Pearl Harbor and US Entry in WWII
The United States fleet in the Pacific was anchored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, while most American sailors were still asleep in their bunks, Japanese planes from aircraft carriers flew over Pearl Harbor bombing every ship in sight. The "surprise" attack lasted less than a few hours. In that time though, 2,400 Americans were killed, with 1,100 deaths solely from the battleship Arizona, and almost 1,200 were wounded. Besides that, 20 warships were sunk or severely damaged, and approximately 150 airplanes were destroyed. The American public was stunned by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but high government officials were only a bit surprised. After cracking the Japanese code sent through encryption over Japanese communications, the United States government had inklings of a Japanese attack in the Pacific. Their ideas though, mostly pointed to violence erupting in the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, and Malaya. When the word reached them that nearly all of the entire Pacific fleet had been exterminated in Pearl Harbor with the exception of three battleships, they received a metaphorical "punch in the gut." This "unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan," as President Roosevelt put it, drew
the earnest hope of the Japanese Government to adjust Japanese-American relations and to preserve and promote the peace of the Pacific through cooperation with the American Government has finally been lost. " He urged the Congress to declare war on Japan, which they did, entering the United States into World War II. "The proposals which were presented by the Japanese Ambassador. " The Japanese, unsatisfied by the American counter-proposal, refused. An hour after the attack, the United States government received a transmission from the Japanese government stating:"Obviously it is the intention of the American Government to conspire with Great Britain and other countries to obstruct Japan's efforts toward the establishment of peace. In October of 1941, a final agreement was attempted by the Japanese to solve the problem of increasing aggression between the two nations over the problem of the United States embargo on oil. If Pearl Harbor never had happened, in this author's opinion, it is a certainty that millions of American lives would never have been lost. the diplomatic part of our relations with Japan was virtually over. " The next day, due to the attacks on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt made his speech stating that December 7th will forever be "a date that will live in infamy.
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