At 03:42 Hawaiian time, the minesweeper spotted a midget submarine periscope southwest of the Pearl Harbor entrance buoy and alerted the destroyer . The midget may have entered Pearl Harbor. However, Ward sank another midget submarine at 06:37|group=nb in the first American shots in the Pacific Theater. A midget submarine on the north side of Ford Island missed the seaplane tender with her first torpedo and missed the attacking destroyer with her other one before being sunk by Monaghan at 08:43. Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki swam ashore and was captured by Hawaii National Guard Corporal David Akui, becoming the first Japanese prisoner of war. A fourth had been damaged by a depth charge attack and was abandoned by its crew before it could fire its torpedoes. It was found outside the harbor in 1960. Japanese forces received a radio message from a midget submarine at 00:41 on December 8 claiming to have damaged one or more large warships inside Pearl Harbor.

In 1992, 2000, and 2001, Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory's submersibles found the wreck of the fifth midget submarine lying in three parts outside Pearl Harbor. The wreck was in the debris field where much surplus American equipment had been dumped after the war, including vehicles and landing craft. Both of its torpedoes were missing. This correlates with reports of two torpedoes fired at the light cruiser at 10:04 at the entrance of Pearl Harbor, and a possible torpedo fired at destroyer at 08:21. There is dispute over this official chain of events though. The "torpedo" that St. Louis saw was also reportedly a porpoising minesweeping float being towed by the destroyer . Some historians and naval architects theorize that a photo of Battleship Row, taken by a Japanese naval aviator during the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was declassified in the 1990s and publicized in the 2000s, shows the fifth midget submarine firing a torpedo at West Virginia and another at Oklahoma. These torpedoes were twice the size of the aerial torpedoes so it was possible that both torpedoes heavily contributed to the sinkings of both ships and especially helped to capsize Oklahoma as Oklahoma was the only battleship that day to suffer catastrophic damage to her belt armor at the waterline from a torpedo. Admiral Chester Nimitz, in a report to Congress, confirmed that one midget submarine's torpedo (possibly from the other midget submarine that fired torpedoes but failed to hit a target) which was fired but did not explode was recovered in Pearl Harbor and was much larger than the aerial torpedoes. Others dispute this theory.

Japanese declaration of war

The attack took place before any formal declaration of war was made by Japan, but this was not Admiral Yamamoto's intention. He originally stipulated that the attack should not commence until thirty minutes after Japan had informed the United States that peace negotiations were at an end. However, the attack began before the notice could be delivered. Tokyo transmitted the 5000-word notification (commonly called the "14-Part Message") in two blocks to the Japanese Embassy in Washington. Transcribing the message took too long for the Japanese ambassador to deliver it at 1:00p.m. Washington time, as ordered, and consequently the message was not presented until more than one hour after the attack had but American code breakers had already deciphered and translated most of the message hours before it was scheduled to be delivered. The final part of the message is sometimes described as a declaration of war. While it was viewed by a number of senior American government and military officials as a very strong indicator negotiations were likely to be terminated and that war might break out at any moment, it neither declared war nor severed diplomatic relations. A declaration of war was printed on the front page of Japan's newspapers in the evening edition of December 8 (late December 7 in the United States), but not delivered to the American government until the day after the attack.

For decades, conventional wisdom held that Japan attacked without first formally breaking diplomatic relations only because of accidents and bumbling that delayed the delivery of a document hinting at war to Washington. In 1999, however, Takeo Iguchi, a professor of law and international relations at International Christian University in Tokyo, discovered documents that pointed to a vigorous debate inside the government over how, and indeed whether, to notify Washington of Japan's intention to break off negotiations and start a war, including a December 7 entry in the war diary saying, "[O]ur deceptive diplomacy is steadily proceeding toward success." Of this, Iguchi said, "The diary shows that the army and navy did not want to give any proper declaration of war, or indeed prior notice even of the termination of negotiations... and they clearly prevailed."

