Pearl Harbor has become a memorial to Americans all over the United
             States. Pearl Harbor is an inlet of the island of Oahu, Hawaii, about 6 miles
             west of Honolulu, and the site of one of the principal naval bases of the United
             States. The government first obtained exclusive use of the inlet and the right to
             maintain a repair and coaling station for ships here in 1887. The harbor was
             surveyed then and later, but improvements were not begun until after the United
             States annexed the Hawaiian Islands in 1898. In 1911 the work of digging a wide
             channel form the sea across the sandbar and coral reef at the mouth of the
             harbor was completed. The channel is about 35 feet deep and the harbor has a
             maximum depth of about 60 ft, making the harbor available to the largest naval
             vessels. (Encarta Encyclopedia, 1994, software)
             The Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 was the
             climax of a decade of rising tension between Japan and the United States.
             Throughout the 1930s, Japan had been steadily encroaching on China, and the
             United States had been trying to contain Japan's expansion. This period of
             growth is known as imperialism. Since America supplied more than half of
             Japan's iron, steel, and oil, Japan was reluctant to push the United States too
             far, but it was also intent on getting control of its own sources of raw materials.
             (Source unknown) In order to accomplish this, Japan joined the Triple Alliance
             with Italy and Germany (communist countries) and began to expand into
             northern Indochina. The United States, in response, placed an embargo on
             aviation, gasoline, scrap metal, steel, and iron. into northern Indochina. After
             Japan's seizure of the rest of Indochina in July 1941, President Franklin D.
             Roosevelt closed the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping and added oil to the
             embargo list. In October 1941 General Hideki Tojo, leader of the Japanese
             pro-war part...