Pearl Harbor Remembered

Today marks 66th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the day remembered by veterans across the nation. Memorials are being held everywhere to honor the fallen and the survivors of this catastrophe which signaled the beginning of WWII. The air raid by the Japanese on the Americans was a devastating loss, even to the innocent. The section of Hawaii, known as Pearl Harbor, was home to the U.S. Pacific fleet, the target of the Japanese.

Japan knew that they could not defeat the United States in a war unless using special tactics, and figured that they'd gamble at a chance of taking out their Pacific fleet and have a chance to be victors before America could recover. A successful air raid, believed by the Japanese, would delay the American entry into the war for months, and hopefully even let the U.S. consider negotiation instead of war. Fighter planes, dive bombers, and torpedo planes were the artillery used in the raid. Using the element of surprise, his targets were not only the ships in the base, but also the nearby airfields and oil storage facilities. The planes were, for the most part undetected until within a short distance of Pearl Harbor. Americans, in the morning before the attack, though an attack was figured to be imminent, were not on combat alert.

Minoru Genda, a Japanese navy officer, was the primary architect of the raid, and his plan unfolded almost perfectly. Keeping the element of surprise and using it to their advantage, the Japanese planes took out most of the American planes on the ground and ships in their ports, also destroying airfields. However, the planes failed to take out the American carriers, which would prove to be forces to be reckoned with. They also failed to destroy the oil storage facilities at Oahu, which would have taken months to restore. Another wave of attacks was supposed to hit, but the Japanese, fearing an American counter-attack, withdrew.

Summing up this historic event, it marked essentially the American entry into World War II. Though the losses were devastating, the United States was able to bounce back from the adversity suffered from the attack on Pearl Harbor.