The Reality of Living through Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor remains controversial eight decades on

Following the war, the attack on Pearl Harbor, an assault by a belligerent against a neutral nation, was designated a war crime. A total of 2,403 Americans were killed in the surprise attack, the first of over 100,000 who lost their lives during the Pacific War. During the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, Navy Minister Shigetaro Shimada, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, and Osami Nagano, Chief of the Naval Staff, were charged with and convicted of war crimes involving the Pearl Harbor attack. Yamamoto, who planned the attack, and Nagumo, who commanded the task force which accomplished it, were both dead by then. Conspiracy theorists and revisionists believe FDR should have been charged as well, though the evidence he was aware of the pending attack and deliberately covered it up does not, for the most part, stand up to close examination.

By the late 1990s, the stirring World War II call to “Remember Pearl Harbor” had faded from memory. The attack is barely mentioned in American schools and history textbooks in the 21^st century. The grandchildren of Americans who huddled by their radios on December 7, 1941, are largely unaware of the date’s significance. In Japan, schools teach it as just one event in the long war to protect Asia from European colonialization and exploitation, which began in 1931 and continued until the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945. USS Arizona remains where it sank, stripped of all salvageable parts, part of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial. Eighty years after its destruction the hull still seeps fuel oil, a few drops at a time which rise to the surface above, easily seen by those who visit the remains of the ship.

Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

“War Plan Orange: Powerful Stuff”. Harry D. Train II, Naval War College Review. 1993. Online

“The Impossible Task of Remembering the Nanking Massacre”. Simon Han, The Atlantic. December 17, 2017.

“Two-ocean Navy bill becomes law, 19 July 1940”. Article, US Naval Institute. July 19, 2010. Online

“Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo makes himself ‘military czar'”. The Editors, History.com. November 5, 2009

“Forgotten Fights: Strike on Taranto, November 1940”. Article, National World War II Museum. July 13, 2020. Online

“General Genda Remembers Pearl Harbor”. Minoru Genda, US Naval Institute. March, 1969. Online

“Pearl Harbor: Thunderfish in the sky”. Ray Panko, Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum. December 28, 2015. Online

“United States freezes Japanese assets”. Article, History.com. Online

“The Pacific Strategy, 1941-1945”. Article, National World War II Museum. Online

“Chuichi Nagumo, Vice Admiral, IJN”. J. Owen, Pearl Harbor Museum. August 17, 2013. Online

“Letter to Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, February 7, 1941. George C. Marshall. 1941. Online