Pearl Harbor

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise airstrike against the United States' naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by the Japanese navy, on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, resulting in the United States becoming a participant in World War II. The Japanese intended that the attack would be a preventive action to remove the US Pacific Fleet as a factor in the war Japan was about to wage against Britain, France, the United States, and the remaining Allies. The attack consisted of two aerial attack waves, totaling 353[5] aircraft. These were launched from six Japanese aircraft carriers.

The attack wrecked two U.S. Navy battleships, one minelayer, and two destroyers beyond repair; it destroyed 188 aircraft; and personnel losses were 2,388 killed and 1,178 wounded.[citation needed] Damaged warships included three cruisers, a destroyer, and six battleships (one, the Nevada, was deliberately grounded and was later refloated and repaired; two were sunk at their berths and were later raised, repaired, and eventually restored to service). Vital fuel storage, shipyard, maintenance, and headquarters facilities were not hit by the strike. Japanese losses were minimal, with only 29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost; also, the Japanese lost 65 servicemen.

The intent of the strike was to protect Imperial Japan's advance into Malaya and the Dutch East Indies вЂ" for their natural resources such as oil and rubber вЂ" by neutralizing the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Both the U.S. and Japan had long-standing contingency plans for war in the Pacific, continuously updated as tension between the two countries steadily increased during the 1930s. Japan's expansion into Manchuria and French Indochina were greeted with steadily increasing levels of embargoes and sanctions by the United States and others. In 1940, under the Export Control Act, the U.S. halted shipments of airplanes, parts, machine tools, and aviation gasoline, which Japan saw as an unfriendly act.[6] Nevertheless, the U.S. continued to export oil to Japan, in part because it was understood in Washington cutting off oil exports would be an extreme step, given Japanese dependence on U.S. oil exports,[7][8] likely to be taken as a provocation by Japan. In the summer of