When December 7, 1941, dawned in Hawaii, no one expected that by the end of the day, the U.S. Pacific Fleet would lie in ruins and the United States would be at war. That morning, in just over an hour and a half, the planes of the Japanese First Carrier Striking Force sank or severely damaged 18 American warships lying at anchor at the Pearl Harbor naval base on the island of Oahu. This single air raid on a single morning altered the history of the United States and forever changed the way Americans thought about the world.
The Attack on Pearl Harbor
examines the history leading up to the attack, the specifics of the raid itself, and the consequences of what then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt called ‘a date which will live in infamy’.