In any event, even if the Japanese had decoded and delivered the 14-Part Message before the beginning of the attack, it would not have constituted either a formal break of diplomatic relations or a declaration of war. The final two paragraphs of the message read:

United States naval intelligence officers were alarmed by the unusual timing for delivering the 1:00p.m. on a Sunday, which was 7:30a.m. in and attempted to alert Pearl Harbor. But due to communication problems the warning was not delivered before the attack. Six airplanes failed to launch due to technical difficulties.|group=nb

1st Group (targets: battleships and aircraft carriers)
49 Nakajima B5N Kate bombers armed with 800kg (1760lb) armor-piercing bombs, organized in four sections (one failed to launch)
40 B5N bombers armed with Type 91 torpedoes, also in four sections
2nd Group – (targets: Ford Island and Wheeler Field)
51 Aichi D3A Val dive bombers armed with general-purpose bombs (3 failed to launch)
3rd Group – (targets: aircraft at Ford Island, Hickam Field, Wheeler Field, Barber's Point, Kaneohe)
43 Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" fighters for air control and strafing The operators, Privates George Elliot Jr. and Joseph Lockard, reported a target to Private Joseph P. McDonald, who was stationed at Fort Shafter's Intercept Center near Pearl Harbor Lieutenant Kermit A. Tyler, a newly assigned officer at the thinly manned Intercept Center, presumed it was the scheduled arrival of six B-17 bombers from California. The Japanese planes were approaching from a direction very close (only a few degrees difference) to that of the bombers, and while the operators had never seen a formation as large on radar, they neglected to tell Tyler of its size. Tyler, for security reasons, could not tell the operators of the six B-17s that were due (even though it was widely known). (3:18a.m. December 8 Japanese Standard Time, as kept by ships of the Kido Butai), with the attack on Kaneohe. A total of 353|group=nb

In the first-wave attack, about eight of the forty-nine 800kg (1760lb) armor-piercing bombs dropped hit their intended battleship targets. At least two of those bombs broke up on impact, another detonated before penetrating an unarmored deck, and one was a dud. Thirteen of the forty torpedoes hit battleships, while four hit other ships. Men aboard the ships awoke to the sounds of alarms, bombs exploding, and gunfire, prompting them to dress as they ran to General Quarters stations. (The famous message "Air raid Pearl Harbor. This is not drill." was sent from the headquarters of Patrol Wing Two, the first senior Hawaiian command to respond.) American servicemen were caught unprepared by the attack. Ammunition lockers were locked, aircraft parked wingtip to wingtip in the open to prevent sabotage, guns unmanned (none of the Navy's 5"/38s, only a quarter of its machine guns, and only four of 31 Army batteries got in action).|group=nb Ensign Joseph Taussig Jr., aboard , commanded the ship's antiaircraft guns and was severely wounded but remained at his post. Lieutenant Commander F. J. Thomas commanded Nevada in the captain's absence and got her underway until the ship was grounded at 9:10a.m. One of the destroyers, , got underway with only four officers aboard, all ensigns, none with more than a year's sea duty; she operated at sea for 36 hours before her commanding officer managed to get back aboard. Captain Mervyn Bennion, commanding , led his men until he was cut down by fragments from a bomb which hit , moored alongside.

Second wave composition

thumb|Second wave B5N2 Bomber Kate Over Hickam Field

thumb|This message, in response to the question "Is channel clear?" denotes the first US ship, relates to orders for to clear [[Pearl Harbor. It is now housed with the National Archives and Records Administration]]

The second planned wave consisted of 171 planes: 54 B5Ns, 81 D3As, and 36 A6Ms, commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Shigekazu Shimazaki. Eighteen ships were sunk or run aground, including five battleships. All of the Americans killed or wounded during the attack were legally non-combatants, given that there was no state of war when the attack occurred.

Of the American fatalities, nearly half were due to the explosion of 's forward magazine after she was hit by a modified shell. Author Craig Nelson wrote that the vast majority of the US sailors killed at Pearl Harbor were junior enlisted personnel. "The officers of the Navy all lived in houses and the junior people were the ones on the boats, so pretty much all of the people who died in the direct line of the attack were very junior people", Nelson said. "So everyone is about 17 or 18 whose story is told there."

thumb|Memorial service at [[Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay|NAS Kaneohe for men killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor]]

