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myOtaku.com: moldy headbread


Sunday, December 7, 2003

In rememberance
Today is December 7, 2003. 62 years ago, was "A date which will live in infamy."

The Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor (on the Hawaiian island of Oahu), December 7, 1941, was the climax of a decade of rising tension between Japan and the United States. Throughout the 1930s, Japan had been steadily encroaching on China, and the United States had been trying to contain Japan's expansion. Since America supplied more than half of Japan's iron, steel, and oil, Japan was reluctant to push the United States too far, but it was also intent on getting control of its own sources of raw materials. On September 27, 1940, Japan joined the Triple Alliance with Italy and Germany and began to expand into northern Indochina. The United States, in response, placed an embargo on aviation gasoline, scrap metal, steel, and iron. After Japan's seizure of the rest of Indochina in July 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping and added oil to the embargo list. In October 1941 Gen. Hideki Tojo, leader of the Japanese pro-war party, became premier.

Negotiations seeking a peaceful settlement went on in Washington, but both sides seem to have decided that war was inevitable. On November 25, 1941, though continuing the discussions, the Japanese dispatched aircraft carriers eastward toward Hawaii and began massing troops on the Malayan border. American military leaders, expecting a Japanese attack on Malaya, gave only general warnings to U.S. forces in Pearl Harbor. Adm. Husband E. Kimmel and Gen. Walter C. Short, in command on Oahu, took few precautions; there was no effective air patrol, and neither ships nor planes were safely dispersed.

Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor at 7:55 a.m., December 7; a second wave hit an hour later. By the time the planes returned to their carriers at 9:45, most of the American planes on Oahu were wrecked; eight battleships, three destroyers, and three cruisers had been put out of action; and two battleships, Oklahoma and Arizona, were utterly destroyed. A total of 2,323 U.S. servicemen had been killed. The next day President Roosevelt spoke for the American people when, before a joint session of Congress, he proclaimed December 7 a "date which will live in infamy." With only one dissent, Congress granted Roosevelt's request to recognize the state of war that existed between the United States and Japan. With that vote, America entered World War II.

PERSONNEL KILLED
Navy 2001
Marine Corps 109
Army 231
Civilian 54


PERSONNEL WOUNDED
Navy 710
Marine Corps 69
Army 364
Civilian 35


SHIPS
Sunk or beached 12
Damaged 9


AIRCRAFT
Destroyed 164
Damaged 159



"Lest we forget"
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