Attack on Pearl Harbor

Through the late 1930s Japan waged a brutal war in China. The United States aided China and gradually cut off the oil, steel, and other materials Japan’s military depended on, while demanding that Japan withdraw from China. Japan joined the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940 and moved into French Indochina. After the United States imposed a full embargo and froze Japanese assets, negotiations stalled.

Facing severe shortages, unwilling to leave China, and convinced that American officials opposed further talks, Japan’s leaders decided to strike first. Their planners hoped to destroy enough battleships and aircraft carriers to cripple American naval power while Japan seized resource-rich territories in Southeast Asia. U.S. leaders, still hoping for a settlement and doubting Japan could attack American territory, were caught by surprise.

Japanese aircraft struck the fleet at anchor. The battleship USS Arizona was sunk with the loss of 1,177 crew members; more than 900 of them remain entombed in the ship. Japan also attacked Hong Kong, the Philippines, and other American and European holdings across the Pacific.

Late that afternoon, Roosevelt dictated his request for a declaration of war, revising the first line from “a date which will live in world history” to “a date which will live in infamy.” He delivered it to a joint session of Congress at 12:30 p.m. on December 8. The Senate voted unanimously for war; in the House, only Jeannette Rankin of Montana voted no. Roosevelt signed the declaration that afternoon.

Germany and Italy, Japan’s allies, declared war on the United States on December 11, and within a week the United States was at war with all the Axis powers. The attack united Americans behind a massive mobilization. It also fed fear and suspicion of Japanese Americans that led, ten weeks later, to Executive Order 9066 and their mass incarceration.

Pearl Harbor became a lasting symbol of national vulnerability and of the dangers of surprise attack, invoked again after the September 11 attacks in 2001. The USS Arizona Memorial, completed in 1961 and dedicated in 1962, honors all the military personnel killed in the attack.