"A date which will live in infamy..."- President Roosevelt. On December 7, 1941 at 7:55 a.m. the Japanese attacked Hawaii which was a U.S. Naval base, not a state. The Japanese sent the United States a 14 part message the day before Pearl Harbor happened and the U.S. code-breaking service got 13 parts of it. Even though we got through the message is was thought that they were going to attack a different place in Southeast Asia, not a big naval base belonging to the U.S. Since it was a Sunday morning most people were still sleeping on the base; only a few were on duty when this massive attack happened.
This attack happened in two waves, the first being at 7:55 a.m. with 183 Japanese planes. Then, about one hour later, 167 more planes arrived. There were 188 pieces of aircraft, three destroyers, eight U.S. Navy battleships, three cruisers, and one minelayer that were sunk or damaged because of the attacks. That was for the U.S., now the Japanese didn't suffer that much only 29 out of their 350 aircraft were gone. The deaths were 2,403 and 68 of those were civilians. Then there were still others that were injured, 1,178 were wounded. There were four U.S. Naval Battleships that were completely destroyed, the USS Arizona, the USS Nevada, the USS Oklahoma, and the USS West Virginia. The USS Arizona is under the Peal Harbor Memorial today, as shown in the picture below.
The effects of this attack are pretty obvious, this was the reason why the United States entered WWII. There were, however, some people that still didn't want to enter the war. I, personally, don't understand that. This huge attack just happened on a big U.S. Naval base and you just want to sit back and not get involved? NO! Luckily the next day we declared war on Japan and they found out that even though they hurt us, we still had a lot more power left. I think that if we had sat back then they would've kept attacking us and it would've been like we were sitting ducks.
Breann Lehr
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