Attack on Pearl Harbor

• 1. Introduction

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  At 7:48 in the morning on the 7th of December 1941, the air above Pearl Harbor filled with the sound of 353 Japanese aircraft dropping out of the Hawaiian sky. Men aboard the American ships woke to alarms, bombs, and gunfire. The famous message that went out from the headquarters of Patrol Wing Two read: "Air raid Pearl Harbor. This is not drill." Within ninety minutes, 2,403 Americans were dead. The naval base on the island of Oahu would never look the same again.

  What brought Japan and the United States to this single violent morning? How did the largest surprise attack ever launched against the American military go undetected, and what did Japan actually hope to gain? The answers stretch back years before the first torpedo hit the water, and the consequences would ripple forward for years after the last fire was put out.

• 2. Decades of Drift Toward War

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  Japan had been watching American expansion in the Pacific with unease since the late 1890s, when the United States annexed Hawaii and the Philippines. Both territories sat close to what Japanese strategists considered their natural sphere of influence. Tensions remained manageable for decades, but Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 began a slow unraveling. Over the following years, Japan pushed into China, setting off the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937.

  By 1940, Japan had invaded French Indochina, aiming to cut off the flow of supplies reaching China. The United States responded by halting shipments of airplanes, machine tools, and aviation gasoline. It stopped short of cutting off oil, partly because Washington worried such a move would be seen as an extreme provocation. Then, in July 1941, following further Japanese advances into Indochina, the United States finally ended oil exports to Japan entirely. The effect was immediate and decisive in Tokyo's thinking. Japan relied heavily on American oil, including for its forces in Manchuria. With that supply cut, Japan turned toward the oil-rich Dutch East Indies as a replacement.

  In mid-1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had moved the Pacific Fleet from San Diego to Hawaii, hoping the presence of a powerful naval force would discourage Japanese aggression. Instead, Japanese planners concluded that any move against British colonies in Southeast Asia would draw the United States into war. That logic pointed toward one conclusion: the Pacific Fleet itself would have to be neutralized first.

• 3. Negotiations and the Hull Note

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  Throughout 1941, Japan and the United States tried to talk their way out of a collision. Japan offered to withdraw from most of China and Indochina after making peace with the Nationalist government and proposed an independent reading of the Tripartite Pact. Washington rejected those terms. Japanese Prime Minister Konoe then proposed a face-to-face meeting with Roosevelt. The American ambassador in Tokyo urged Roosevelt to accept, warning it was the only chance to preserve Konoe's conciliatory government. Roosevelt insisted on a prior agreement. No meeting took place. The Konoe government collapsed the following month when the Japanese military refused to accept any withdrawal from China.

  Japan's final proposal, delivered on the 20th of November 1941, offered to pull out of southern Indochina and halt new attacks in Southeast Asia. In exchange, Japan asked the United States, United Kingdom, and Netherlands to supply a million gallons of aviation fuel, lift their sanctions, and stop aiding China. The American counter-proposal, known as the Hull note and dated the 26th of November, demanded that Japan completely evacuate China without conditions and conclude non-aggression pacts with Pacific powers. On the 26th of November in Japan, the day before the note even arrived, the Japanese naval task force had already left port for Pearl Harbor.

  In 1999, professor Takeo Iguchi of International Christian University in Tokyo discovered documents revealing that the Japanese government had debated whether to notify Washington at all before striking. A December 7th entry in a Japanese war diary read: "Our deceptive diplomacy is steadily proceeding toward success." Iguchi concluded that the army and navy had never wanted to give proper notice of war and clearly prevailed in that debate.

• 4. Yamamoto's Plan

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  Planning for the Pearl Harbor attack began in early 1941 under Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of Japan's Combined Fleet. Yamamoto conceived it as a pre-emptive strike, designed to cripple the Pacific Fleet before it could interfere with Japan's advance into what the Japanese called the "Southern Resource Area." He faced significant resistance from naval headquarters and ultimately threatened to resign his command before winning approval for formal planning and training.

  Detailed work fell mainly to Rear Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka, with assistance from Commander Minoru Genda and Captain Kameto Kuroshima, Yamamoto's Deputy Chief of Staff. The planners studied the 1940 British air attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto closely. Over several months, pilots trained, equipment was modified, and intelligence was gathered. The spy Takeo Yoshikawa provided detailed reports on fleet composition and readiness at Pearl Harbor, meaning the reconnaissance floatplanes launched before the attack were considered unnecessary.

  Emperor Hirohito did not approve the plan until the 5th of November, after the third of four Imperial Conferences held to consider the matter. Final authorization came on the 1st of December, after a majority of Japanese leaders told him the Hull note would destroy the gains of the China campaign and undermine Japan's hold on Korea and Manchuria. The attacking force of six aircraft carriers departed Hittokapu Bay on the 26th of November. The plan called for 408 aircraft in total: 360 for two attack waves and 48 for defensive patrol.

• 5. The Attack Itself

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  A United States Army SCR-270 radar station at Opana Point on Oahu's northern tip detected the approaching first wave. The two operators, Privates George Elliot Jr. and Joseph Lockard, reported an unusually large target to Lieutenant Kermit A. Tyler at the Intercept Center near Pearl Harbor. Tyler assumed the blip was the scheduled arrival of six B-17 bombers from California. The operators had never seen a formation as large on radar but did not tell Tyler the size, and Tyler could not explain his reasoning to them for security reasons.

