During the attack of the Pearl Harbor the World War II was raging. The World War II being a problem that took place on another continent, Europe, the United States didn’t take place in it. Never the less they were having a cold war with Japan who took place in the World War II conflict on the Axis side (allied with Hitler). In that time when Japan invaded Asia the U.S. protested by cutting off all the exports to Japan. This of course made Japan very mad so in order to get their vengeance they decided to cripple the US Navy fleet. The biggest US Navy fleet at that time was stationed in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
Ship Shokaku, Pearl Harbor attack, 7th of Dec, 1941: (photo 1)
USS Nevada, Pearl Harbor attack: (photo 2)
The morning on December 7th, 1941, Japan attacks the U.S. base in Pearl Harbor. That morning the United States lost 1998 navy personnel, 109 Marines, 233 army personnel and 48 civilians that were killed in that bombing which resulted in 2,402 soldiers that got killed and 1,282 military personnel and civilians wounded. Serious damage was made also on the battleships and other military equipment with 5 battleships, 3 destroyers, 3 cruisers and 188 planes destroyed.
Japan wanted to cripple the U.S navy in order to make path to attack Indo-China and Australia and with that they wanted to fortify their economic power. Unfortunately for Japan this didn’t work and only a small portion of the fleet was damaged as most of it was out of the Naval base. The Next day USA declared war to the Axis’ powers and they managed to recover more than a half from what was damaged in the Pearl Harbor attack.
Some people say that USA already knew who, when and where it was going to attacked, but Roosevelt remained silent in order to use the attack as a way to go and fight in World War II. How really and what were the reasons for The Pearl Harbor attack on 7th December, 1941, is a subject that should be judged in another occasion.