The Japanese plan was simple on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941: Destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Pearl Harbor is a U.S. naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii. It is located near the center of the Pacific Ocean, roughly 2,000 miles from the U.S. mainland and about 4,000 miles from Japan.
No one in the military, in the intelligence community, or in the President Roosevelt Administration believed that the Japanese would start a war with an attack on the distant islands of Hawaii.
Additionally, American intelligence officials were confident that any Japanese attack would take place in one of the (relatively) nearby European colonies in the South Pacific.
However, at about 8 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, Imperial Japanese Navy planes filled the sky over Pearl Harbor and attacked with bombs, torpedoes and strafing gunfire. In less than two hours, the surprise attack resulted in the eight battleships moored in Pearl Harbor sustaining significant damage.
In all, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor crippled or destroyed nearly 20 American ships and more than 300 airplanes. Dry docks and airfields were likewise destroyed.
The attack also killed 2,403 U.S. personnel, including sailors, soldiers and civilians. Additionally, 1,178 people were wounded. 129 Japanese soldiers were killed. Half of the dead U.S. personnel at Pearl Harbor were on board the battleship, USS Arizona.
Japanese failed to cripple the Pacific Fleet.
By the 1940s, aircraft carriers had become the most important naval warship, and as it happened, all of the Pacific Fleet’s carriers were away from the base on the morning of December 7, 1941.
Moreover, the Pearl Harbor assault had left the base’s vital onshore facilities—oil storage depots, repair shops, shipyards and submarine docks—intact. As a result, the U.S. Navy was able to rebound relatively quickly from the attack.
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