Pearl Harbor

US Marine dive bombers over the Pacific Ocean after Japan's attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, USA, in 1941.

US Pacific naval base on Oahu island, Hawaii, USA, the scene of a Japanese aerial attack on 7 December 1941, which brought the USA into World War II. The attack took place while Japanese envoys were holding so-called peace talks in Washington. More than 2,000 members of the US armed forces were killed, and a large part of the US Pacific fleet was destroyed or damaged.

The local commanders Admiral Kimmel and Lt-Gen Short were relieved of their posts and held responsible for the fact that the base was totally unprepared at the time of the attack, but recent information indicates that warnings of the attack given to the USA (by British intelligence and others) were withheld from Kimmel and Short by President Franklin D Roosevelt. US public opinion was very much against entering the war, and Roosevelt wanted an excuse to change popular sentiments and take the USA into the war. The Japanese, angered by US embargoes of oil and other war material and convinced that US entry into the war was inevitable, had hoped to force US concessions. Instead, the attack galvanized public opinion and raised anti-Japanese sentiment to fever pitch; war was declared shortly thereafter.

Casualties The attack was carried out by a large Japanese naval force under Vice Admiral Nagumo; the force included six carriers and about 360 aircraft. Three Japanese midget submarines also took part, and one penetrated the harbour defences, but all were sunk. Four US battleships were sunk, three severely damaged, and almost 200 aircraft were destroyed on the ground. The dockyard and fuel installations escaped serious damage, along with two carriers, 13 cruisers, and 24 destroyers which were at sea. Combined US service casualties were 3,303 killed or missing and 1,272 wounded; they are commemorated by the USS Arizona National Memorial, which stands above the remains of the battleship.

History of the base Situated on the south coast of Oahu, Pearl Harbor is a natural inlet consisting of three main arms, the West, Middle, and East Lochs, separated by peninsulas. Its narrow entrance is only 500 m/1,640 ft wide. The inlet forms one of the few safe anchorages in the islands and, in 1887, the USA made an agreement with the Hawaiian monarchy to use it as a naval base. A series of installations for the various arms of the service now occupy the shores of the harbour, Ford Island within it, and the adjacent hills; the channels have been dredged to a depth of 11 m/35 ft. The naval shipyard and Hickam Air Force Base lie on the east side, almost adjacent to Honolulu. Today Pearl Harbor is a submarine base, supply centre, and naval shipyard.

Around 800 survivors gathered in Honolulu in December 2001 for the 60th anniversary of the attack. The ceremony was also attended by 20 survivors of the sunken battleship USS Arizona, on which 1,177 crew members died.