7 December 1941
Japanese Aircraft Attack Pearl Harbor
In order to prevent the U.S. Navy from interfering with Japanese ambitions in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the Japanese Admiral Yamamoto Isoruku developed a plan to send a task force of aircraft carriers across the Pacific Ocean. Their target was to be the main U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Once negotiations broke down between the United States and Japan in late November, the task force set sail from the Kurile Islands, heading toward Hawaii.

On Sunday morning, December 7, nearly 400 Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor in two separate waves. There they found lying at anchor all of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, with the exception of the aircraft carriers Lexington and Enterprise, which had been dispatched to Wake and Midway Islands. The air strike came as a complete surprise, as Japan’s declaration of war had not yet been delivered. The first wave of planes reached their target just before 8:00 am local time, and within a few minutes they had sunk no fewer than six battleships and two light cruisers. They also destroyed a large number of U.S. aircraft before they could leave the ground. A second wave followed about an hour later, damaging another battleship and sinking three destroyers. The Japanese lost only twenty-nine aircraft in the operation.

The following day President Franklin D. Roosevelt called December 7 “a date which will live in infamy,” and asked Congress for a declaration of war.

Histories:
The Attack on Pearl Harbor
The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor and Clark Field
The Perilous Fight (PBS): Pearl Harbor

Campaign Maps:
Hawaii and Japan
The Island of Oahu
Pearl Harbor
Japanese Approach to Pearl Harbor
Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor
National Geographic: Remembering Pearl Harbor (animated map)

Personal Accounts:
National Geographic: Remembering Pearl Harbor
A Memory: One Man’s Pearl Harbor
“80 Rounds in Our Pants Pockets”: Orville Quick Remembers Pearl Harbor
Rutgers Oral History Archives of World War II: Interview with Richard Stanley
“This is No Joke: This is War”: A Live Radio Broadcast of the Attack on Pearl Harbor,”
Oral History of the Pearl Harbor Attack
Journal notes kept by George Macartney Hunter, an officer with the U.S. Naval Reserve assigned to the USS West Virginia stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

Documents:
Pearl Harbor Attack Documents

Photographs:
Shattered by a direct hit, the USS Arizona burns and sinks
National Archives and Records Administration, Pictures of World War II
Pearl Harbor Raid, December 7, 1941
USS West Virginia aflame
Wreckage of U.S.S. Arizona
USS Arizona, at height of fire, following Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
Battered by aerial bombs and torpedoes, the U.S.S. California settles slowly into the mud and muck of Pearl Harbor
Testifying to the extent of the Japanese sneak attacks are these three stricken U.S. battleships
The Perilous Fight (PBS): Pearl Harbor