Among the notable civilian casualties were nine Honolulu Fire Department firefighters who responded to Hickam Field during the bombing in Honolulu, becoming the only fire department members on American soil to be attacked by a foreign power in history. Fireman Harry Tuck Lee Pang of Engine6 was killed near the hangars by machine-gun fire from a Japanese plane. Captains Thomas Macy and John Carreira of Engine4 and Engine1, respectively, died while battling flames inside the hangar after a Japanese bomb crashed through the roof. An additional six firefighters were wounded by Japanese shrapnel. The wounded later received Purple Hearts (originally reserved for service members wounded by enemy action while partaking in armed conflicts) for their peacetime actions that day on June 13, 1944; the three firefighters killed did not receive theirs until December 7, 1984, on the 43rd anniversary of the attack. This made the nine men the only non-military firefighters to receive such an award in American history.

Already damaged by a torpedo and on fire amidships, Nevada attempted to exit the harbor. She was targeted by many Japanese bombers as she got underway and sustained more hits from bombs, which started further fires. She was deliberately beached to avoid risking blocking the harbor entrance if she sank there. was hit by two bombs and two torpedoes. The crew might have kept her afloat, but were ordered to abandon ship just as they were raising power for the pumps. Burning oil from Arizona and was drifted down toward her and probably made the situation look worse than it was. The disarmed target ship was holed twice by torpedoes. West Virginia was hit by seven torpedoes, the seventh tearing away her rudder. was hit by four torpedoes, the last two above her belt armor, which caused her to capsize. was hit by two of the converted 16" shells, but neither caused serious damage.

thumb|Rear Admiral [[Ernest G. Small (right) presents Purple Heart medals to enlisted men wounded in the Pearl Harbor attack]]

Although the Japanese concentrated on battleships (the largest vessels present), they did not ignore other targets. The light cruiser was torpedoed, and the concussion from the blast capsized the neighboring minelayer . Two destroyers in dry dock, and , were destroyed when bombs penetrated their fuel bunkers. The leaking fuel caught fire; flooding the dry dock in an effort to fight fire made the burning oil rise, and both were burned out. Cassin slipped from her keel blocks and rolled against Downes. The light cruiser was holed by a torpedo. The light cruiser was damaged but remained in service. The repair vessel , moored alongside Arizona, was heavily damaged and beached. The seaplane tender Curtiss was also damaged. The destroyer was badly damaged when two bombs penetrated her forward magazine.

Of the 402 American aircraft in Hawaii, 188 were destroyed and 159 damaged, 155 of them on the ground.

Japanese losses

thumb|Body of Japanese fighter pilot Fusata Iida was buried with military honors by US troops on December 8, 1941

Fifty-five Japanese airmen and nine submariners were killed in the attack, and one, Kazuo Sakamaki, was captured. Of Japan's 414 with another 74 damaged by anti-aircraft fire from the ground.

Possible third wave

According to some accounts, several Japanese junior officers, including Fuchida and Genda, urged Nagumo to carry out a third strike in order to sink more of Pearl Harbor's remaining warships, and damage the base's maintenance shops, drydock facilities and oil tank yards.

: hit by six bombs, one torpedo, beached; returned to service October 1942. 60 dead.
(Admiral Husband E. Kimmel's flagship of the United States Pacific Fleet): in dry dock with Cassin and Downes, hit by one bomb and debris from USS Cassin; remained in service. 9 dead.
: hit by two bombs; returned to service February 1942. 5 dead.
: hit by two bombs; returned to service February 1942. 4 dead (including floatplane pilot shot down).

Ex-battleship (target/AA training ship)

: hit by two torpedoes, capsized; total loss, salvage stopped. 64 dead. Later memorialized.

Cruisers

: hit by one torpedo; returned to service January 1942. 20 dead.
: hit by one torpedo; returned to service February 1942.
: near miss, light damage; remained in service.

Destroyers

: in drydock with Downes and Pennsylvania, hit by one bomb, burned; reconstructed and returned to service February 1944.
: in drydock with Cassin and Pennsylvania, caught fire from Cassin, burned; reconstructed and returned to service November 1943.
: underway to West Loch, damaged by two near-miss bombs; continued patrol; dry-docked January 15, 1942, and sailed January 20, 1942.
: hit by three bombs; returned to service June 1942.

