The United States and Japan had had differences with eachother since 1930 over China. In 1937 Japan had made a goal to conquer China. The United States helped China out by increasing military and finacial aid. This was also for a program to help the military power in the Pacific and to stop the shipment of oil and raw materials to Japan.
Japan didn't have alot of oil or raw material to start off with so they looked at this as a threat. Japan thought that the only way to help this was to seize territories in Southeast Asia with lots of resources. Japan knew that if they did this they would certainly end up going to war with the U.S. The U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was the only thing that would mess up Japan's plan. They felt that the only way to make their plan work out was to surprise attack Pearl Harbor....
What happened on December 7, 1941
It all begun at 6:00 a.m. 181 planes were launched full of torpedo, dive bombers, horizontal bombers and fighters. Some people in the south did realize that there was something different on this Sunday morning.
Before the sun came up. Near the enterance of Pearl Harbor we had found a submarine periscope. We attcked that and then destroyed it. By 7 a.m. the first wave of attcker planes were spotted. The people that spotted them didn't think that they were a big enough deal to actually take action. They just thought that it was some American planes that were supposed to arrive that morning.
At 8:00 a.m. Japanesse first hit American ships and military installations in Oahu. The purpose of the Japanese hitting the planes first were to make sure that the Americans couldn't interfer with the Japanese. Within the first minutes of being attacked all the battleships by Ford Island had been bombed and distroyed. 1,177 crewmen were killed by fire.
On ship had gotten away. The USS Nevada. Thirty minutes after the first wave of carriers another wave came with about 170 planes. They focused on sinking this ship. They eventually did get it to sink.
The attack ended at 10:00 a.m. 21 of our ships has been sunk or damage within about 2 hours. 188 aircrafts distroyed and 159 were left damaged. 2,403 americans died.
This put the U.S. and Japan in a place to go to war against eachother. It brought the U.S. into WWII
I think that the Pearl Harbor attack had a huge part on our country. I think that Japan didn't know what they were doing. I bet that they wish they wouldn't have attacked us.
Comments