Pearl Harbor

Introduction

This report will show that the attack on the U.S. in the hands of the Japanese air force could have been avoided. In other words, that the U.S. knew that there could be an attack by Nipponese forces and could have prevented, but it was not because it was the perfect excuse to enter World War II (Tanaka, 50).

At 7:45 AM, US Navy personnel of the Pacific fleet docked in the harbor heard a shattering sound overhead as bombs fell from the sky. Japanese planes came in two waves, first bombing the battleships in the harbor, then the supporting cruisers and destroyers, followed by the military airfields near the shore. By 9:55 that morning 2,390 people were dead, 1178 more were wounded, and the Pacific fleet was crippled with 21 ships sunk, beached, or damaged, and 323 airplanes damaged or destroyed.

That Monday President Franklin D. Roosevelt stood before Congress, declared December 7, 1941 "a date that will live in infamy," and asked for a Declaration of War against Japan. The following day, Germany and Italy, Japan's allies, declared war on the United States, and Americans were plunged into World War II, shouting the slogan "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Summary

For more than sixty years now, "Pearl Harbor" has been one of the most famous place names in United States history. On Sunday, December 7, 1941, one of the most carefully planned and devastating military attacks ever made on a nation at peace occurred at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, in what was then the US Territory of Hawaii. Most people in the continental United States had never heard of Pearl Harbor before that time.

U.S. and Japan, some years ago, had some problems between them. It all started in the 20's when Japan faced the crisis in which European countries, after the First World War began to dominate the market in East Asia; region that the U.S. wanted to dominate. U.S, through a series of treaties limited the influence of the country of the rising sun on China also reduced its navy. In addition, together with the U.S., some Western European countries put an embargo on Japan and introduced taxes on their products (Lord, 34).

Historical Context

In the nineteenth century, Pearl Harbor, six miles west of Honolulu on the south coast of Oahu, was a beautiful inlet. It was though fifty to sixty feet deep, it was useless for navigation since it was landlocked, being separated from the ocean by a sandbar ten feet wide. In 1887, however, the United States saw the possibilities of the site and negotiated with Hawaii's King Kamehameha for exclusive rights to develop a repair and cooling station in the inlet. American engineers removed the bar, and the inlet became a modest working harbor. In 1898, when the US annexed Hawaii, Pearl Harbor was envisioned as a naval base. Engineers dredged the harbor entrance, scraping away sandbar and coral reef to a depth of thirty-five feet, and finally completed the work in 1911.

In 1939, as war encompassed Europe and Japan threatened ...