Auxiliaries

(minelayer): damaged by torpedo hit on Helena, capsized; returned to service (as engine-repair ship) February 1944.
(repair ship): hit by two bombs, blast and fire from Arizona, beached; returned to service by August 1942.
(seaplane tender): hit by one bomb, one crashed Japanese aircraft; returned to service January 1942. 19 dead.
(harbor tug): damaged by explosion and fires in Shaw; sunk; returned to service August 1942.
(yard floating dock): damaged by bombs; sunk; returned to service January 25, 1942, servicing Shaw.

Salvage

After a systematic search for survivors, Captain Homer N. Wallin was ordered to lead a formal salvage operation.

Around Pearl Harbor, divers from the Navy (shore and tenders), the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, and civilian contractors (Pacific Bridge Company and others) began work on the ships that could be refloated. They patched holes, cleared debris, and pumped water out of ships. Melvin Storer and other Navy divers worked inside the damaged ships. Within six months, five battleships and two cruisers were patched or refloated so they could be sent to shipyards in Pearl Harbor and on the mainland for extensive repair.

Intensive salvage operations continued for another year, a total of some 20,000 man-hours under water. Arizona and the target ship Utah were too heavily damaged for salvage and remain where they were sunk, with Arizona becoming a war memorial. Oklahoma, while raised, was never repaired and capsized while under tow to the mainland in 1947. Nevada proved particularly difficult to raise and repair; two men involved in the operation died after inhaling poisonous gases that had accumulated in the ship's interior. As information developed, Early made a number of additional announcements to approximately 150 White House reporters over the course of the afternoon.

Initial reports of the attack moved on news wires at approximately 2:25p.m. Eastern time. The first radio coverage (which, at the time, represented the earliest opportunity for ordinary people to learn of the attack) was on the CBS radio network's scheduled news program, World News Today, at 2:30p.m. Eastern time. John Charles Daly read the initial report, then switched to London, where Robert Trout ad-libbed on the possible London reaction. The first report on NBC cut into a play, a dramatization of The Inspector-General, at 2:33p.m. Eastern time and lasted only 21 seconds. Unlike the later practice with major news stories, there were only brief interruptions of scheduled commercial programming.

thumb|The front page of the [[Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1941]]

The attacks were covered on television but the extent of it was limited; as commercial television had started just six months earlier, "a few thousand TV sets existed" in the United States, with most being in the Greater New York City area, and only a handful of stations existed which were all in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. WNBT from New York was the only TV station that was regularly airing that day in the country, with the comedy movie Millionaire Playboy, which was scheduled for 3:30-4:30 PM, being interrupted with the news of the attack. The other station known to cover the attacks was WCBW, also out of New York, where a special report on the attack was broadcast that evening. There are no recordings of either station's coverage, either visual or audio.

At the time of the attack, the last three regular season National Football League games were happening. The Chicago Bears were playing the Chicago Cardinals at Comiskey Park; the Brooklyn Dodgers were playing the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds; and the Philadelphia Eagles were playing the Washington Redskins at Washington's Griffith Stadium. All three games were in progress as the attacks began, and no official announcements were made at any of the games concerning the attacks, with many fans finding out from phone calls placed at the stadium or from newsboys outside the stadium. However, throughout the Redskins game, happening in Washington, many military, government and diplomatic personnel were asked to call their offices or return to them. At the Giants game, OSS head, Col. William J. Donovan, was paged to call his office immediately, and all military personnel were asked to return to their stations at the conclusion of the game. The Washington game, thanks to the announcements and general curiosity of the happenings, ended in a near-empty stadium. When asked why an announcement wasn't made at his game, Redskins owner George Preston Marshall simply stated, "I didn't want to divert the fans' attention from the game."

A contemporaneous newspaper report compared the attack to the Battle of Port Arthur in which the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the Imperial Russian Navy, triggering the Russo-Japanese War, 37 years prior. Modern writers have continued to note parallels between the attacks, albeit more dispassionately.

