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The Japanese Navy sent four aircraft carriers on a secret mission to attack the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu. The planes achieved surprise by approaching from low over the ocean. Although the US suspected that Japan was about to launch an offensive, they did not decipher the key documents that would have told them where the attack would be, at least until it was too late.

On the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, the attacking planes attempted to knock out most of the ships of the US fleet docked at Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese planned to attack Pearl Harbor almost immediately after a declaration of war was delivered to the US. However, the Japanese consulate officials in Washington ran behind schedule and the attack took place before war was declared. In any case, it would have been a "sneak attack" or "surprise attack" and the US forces were almost completely unprepared for it. President Roosevelt addressed Congress the following day and war was declared on Japan.

The Attack

The Japanese sent their carrier planes into Pearl Harbor dropping bombs, strafing, and releasing torpedoes into the water. The attacks killed 2463 soldiers, sailors, and civilians. Of those, 1177 of those killed were the crew on the battleship USS Arizona which was hit in an ammunition magazine and exploded, then capsized, flipping over and sinking to the bottom of the harbor.

The US might have been better prepared, and two incidents should have indicated that an attack was under way. Just hours before the attack, a US destroyer attacked and sank a midget submarine in the waters near Oahu. The US radar stations reported contacts which were dismissed as US B-17's being ferried to the air station. The Japanese sank several US warships. But by missing the two US aircraft carriers in Hawaii, the Japanese became the victims of their own plans. Six months after Pearl Harbor, 4 Japanese carriers were sunk while attacking again at the Battle of Midway.

The Intent

The Japanese sought to destroy the US fleet so that it could not oppose their conquests in the Pacific until it was too late, with major forces having occupied the territories as they had in China and Indochina. The US had been enacting an embargo against Japan for its attacks on China (beginning in 1937), and Japan needed raw materials from abroad to use in their conquests of the western Pacific and East Asia.

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13y ago

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