Pearl Harbor
Recording the Pearl Harbor Attack
Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, California was established by the U.S. Army in 1914 as a Coast Artillery installation to defend the harbors of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Read more
Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor and other U.S. military installations on the island of Oahu, territory of Hawaii, Sunday, December 7, 1941, plunged the United States into World War II. The Pearl Harbor anchorage of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet was attacked by two waves of Japanese planes flying from aircraft carriers more than 200 miles north of Hawaii. Eight battleships of the Pacific Fleet, as well as numerous other ships, were sunk or damaged, and 2,403 American lives were lost. Pearl Harbor has become an enduring symbol of American resolve in the wake of the surprise air raid. President Franklin Roosevelt called the date of the Pearl Harbor attack one that would “live in infamy.”
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor Attack Cover-up
By Susan ZimmermanBACKSTORY: Although for the past 75 years history has had little to say about “Bally’s Project,” an effort to falsify State Department records to remove evidence of gross miscalculations prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor—the author recently discovered a small file of documents in the Frank A. Read more
Pearl Harbor
USS Nevada’s Run to the Sea
By Joseph M. HorodyskiDuring the dark daysof December 1941, when it seemed as if American and British bases were falling like dominoes across the Pacific, two incidents during the Japanese attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor gave American morale a much needed boost. Read more
Pearl Harbor
World War II Summary and Synopsis
by Mike HaskewWorld War II spanned six long years from 1939 to 1945. The Allied powers, principally The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, defeated the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. Read more
Pearl Harbor
The Pearl Harbor Attack: Anchorage of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
by Mike HaskewOn December 7, 1941, Japanese naval aircraft attacked the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, as well as other U.S. Read more
Pearl Harbor
Takeo Yoshikawa and the Spies Behind the Pearl Harbor Attack
By Phil Zimmer“You are probably the nearest to war that you’ll ever be without actually being in it,” said Commander Harold M. Read more
Pearl Harbor
The Kempeitai: Japan’s Dreaded “Gestapo”
By Eric NiderostIn Western countries, “military police” are associated in the public mind with keeping order among off-duty personnel, such as arresting drunken servicemen. Read more
Pearl Harbor
B-29 Production
By Joe KirbyWhen Maj. Gen. Curtis Lemay, the hard-driving commander of the Twentieth U.S. Air Force based in Guam, decided to change tactics in early 1945 to boost the effectiveness of the B-29 Superfortress, it was the Bell Aircraft plant in Marietta, Georgia, that ultimately provided him with the stripped-down bombers that played such a key role in ending the war in the Pacific. Read more
Pearl Harbor
Sinking the USS Reuben James
By Joseph Connor, Jr.When the destroyer USS Reuben James (DD-245) was assigned to convoy duty in the North Atlantic in the autumn of 1941, its crew had a sense of foreboding and feared the worst. Read more
Pearl Harbor
Hideki Tojo vs Isoroku Yamamoto: Conflict in the Military Ranks
By Eric HammelThree generations of Americans wrongly believe that General Hideki Tojo and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto were equally culpable in starting the Pacific War. Read more
Pearl Harbor
Japanese Internment: Behind the Barbed Wire in America
By Richard Higgins“We were stunned when we entered the camp,” Yoshio “Yosh” Nakamura said, remembering the day when he and his family, from El Monte, California, were herded through the main gate at the Gila River Relocation Center—a Japanese American internment camp 30 miles southeast of Phoenix, Arizona—carrying only suitcases into which their worldly possessions had been crammed. Read more
Pearl Harbor
Four Marines on the “Green Hell” of Guadalcanal
By Adam Makos & Marcus BrothertonOn August 6, 1942, the men of Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift’s U.S. 1st Marine Division watched from the railings as their troopship, the USS George F. Read more
Pearl Harbor
Japanese Suicide Attacks at Pearl Harbor and Beyond
by David Alan JohnsonThe deliberate crashing into enemy targets by Japanese aviators did not begin at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands. Read more
Pearl Harbor
A Soldier Remembers the Pearl Harbor Attack
By John Sanford BairdAt about 8 am on the morning of December 7, 1941, I stood on the third-floor deck of a red brick barracks that looked across the Schofield Barracks golf course toward the infantry barracks that housed much of the U.S. Read more
Pearl Harbor
Against the Odds: Jeanette Rankin
By Martin K.A. MorganAn Associated Press report described “a chorus of hisses and boos” that echoed through the chamber when the Congresswoman from Montana cast her vote. Read more
