Pearl Harbor

• 1. Introduction

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  Pearl Harbor sits on the western edge of Oahu, Hawaii, a lagoon harbor that for much of its early history was too shallow for large ships. The Hawaiians called it Wai Momi, meaning "Waters of Pearl," and before any foreign navy arrived, they regarded its waters as the home of the shark goddess Kaahupahau and her brother Kahiuka. What transformed a sacred lagoon into the headquarters of the most powerful naval fleet in the Pacific? And how did a single Sunday morning in December 1941 pull the United States into the largest conflict in human history? Those questions run through every chapter of Pearl Harbor's story, from the first American missionaries who set foot on Oahu in the 1820s to the Japanese prime minister who stood beside a US president at the harbor's edge in December 2016.

• 2. Waters of Pearl

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  A Hawaiian chief named Keaunui, head of the powerful Ewa chiefs, is credited in tradition with cutting a navigable channel near what later became known as the Puuloa saltworks. Before his work, the estuary already had a natural outlet, but Keaunui deepened and widened it enough to make it accessible to navigation, and it became known as "Pearl River." The Hawaiians also knew this place as Puuloa, meaning "long hill." Even after that channel was opened, the shallow entrance remained a practical barrier for much of the nineteenth century. Large ships could not enter, and the deep, protected waters of the inner harbor went largely unused for decades. The shallow entrance would remain a formidable obstacle well into the era when American naval officers began eyeing Hawaii as a strategic foothold in the Pacific.

• 3. American Ambitions in the Pacific

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  As early as 1820, the United States had appointed an "Agent of the United States for Commerce and Seamen" to look after American business in the Port of Honolulu. Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, American warships called regularly at Honolulu, and their commanding officers often carried letters from the US Government offering advice on Hawaiian governmental affairs. By 1841, the Honolulu newspaper Polynesian was already advocating that the United States establish a naval base in Hawaii, citing the need to protect American citizens working in the whaling industry. The British Hawaiian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Robert Crichton Wyllie, remarked in 1840 that he believed "the tide of events rushes on to annexation to the United States." After the Civil War and the American purchase of Alaska, Pacific trade expanded further. In 1865, the North Pacific Squadron was formed, and in the following year a vessel was assigned to cruise among the Hawaiian Islands, surveying the Northwestern chain in the direction of Japan. That survey led directly to the United States claiming Midway Island. By November 1867, the Secretary of the Navy could note that 42 American flags flew over ships in Honolulu harbor compared to only six flags of other nations. Congress then approved $50,000 on the 1st of March 1869 to deepen the approaches to Midway, which the Secretary had praised as surpassing even Honolulu's harbor.

• 4. The Treaties That Opened the Harbor

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  When King Lunalilo died in 1873, negotiations were already underway for Hawaii to cede Pearl Harbor in exchange for duty-free sugar exports to the United States. The election of King Kalakaua in March 1874 brought a riot that prompted the landing of sailors from USS Tuscarora. A British warship also put a token force ashore. During Kalakaua's reign, the United States was eventually granted the exclusive right to enter Pearl Harbor and establish a coaling and repair station. The United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom signed the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, supplemented by a Convention on the 6th of December 1884, and the treaty was ratified in 1887. On the 20th of January 1887, the United States Senate formally granted the Navy the exclusive right to maintain a coaling and repair station at Pearl Harbor; the US took possession on the 9th of November that year. Despite holding that right, the United States did not fortify Pearl Harbor as a naval base for another sixty years, because the shallow entrance still blocked the use of the deep inner harbor. It was the Spanish-American War of 1898, combined with the desire for a permanent American presence in the Pacific, that finally pushed the decision forward.

• 5. The 7th of December 1941

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  Following the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the United States Navy established a base on Oahu in 1899. By 1941, Pearl Harbor was the headquarters of the US Pacific Fleet. American commanders at the time believed that if Japan struck, the target would be either Wake Island or the Philippines. There was no meaningful plan for the air defense of Hawaii. On the 7th of December 1941, Imperial Japanese Navy airplanes and midget submarines attacked the base. The attack drew the United States into World War II. Military analysts later noted that had the Pacific Fleet sortied on war warnings and been at sea that morning, the major ships would likely have been sunk in deep water, making salvage impossible. In the attack's immediate aftermath, two American commanders bore the weight of the disaster: Lt. Gen. Walter Short and Adm. Husband Kimmel were both demoted of their full ranks. Both men spent years afterward seeking to restore their reputations and full military standing.

• 6. After the War

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  Pearl Harbor remained one of the two main bases for the US Pacific Fleet after World War II, alongside Naval Base San Diego. In 2010, the Navy and Air Force merged their two nearby installations, combining Pearl Harbor with Hickam Air Force Base to create Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. In December 2016, on the 75th anniversary of the attack, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a joint visit to Pearl Harbor with US President Barack Obama. It was the first official visit by a sitting Japanese leader to the site. The harbor also carries an environmental legacy: on the 14th of October 1992, the US Environmental Protection Agency added the Pearl Harbor Naval Complex to the National Priorities List as a Superfund site. On the 4th of December 2019, a US Navy sailor killed two civilian workers and wounded another at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard before shooting himself, a reminder that the base remains an active, working installation with its own ongoing history.