Phillip Burnap 5th Period 1/24/12 -1

The Attack on Pearl Harbor

"Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." The well known speech quoted by Coach Harris all the time made by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his speech to Congress, December 7th would indeed live in infamy. Pearl Harbor was one of the most important incident for the United States since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Not only was it taking a toll on our home country, it had resounding consequences across the globe. It has lived on as one of the single most tragic events on United States soil. The United States had received many warnings stating there would be an attack on Pearl Harbor. In October, the Soviets top spy, Richard Sorge, informed Kermlin that Pearl Harbor would be attacked in sixty days. Moscow had then informed him that this had been passed on to the United States. The United States completely ignored all references to an attack on Pearl Harbor. On December 6th at 9:30pm, Roosevelt had read the first thirteen parts of the decoded declaration of war that the Japanese had sent to us. The document stated "This means war." This is when Roosevelt decided that it was time to proclaim war on Japan. Unfortunately, his decision did not reach Pearl Harbor in any helpful form before it was too late. Pearl Harbor has remained an important topic for these very same reasons. Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been blamed for not recognizing the seemingly obvious threats, but recently a different take on the situation has surfaced. Historians have allowed for the possibility that Roosevelt was prevented from taking action by Congress. Some evidence to support this is an account by Harry Hopkins of the President's demeanor after receiving word that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. He described Roosevelt as being unsurprised and greatly relieved. In addition to this, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that FDR became "in a way more serene." By 7:55am Japanese planes filled the sky over Pearl Harbor. The first wave consisted of a flight of Japanese bombers armed with shallow-running torpedoes and bombers armed with armor piercing bombs. Without warning, they opened fire on the seven exposed battleships and the surrounding ships. Simultaneously, the airfields and aircraft on them were assaulted, giving the Japanese near-complete air superiority. By the time the crews had reacted, most gun emplacements useful as anti-aircraft guns were destroyed. Pearl Harbor was defenseless, and the Japanese took full advantage of this. Soon after the first wave had ended, the low roar of a plane's engines was heard again over Oahu. This time, the United States Military was more prepared, but still mostly disabled. Soldiers who were not wounded grabbed whatever they could find and attempted to defend what remained of the Pacific fleet. However, it was to no avail. Only twenty-nine Japanese planes were downed, out of three hundred and fifty-three sent in the attacks. The night of December 7th yielded more casualties, but they were not the result of Japanese bombardment. As men and women scrambled across the island trying to restore order and set up a first line of defense, it became night. Although they had all been told of the Enterprise's planes arrival, someone became nervous when the planes redirected themselves over what was left of Battleship Row and opened fire. Suddenly, the night sky was lit up with tracers from the makeshift anti-air defenses. Only two of the six planes inbound on the first flight landed. Lack of information that hostilities had started with Japan, improper communications, the inability of our ground and shipboard forces to

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recognize friendly planes, or know the proper recognition signals were the contributory causes for the loss of personnel and airplanes of the Enterprise Air Group A report from a U.S. pilot . The death toll at Pearl Harbor by the end of December 7th had risen to two thousand four hundred and three servicemen and women. Another one thousand one hundred and seventy-eight had been wounded. In addition to the grievous loss of human life, wartime materials suffered. The Oklahoma and the Arizona battleships were destroyed beyond repair. The Nevada, California, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Maryland were all heavily damaged, or sunk and raised again. Many other support ships were damaged and destroyed as well. One hundred and eighteen planes were destroyed, and one hundred and sixty two were damaged. The attack did, however, force the United States to recognize the danger to the world that the Axis was. Pearl Harbor sent a shockwave felt throughout the world. It alerted the American people to the fact that neutrality did not make a country exempt from anything and it brought the United States into World War II. In addition to thinking that the Axis leaders had no interest in the Americas, Americans thought that they could separate themselves from the war with a policy of neutrality. As former president Calvin Coolidge said, though, "The business of America is business.". American companies were more than ready to sell weapons and munitions to countries already involved in the war. This caused some understandable resentment towards the United States, as they were arming someone's enemy with every trade. As tensions arose between the United States and the Axis powers, the government eventually halted trade with the Axis. Frustrated with the Americans supporting their enemies but not themselves, German U-Boats began to target merchant ships. Although this resulted in numerous civilian deaths for the United States, it was still not enough to force the isolationists to act. Before the events at Pearl Harbor, America was divided on the issue of war. More of the country was inclined to let Europe sort out its problems by itself, holding painful memories of the First World War However, some people saw the inevitability of war between the United States and the Axis. In the end, Germany would not be content staying in Europe. Although it did so in a tragic way, Pearl Harbor had sufficient gravity to open people's eyes to the reality of the situation. One thing no one realizes is that if the Attack on Pearl Harbor never happened Germany could have grown even more and had a more strategic attack on our home country. Having come so far since as countries in the 1940's, it was profoundly disturbing to see the loss of civilian life and horrible treatment of civilians in what was supposedly "regulated warfare." In World War II, almost half of all casualties were civilians, and of those that did survive, they stood a chance of being forced into a camp, depending on their ethnicity. Although United States civilians remained relatively safe, countries such as Russia lost over seven and a half million of its non-military population. China, as a result of Japanese conquest and 'cleansing', lost upwards of ten million civilians. Many people become too focused on Hitler's concentration camps to realize that genocide was occurring globally. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps for safety from any other threats from the Japanese.. This appalling act by the government was, for the most part, overlooked. People at the time were too focused on revenge to care about other people in internment camps, let alone other Japanese people

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in concentration camps. These people were taken mainly from the west coast, apparently in case Japan invaded. Upon entering, they were searched, and stripped of any cameras or anything that might be construed as a weapon. Personal belongings were often taken, as well. Despite this, it is not often that you will hear a discussion of the American internment camps during a history class in the United States (Except Coach Harris class).

Sources
http://www.history.navy.mil/docs/wwii/pearl/ph17.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor http://www.pearlharbor.org/ http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq66-1.htm