Coverage in Japan

News of the attack was first broadcast at 11:30 AM (Japanese Standard Time), however it had already been announced "shortly after" 7 AM (Japanese Standard Time) that Japan had "entered into a situation of war with the United States and Britain in the Western Pacific before dawn". There was no further elaboration or explanation, and the attacks were already finished by that time. The attack on Pearl Harbor was eventually covered in the Japanese press, but press in wartime Japan was heavily censored. One Japanese newspaper, The Asahi Shimbun did report on the attack the day it occurred, and from that point onward their editorials began to back governmental decisions regardless of what they were. The Asahi Shimbun also reported the declaration of war on the United States after the attacks, framing it as an Imperial Order, with most Japanese people taking it that way. In contrast, coverage in The New York Times focused on "the danger to democracy and to the nation" brought on by the Japanese attack.

Coverage elsewhere

The United Kingdom's BBC broadcast news of the attack and that Manila was also under attack.

Aftermath

thumb|A 1942 poster by [[Allen Saalburg issued by the United States Office of War Information]]

The day after the attack, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his famous Day of Infamy speech to a Joint Session of Congress, calling for a formal declaration of war on the Empire of Japan. Congress obliged his request less than an hour later. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, even though the Tripartite Pact did not require it. Congress issued a declaration of war against Germany and Italy later that same day.

The United Kingdom had already been at war with Germany since September 1939 and with Italy since June 1940, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had promised to declare war "within the hour" of a Japanese attack on the United States. Upon learning of the Japanese attacks on Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, Churchill promptly determined there was no need to either wait or further consult the US government and immediately summoned the Japanese ambassador. As a result, the United Kingdom declared war on Japan nine hours before the United States did.

The attack was a shock to all the Allies in the Pacific Theater. Further losses compounded the alarming setback. Japan began the Philippines campaign (1941–1942) hours later (because of the time difference, it was December 8 in the Philippines). Only three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse took place off the coast of Malaya, causing Churchill later to recollect "In all the war I never received a more direct shock. As I turned and twisted in bed the full horror of the news sank in upon me. There were no British or American capital ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific except the American survivors of Pearl Harbor who were hastening back to California. Over this vast expanse of waters, Japan was supreme and we everywhere were weak and naked."

right|thumb|President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt delivering the "Infamy Speech" to Congress, requesting a declaration of war, December 8, 1941]]

Throughout the war, Pearl Harbor was frequently used in American propaganda. The bombing of Pearl Harbor would not persuade controversial Detroit area priest Charles Coughlin to support US entry into World War II, with Coughlin even alleging that Jews had planned the war for their own benefit and had conspired to involve the United States.

One further consequence of the attack on Pearl Harbor and its aftermath (notably the Niʻihau incident) was that Japanese-American residents and citizens were imprisoned in nearby Japanese-American internment camps. Within hours of the attack, hundreds of Japanese-American leaders were rounded up and taken to high-security camps such as Sand Island at the mouth of Honolulu harbor and Kilauea Military Camp on the island of Hawaii. Eventually, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, nearly all who lived on the West Coast, were forced into interior camps, but in Hawaii, where the 150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were interned.

The attack also had international consequences. The Canadian province of British Columbia, bordering the Pacific Ocean, had long had a large population of Japanese immigrants and their Japanese-Canadian descendants. Pre-war tensions were exacerbated by the Pearl Harbor attack, leading to a reaction from the government of Canada. On February 24, 1942, Order-in-Council P.C. no. 1486 was passed under the War Measures Act, allowing for the forced removal of any and all Canadians of Japanese descent from British Columbia, as well as prohibiting them from returning to the province. On March 4, regulations under the act were adopted to expel Japanese Canadians. As a result, 12,000 were interned in interior camps, 2,000 were sent to road camps, and another 2,000 were forced to work in the prairies on sugar beet farms.

In the wake of the attack, fifteen Medals of Honor, fifty-one Navy Crosses, fifty-three Silver Stars, four Navy and Marine Corps Medals, one Distinguished Flying Cross, four Distinguished Service Crosses, one Distinguished Service Medal, and three Bronze Star Medals were awarded to the American servicemen who distinguished themselves in combat at Pearl Harbor. Additionally, a special military award, the Pearl Harbor Commemorative Medal, was later authorized for all military veterans of the attack.