  Commander Mitsuo Fuchida led the first attack wave of 183 airplanes. Torpedo bombers led the strike, exploiting the first moments of surprise to hit the battleships. At the same time, dive bombers attacked airfields across Oahu, beginning with Hickam Field and Wheeler Field. On the ground, ammunition lockers were locked, aircraft were parked wingtip to wingtip to guard against sabotage, and most guns sat unmanned. Of 402 American aircraft in Hawaii, 188 were destroyed and 159 damaged, with 155 of those on the ground.

  Aboard the ships, individual acts of resistance stood out against the chaos. Ensign Joseph Taussig Jr. commanded his ship's antiaircraft guns and stayed at his post despite being severely wounded. Lieutenant Commander F. J. Thomas got the battleship Nevada underway before she was ordered aground at 9:10 that morning to avoid blocking the harbor entrance. One destroyer got to sea with only four ensigns in command, none with more than a year of sea service, and operated for 36 hours before her commanding officer could get back aboard.

  Among the civilian casualties were nine Honolulu Fire Department firefighters who responded to Hickam Field during the bombing. Fireman Harry Tuck Lee Pang of Engine 6 was killed by machine-gun fire from a Japanese plane. The three firefighters who died did not receive their Purple Hearts until the 7th of December 1984, the 43rd anniversary of the attack.

• 6. The Ships and the Toll

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  Of the eight battleships at Pearl Harbor, four were sunk. Arizona suffered the worst fate: a modified 16-inch shell detonated her forward magazine, killing 1,177 men. Nearly half of all American fatalities at Pearl Harbor died in that single explosion. Author Craig Nelson noted that the vast majority of sailors killed were junior enlisted personnel, most of them around 17 or 18 years old.

  Oklahoma capsized after taking four torpedoes, the last two striking above her belt armor. West Virginia was hit by seven torpedoes, the seventh tearing away her rudder. Nevada, already damaged, tried to exit the harbor and was deliberately beached to prevent her from sinking in the channel. Pennsylvania sat in dry dock and was struck by a single bomb.

  Total American losses came to 2,403 killed and 1,178 wounded across all branches. Japanese losses were far smaller: 29 aircraft, five midget submarines, and 130 personnel. In total, 18 ships were sunk or run aground. The Japanese also destroyed more than 180 American aircraft.

  All but the Arizona and the target ship Utah proved salvageable. Captain Homer N. Wallin led the formal salvage operation. Divers and civilian contractors worked in difficult conditions, patching hulls and pumping out flooded compartments. Intensive salvage operations eventually totaled around 20,000 man-hours underwater. Nevada proved particularly difficult; two men working inside her died after inhaling poisonous gases trapped in the ship's interior. Five of the repaired battleships would later fight at the Battle of Surigao Strait in October 1944.

• 7. The Third Wave That Never Came

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  After the second wave withdrew, several Japanese junior officers, including Fuchida and Genda, reportedly urged Admiral Nagumo to order a third strike. The captains of all five other carriers in the task force said they were ready to launch. Nagumo decided against it.

  His reasons were practical. American anti-aircraft fire had improved markedly during the second wave, and two-thirds of Japan's losses came in that second attack. Nagumo did not know where the three absent American carriers were. A third wave would require recovery of the first two waves before any aircraft could be relaunched, meaning planes would need to land at night. Only the Royal Navy had developed night carrier techniques at that point. The task force's fuel also limited how long it could remain north of Pearl Harbor.

  The consequences of that decision proved enormous. Pearl Harbor's oil tank farms, submarine base, and repair facilities were left untouched. Admiral Chester Nimitz later told Congress that destroying those facilities would have prolonged the war by roughly two years. Yamamoto himself later stated categorically that not ordering a third strike had been a great mistake. The submarine base in particular was critical: American submarines went on to cripple Japan's ability to import oil and raw materials, cutting the amount of imported raw materials roughly in half by the end of 1942.

• 8. A World Reshaped

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  President Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress on the 8th of December, calling the 7th of December 1941 "a date which will live in infamy." Congress declared war on Japan in less than an hour. On the 11th of December, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, without any formal obligation to do so under the Tripartite Pact. Congress responded with declarations of war against both that same day.

  British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had promised to declare war on Japan within the hour of a Japanese attack on the United States. He did not wait; upon learning of the attacks on Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, he summoned the Japanese ambassador immediately. Britain declared war on Japan nine hours before the United States did. Three days after Pearl Harbor, Japanese aircraft sank the British warships Prince of Wales and Repulse off the coast of Malaya. Churchill later wrote that he never received a more direct shock during the entire war.

  Within hours of the attack, hundreds of Japanese-American leaders were rounded up and sent to camps including Sand Island at the mouth of Honolulu harbor. Eventually more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, nearly all from the West Coast, were forced into interior camps. In Hawaii, where Japanese Americans made up more than one-third of the population, only between 1,200 and 1,800 were interned. In Canada, Order-in-Council P.C. no. 1486, passed on the 24th of February 1942, authorized the forced removal of all people of Japanese descent from British Columbia. Some 12,000 were interned in interior camps, 2,000 sent to road camps, and another 2,000 compelled to work on sugar beet farms in the prairies.

  Rear Admiral Chuichi Hara's assessment of Pearl Harbor cut to its strategic core: "We won a great tactical victory at Pearl Harbor and thereby lost the war." The unscathed oil tanks and repair yards kept the Pacific Fleet operational through the Doolittle Raid and the Battle of Midway. The cryptanalytic unit in the basement of the Old Administration Building contributed directly to the Midway ambush. The three aircraft carriers that had been at sea on December 7th remained the nucleus of American offensive power in the Pacific for years to come.