November 11, 2008
History Paper 2
Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise strike by the Japanese navy against the United States. As a result of this, the United States became involved in World War II. Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, Sunday morning. Before the attack, Americans ignored the war and continued sending the British ships and tanks while their enemies were making bombs. Americans had cut off the Japanese oil supply. They only had enough for eighteen months. This resulted in a massive sudden strike; the Japanese annihilated the Pacific fleet in a single attack at Pearl Harbor. Over 2,400 Americans were killed and over 1,000 were wounded. The Japanese plan was to send out radio messages for Americans to intercept. They wanted to make sure to mention Hawaii in all the clutter, to confuse them. So, by the time the Americans decoded the message it would be too late. The United States focused more on the Japanese missing ships, and where they went to. Some Americans in the government thought it had to do with an attack on Pearl Harbor but others did not believe such thing would happened, and they were protected. All their ships were grouped together so they wouldn’t be spread out into the water, just as a precaution. The Japanese sent out one of their own over to Hawaii to take pictures, so they could finish out their plan, and would help then where to best hit them first, and where everything was located. This was a long process over many months. The Japanese were ready for attack, they sent out ships and submarines first because they would take the longest to get to Pearl Harbor, then they sent out the aircrafts which only took about four days to get there. There were hundreds of aircrafts covering the sky, so they could attack from all directions. They arrived Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, while many were still sleeping. They first attacked the ships in the harbor with
Cited: Miles, Donna. “Pearl Harbor Parallel 9-11” Military. 7 December 2006 Monster’ A Monster Company 25, November 2008