One December 7, 1941, the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor and took everyone by surprise. However, the incident precipitated the entry of the United States of America into World War II.
The events that led to the attack on Pearl Harbor actually began a decade earlier. In 1931, Japan occupied Manchuria and claimed it as an independent state which was run by the Japanese army through a puppet government. Until this happened, Manchuria was a part of China. Then, Japan started expanding its empire and embarked in 1937 to conquer China. The United States had economical and political interests in China and East Asia, so it started strengthening the military power in Pacific and sending aid to China to combat the Japanese occupation.
In the meantime, in September 1940, Hitler created the Tripartite Pact wherein there was a mutual military assistance agreement between Japan, Germany and Italy. By July 1941, peace negotiations were failing and the United States and Great Britain reacted by placing embargo on oil and other raw material to Japan. This came as a shock to Japan as 80 percent of its oil was supplied by America and the Japanese government viewed the oil embargo as threat to the survival of the country. In return, Japan went on to seize Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), which was rich in oil, within a year, practically all of Indochina was occupied by Japan.
By this time, it was a forgone conclusion that America would have to go to war with Japan. War was inevitable. Franklin D Roosevelt had the foresight of transferring the United States Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbor 18 months before. The commander of Japanese fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, knew that the Pacific Fleet posed a major threat to Japan so he engineered a surprise attack to immobilize the US Navy before a war between Japan and the US took place.
Admiral Yamamoto devised an attack force that consisted of 6 aircraft carriers with over 420 planes, a group of fast battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and tankers to fuel ships. A separate group of scout submarines were sent in advance to Hawaii to sink any American warships that escaped.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was indeed ingenious with precise planning and execution of aerial warfare and surprise. The December 7, 1941 attack killed 2,400 US military personnel and 68 civilians. Over 1,100 were wounded. The US forces lost 188 aircraft and 159 were damaged. In the Pacific Fleet, 21 warships were either damaged or sunk.
On December 8, 1941, the United States of America officially entered into World War II
How The United States Of America Joined WW II
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