December 7, 1941: It was a fateful day, the
start of World War II for the United States, and a turning point in
our history.
Pearl Harbor, on the Island of O'ahu, Hawaii, (then a territory of
the United States) was attacked by the Japanese Imperial Navy, at
approximately 8:00 a.m., Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. The surprise
attack was conceived by Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, with a
strking force of 353 Japanese aircraft led by Commander Mitsuo Fuchida.
The attack was launched from six heavy aircraft carriers accompanied
by 24 supporting vessels. A separate group of submarines was to sink
any American warships which escaped the Japanese carrier force. The
goal: Cripple U.S. naval might in the Pacific, allowing Japan to seize
control of the area.
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At dawn on December 7, the Japanese task force reached a point slightly
more than 200 miles north of Oahu. At 6:00 a.m., the six carriers
launched a first wave of 181 planes composed of torpedo bombers, dive
bombers, horizontal bombers and fighters. Even as they flew south,
some elements of U.S. forces on Oahu realized there was something
different about this Sunday morning. In the hours before dawn, U.S.
Navy vessels spotted an unidentified submarine periscope near the
entrance to Pearl Harbor. It was attacked and reported sunk by the
destroyer USS Ward (DD-139) and a patrol plane.
At 7:00 a.m., an alert operator of an Army radar station at Opana
spotted the approaching first wave of the attack force. The officers
to whom those reports were relayed did not consider them significant
enough to take action. The report of the submarine sinking was handled
routinely, and the radar sighting was passed off as an approaching
group of American planes due to arrive that morning.
The Japanese aircraft achieved complete surprise when they hit American
ships and military installations on Oahu shortly before 8:00 a.m.,
attacking military airfields at the same time they hit the fleet anchored
in Pearl Harbor. The Navy air bases at Ford Island and Kaneohe Bay,
the Marine airfield at Ewa and the Army Air Corps fields at Bellows,
Wheeler and Hickam were all bombed and strafed. The purpose of the
simultaneous attacks was to destroy the American planes before they
could rise to intercept the Japanese.
Of the 100 ships in Pearl Harbor, the primary targets were the eight
battleships anchored there. Seven were moored on Battleship Row along
the southeast shore of Ford Island while the USS Pennsylvania (BB-38)
lay in drydock across the channel. Within the first minutes of the
attack all the battleships adjacent to Ford Island had taken bomb
and/or torpedo hits. The USS West Virginia (BB-48) sank quickly. The
USS Oklahoma (BB-37) turned turtle and sank. At about 8:10 a.m., the
USS Arizona (BB-39)
was mortally wounded by an armorpiercing bomb which ignited the ship's
forward ammunition magazine. The resulting explosion and fire killed
1,177 crewmen, the greatest loss of life on any ship that day and
about half the total number of Americans killed. The USS California
(BB-44), USS Maryland (BB-46), USS Tennessee (BB-43) and USS Nevada
(BB-36) also suffered varying degrees of damage in the first half
hour of the raid.
There was a short lull in attack at about 8:30 a.m. At that time the
USS Nevada, despite her wounds, managed to get underway and move down
the channel toward the open sea. Before she could clear the harbor,
a second wave of 170 Japanese planes, launched 30 minutes after the
first, appeared over the harbor. They concentrated their attacks on
the moving battleship, hoping to sink her in the channel and block
the narrow entrance to Pearl Harbor. On orders from the harbor control
tower, the Nevada beached herself at Hospital Point and the channel
remained clear.
When the attack ended shortly before 10:00 a.m., less than two hours
after it began, the American forces has paid a fearful price. Twenty-one
ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet were sunk or damaged. Aircraft losses
were 188 destroyed and 159 damaged, the majority hit before they had
a chance to take off. There were a total of 2,403 American casualties,
including 68 civilians, most of them killed by improperly fused anti-aircraft
shells landing in Honolulu. There were 1,178 military and civilian
wounded.
Japanese losses were comparatively light. Twenty-nine planes, less
than 10 percent of the attacking force, failed to return to their
carriers. The Japanese success was overwhelming, but not complete;
as fate would have it, U.S. aircraft carriers that were to be primary
targets in the attack were absent from the harbor. The Japanese also
failed to damage the Pearl Harbor Naval Base's shoreside facilities;
these facilities played an important role in the Allied victory in
World War II.
Eventually, all but three of the ships sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor
were repaired: the USS Arizona (too badly damaged to be salvaged),
the USS Oklahoma (raised but considered to be too old to be worth
repairing), and the USS Utah (also considered obsolete). Most importantly,
the shock and anger caused by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor
united a divided nation and was translated into a wholehearted American
commitment to victory in World War II. |
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