Attack on Pearl Harbor
- Date
- 7 December 1941
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- Pacific (Hawaii, United States)
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
On the morning of 7 December 1941, Japanese carrier-based aircraft launched a surprise attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, sinking or damaging numerous battleships and other vessels and killing about 2,400 Americans.
Japan simultaneously attacked British and American positions across the Pacific and Southeast Asia. The following day the United States declared war on Japan; on 11 December Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The attack ended American non-belligerency and brought the world's largest industrial power fully into the war, decisively expanding the conflict into a truly global struggle. Although it crippled the U.S. battleship fleet, the absence of American aircraft carriers from the harbour left the most strategically important vessels intact.
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Empires active in 7 December 1941
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
Related military & conflict events
- Operation Barbarossa: German invasion of the Soviet Union22 June 1941
- Battle of Stalingrad23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943
- German invasion of Poland and outbreak of World War II1 September 1939
- D-Day: the Normandy landings6 June 1944
- Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki6 & 9 August 1945
- Second Sino-Japanese War and the Nanjing Massacre7 July 1937 – 2 September 1945
Also relevant
Further reading
The wider story
The Americas: A Hemispheric History
Brisk single-volume history of the whole hemisphere since European contact.
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