The Bombing of Pearl Harbor

On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise military strike on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack, carried out by 353 aircraft launched from six aircraft carriers, killed 2,403 Americans, sank four battleships, and damaged numerous other vessels and aircraft. Japan intended to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Fleet to secure its conquests in Southeast Asia. The attack achieved tactical surprise but was a strategic catastrophe: it united a deeply divided American public behind the war effort. President Franklin Roosevelt called it "a date which will live in infamy," and Congress declared war the next day. Within six months, the Battle of Midway turned the tide. The war that Japan had started with Pearl Harbor ended with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 — and Japan's unconditional surrender.