Niʻihau Incident

thumb|Petty Officer Shigenori Nishikaichi's aircraft ten days after it crashed

Japanese planners of the Pearl Harbor attack had determined that some means were required for rescuing fliers whose aircraft were damaged too badly to return to the carriers. The island of Niʻihau, only thirty minutes by air from Pearl Harbor, was designated as the rescue point.

During the second wave, a Zero fighter flown by Petty Officer Shigenori Nishikaichi of Hiryu was damaged in the attack on Wheeler, so he flew to the rescue point. The aircraft was further damaged on his crash landing. Nishikaichi was helped from the wreckage by one of the Native Hawaiians, who, aware of the tension between the United States and Japan, took the pilot's pistol, maps, codes and other documents. The island's residents had no telephones or radios and were completely unaware of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Nishikaichi enlisted the support of three Japanese-American residents in an attempt to recover the documents. During the ensuing struggles, Nishikaichi was killed, and a Hawaiian civilian was wounded; one collaborator committed suicide, and his wife and the third collaborator were sent to prison.

The ease with which the local ethnic Japanese residents had apparently gone to Nishikaichi's assistance was a source of concern for many and tended to support those who believed that local Japanese could not be trusted.

Strategic implications

Rear Admiral Chūichi Hara summed up the Japanese result by saying, "We won a great tactical victory at Pearl Harbor and thereby lost the war."

While the attack accomplished its intended objective, it turned out to be largely unnecessary. Unknown to Yamamoto, who conceived the original plan, the United States Navy had decided as far back as 1935 to abandon "charging" across the Pacific towards the Philippines in response to an outbreak of war (in keeping with the evolution of Plan Orange). The United States instead adopted "Plan Dog" in 1940, which emphasized keeping the IJN out of the eastern Pacific and away from the shipping lanes to Australia, while the United States concentrated on defeating Nazi Germany.

Fortunately for the United States, the American aircraft carriers were untouched; otherwise, the Pacific Fleet's ability to conduct offensive operations would have been crippled for a year or more (given no diversions from the Atlantic Fleet). As it was, the Navy was left with no choice but to rely on carriers and submarines. While six of the eight battleships were repaired and returned to service, their relatively low speed and high fuel consumption limited their deployment, and they served mainly in shore bombardment roles (their only major action being the Battle of Surigao Strait in October 1944). A major flaw in Japanese strategic thinking was their reliance on Kantai Kessen, a belief that the ultimate Pacific battle would be fought by battleships, in keeping with the doctrine of Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan. As a result, Yamamoto (and his successors) hoarded battleships for a "decisive battle" that never happened. According to the US Naval Institute, Admiral Chester Nimitz believed that the US was fortunate to have been caught by a surprise attack, instead of having their Pacific Fleet lured out to sea by the Japanese, since the US fleet at that point could never have brought the Japanese fleet into conventional combat, and if they had done so, "The six Japanese carriers could have stood off in deep water and sunk our ships one by one in deep water. We would have lost all the able officers and crews who eventually manned the ships of our new Pacific fleet."

The Japanese confidence in their ability to win a quick victory meant that they neglected Pearl Harbor's navy repair yards, oil tank farms, submarine base, and old headquarters building. All of these targets were omitted from Genda's list, yet they proved more important than any battleship to the American war effort in the Pacific. The survival of the repair shops and fuel depots allowed Pearl Harbor to maintain logistical support of the Navy, such as the Doolittle Raid, the Battle of the Coral Sea, and the Battle of Midway. It was submarines that immobilized the Imperial Japanese Navy's heavy ships and brought Japan's economy to a virtual standstill by crippling the importation of oil and raw materials: By the end of 1942, the amount of imported raw materials was cut in half "to a disastrous ten million tons", while oil "was almost completely stopped". Lastly, the basement of the Old Administration Building was the home of the cryptanalytic unit that contributed significantly to the Midway ambush and the submarine force's success.

The Japanese failure to follow up their attack on Pearl Harbor with an invasion of Hawaii was also seen as another strategic failure, although experts find it unlikely Japan could have pulled off such a feat. Japan had long seen Hawaii as a part of their planned Pacific empire. As early as 1932 and even 1924, Admiral Seijiro Kawashima and Commander Hironori Mizuno argued that in the event of any war with the United States, Japan needed to take Hawaii, and a failure to do so would doom the war to being prolonged, and keep Japan from being able to win. Before the Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese intelligence officer Kinoaki Matsuo and Japanese Commander Minuro Genda were both in favor of invading Hawaii, believing that such a move was necessary for forcing the US to the negotiating table and winning the war. However, in the wake of discussions following the war games drilling for the Pearl Harbor attack on 5–17 September 1941, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto ultimately decided against attempting an invasion of Hawaii.

