from Pearl Harbor Tours,

It was a sunny Sunday morning when, on December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Air Force launched planes from 6 Japanese aircraft carriers North of Oahu, Hawai’i. Their primary goal was to destroy the US Fleet which was anchored and vulnerable at Pearl Harbor. Their attack, although it damaged many US planes and ships, was not strategically successful for the Japanese, and did little to help achieve their long-term war goals. Learn some facts about Pearl Harbor

Starting just minutes before 8:00 in the morning and lasting nearly 2 hours, many of the battleships anchored on battleship row, several other navy service vessels in the harbor – as well as hundreds of planes parked “tip-to-tip” on the 8 airfields across Oahu were damaged or destroyed. Luckily the civilian population and historic sites in Honolulu were largely spared.

This single act caused public opinion to change from an “America First”, isolationist mentality to a fully committed international ally, ready to show it’s industrial might. The next day President Franklin Roosevelt asked congress for a Declaration of War and within days Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. World War 2 had become truly global.

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