Pearl Harbor Assigned Blog

[7th Natalie]

• The Japanese fleet consisted of 353 planes that attacked in two waves
• The Japanese only attacked the ships at Pearl Harbor Naval base and airplanes at Hickman Airfield, leaving surrounding areas such as repair facilities, the submarine base and fuel oil storages areas unharmed
• The primary target for the Japanese were the US aircraft carriers and were not there at the base at the time of the attack
• They cancelled a second planned attack because of this
• 4 of the American battleships in "battleship row" were sunk and another was capsized and a sixth run aground
• 11 other ships were sunk and 188 planes were destroyed
• 2,343 soldiers were killed, 1,272 were wounded, and another 960 are still left missing
• Only 28 Japanese planes were shot down and 5 midget submarines sunk
• America entered the war the next day after Franklin Delanor Roosevelt gave his "Day of Infamy" speech to congress
• The US declared war on Germany and Italy on December 11, after they declared war on the US
• The dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped bring an end to WWII in 1945
• There was a floating National Monument erected on the hull of the sunken Arizona in 1962
• There is a conspiracy theory that FDR provoked the Japanese attack in order to sway American opinion and make is possible for the US to enter the war
• There is another conspiracy saying that FDR knew that the Japanese were going to be bombing Pearl Harbor but let it happen to enter the war and bring us out of the Great Depression
• The attack was at 7:55 am on Sunday, December 7th, 1941