Debate on the failure of American intelligence

thumb|The [[USS Arizona Memorial|USS Arizona Memorial]]

There has been debate as to how and why the United States had been caught unaware, and how much and when American officials knew of Japanese plans and related topics. As early as 1924, Chief of United States Air Service Mason Patrick showed concern for military vulnerabilities in the Pacific, having sent General Billy Mitchell on a survey of the Pacific and the East. Patrick called Mitchell's subsequent report, which identified vulnerabilities in Hawaii, a "theoretical treatise on employment of airpower in the Pacific, which, in all probability undoubtedly will be of extreme value some 10 or 15 years hence".

At least two naval war games, one in 1932 and another in 1936, proved that Pearl was vulnerable to such an attack. Admiral James Richardson was removed from command shortly after protesting President Roosevelt's decision to move the bulk of the Pacific fleet to Pearl Harbor. The decisions of military and political leadership to ignore these warnings have contributed to conspiracy theories. Several writers, including decorated World WarII veteran and journalist Robert Stinnett, author of Day of Deceit, and former United States Rear Admiral Robert Alfred Theobald, author of The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor: The Washington Background of the Pearl Harbor Attack, have argued that various parties high in the American and British governments knew of the attack in advance and may even have let it happen or encouraged it in order to force the United States into the war via the so-called "back door". However, this conspiracy theory is rejected by mainstream historians.

The theory that the Americans were warned in advance, however, is supported by statements made by Dick Ellis, a British-Australian intelligence officer for MI6 who helped William J. Donovan set up the Office of Strategic Services. Ellis was deputy to William Stephenson at British Security Co-ordination. In Jesse Fink's 2023 biography of Ellis, The Eagle in the Mirror, Ellis is quoted as saying: "[Stephenson] was convinced from the information that was reaching him that this attack was imminent, and through Jimmy Roosevelt, President Roosevelt's son, he passed this information to the President. Now whether the President at that time had other information which corroborated this... it's impossible to say."

The US Navy's "Washington chief" during the Pearl Harbor attack was Admiral Harold R. Stark, who was the Chief of Naval Operations. While Admiral Kimmel commanded the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Stark was his superior in Washington and was found to be responsible for failing to adequately advise Kimmel of the critical situation before the attack.

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

Books

(first published in German; 2016)

US government documents

Journal articles

Magazine articles

Online sources

External links

Overview (archived) from Naval History and Heritage Command
Account (with Video) on History.com
The Attack on Pearl Harbor on ThoughtCo.
"Remembering Pearl Harbor:The USS Arizona Memorial" — Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan (archived) from National Park Service
Hawaii War Records Depository, Archives & Manuscripts Department, University of Hawaii at Manoa Library
7 December 1941, The Air Force Story on ibiblio.org
The "Magic" Background (PDFs or readable online) on ibiblio.org
The Congressional investigation on ibiblio.org

Archival documents

Records related to the Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) in National Archives Catalog

::116 moving images, 13 photographs and 9 textual records are available online

Accounts

Guarding The United States And Its Outposts, in Guarding the United States and Its Outposts Official US Army history of Pearl Harbor by the United States Army Center of Military History
War comes to Hawaii Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Monday, September 13, 1999

Media

Video of first Newsreel from December 23, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor from British-Pathe
Pearl Harbour – British Movietone News, 1942 from the AP Archive
Historic footage of Pearl Harbor during and immediately following attack on December 7, 1941 on CriticalPast
December 7th (long version) from US National Archives A documentary made by the Office of Strategic Services several years after the attack, which shows (mostly by dramatization) life in Hawaii before, during, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Historical documents

US Navy Report of Japanese Raid on Pearl Harbor from World War II Database
Second World War – USA Declaration of War on Japan from WorldWar-Two.net
Collection of extensive Japanese preparation military documents on ibiblio.org