Tabla de contenidos para Pearl Harbor en Pearl Harbor

Early in the morning of Sunday 7 Dec ember 1941, the inhabitants of the Hawaiian island of Oahu were woken by the drone of aircraft engines, the rattle of guns and the sound of bombs exploding. At 7.48am, 183 aircraft swooped in low over the sea. Torpedo bombers had surprised the United States Pacific Fleet at harbour, and within minutes all eight battleships moored there had been hit. Meanwhile, dive bombers screamed down over the island’s airbases. A further 170 aircraft roared in to attack a short while later in a second wave, so that by the time the radio announcer told Hawaiians what was happening, the cream of the Pacific Fleet lay sunk or crippled, while on the airfields, 188 aircraft were destroyed and a further 159 damaged. Witnesses…

In 1941, Private James Jones had one overriding ambition: to become a great American novelist. Unable to afford college, the future author of the war classic From Here to Eternity had enlisted in the army and been shipped to Hawaii. One of 30,000 US soldiers – known as “dogfaces” – stationed there to protect the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Jones had wangled himself a role in the orderly room at Schofield Barracks. With its desks and typewriters, it was an excellent place to look busy while he was actually typing out short stories and poems and mailing them to literary magazines on the mainland. “Now that I’m a clerk in the orderly room, I’ve been spending all my spare time in there, writing,” he told his brother in…

The US knew, in the second half of 1941, that Japan was preparing for war in the western Pacific and south-east Asia. Tokyo needed to secure material for its military operations in China – principally oil, tin, bauxite and rubber. But Washington was never aware of the final details of these plans. US strategists knew, of course, that a Japanese offensive would chiefly target Dutch and British possessions in south-east Asia, because it was there that the raw materials required to fuel Japan’s imperial ambitions were located. They knew, also, that the US’s military presence in the Philippines would at some point come into the crosshairs. For some time, it had been clear that Japan was war-minded. Emperor Hirohito’s expansionist regime had been beating the war drum in Asia since…

On 11 September 2001, two hijacked airliners were deliberately flown into New York’s World Trade Center, bringing down the twin towers, while a third plane hit the Washington Pentagon, and a fourth crashed after passengers stormed the cockpit. The nearly 3,000 killed on 9/11 was close to the number of dead – 2,400 – on another “date which will live in infamy”, in President Roosevelt’s famous phrase. The last time American soil had been attacked from the air was 7 December 1941, when the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service mounted a surprise – and spectacularly successful – raid on the US navy’s main Pacific base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Although Hawaii, an island group in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is many hundreds of miles from the US…

APRIL/MAY 1940 Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of Japan’s Combined Fleet, first conceives the idea of attacking Pearl Harbor “to give a fatal blow to the enemy fleet”. 7 JANUARY 1941 In his cabin aboard the battleship Nagato in Hiroshima Bay, Yamamoto composes a letter to Admiral Koshiro Oikawa, navy minister, in which he writes that a conflict with the US and Britain is “inevitable”. Therefore, says Yamamoto, “we should do our very best at the outset of the war with the United States… to decide the fate of the war on the very first day”. This would be best achieved by a “vigorous” attack on Pearl Harbor. 27 JANUARY Joseph Grew, the US ambassador to Japan, wires Washington with a warning he’s received from multiple sources that, in the event…

Stefanos Vasilakes was the embodiment of all that was great about the United States of America. After arriving from Greece in 1910, he had set up a hot peanuts and fresh popped corn cart on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and East Executive Avenue in Washington DC. The spot was actually White House property, but none of the occupiers minded when he sold the best peanuts in town. Presidents Taft, Wilson, Harding and Roosevelt had all been customers, as had Coolidge, who described Vasilakes as his “contact man” with the American public. To reporters, Vasilakes represented the “little man” of the nation. And on the afternoon of Sunday 7 December the “little man” was livid. When the reporter from Washington’s Evening Star newspaper arrived outside the White House en route…

Visiting the memorial at Pearl Harbor today, gazing at the mangled wreckage of the USS Arizona with the crowds of tourists, one can be mistaken for concluding that the infamous raid on this military stronghold was an isolated act of Japanese deceit – the product of an anachronistic quasi-fascist regime long since consigned to history. It’s hard to find at Oahu, in fact, any sense of the wider context of what Franklin D Roosevelt called a “date which will live in infamy”. But an hour before the first Japanese planes appeared in the morning sky above the Arizona, amphibious forces under General Tomoyuki Yamashita had begun landing on the north-eastern coast of British Malaya, and several hours later were striking at US defences in the Philippines, Guam and Wake Island.…

1 September 1939 Nazi Germany invades Poland. In a lightning six-week “Blitzkrieg” campaign the country is conquered and its capital, Warsaw, is bombed and reduced to rubble. In a prearranged plan, Stalin’s Soviet Union occupies eastern Poland and the two totalitarian powers divide the country between them. 3 September 1939 Britain and France, fulfilling a guarantee to Poland, declare war on Germany after the expiry of an ultimatum demanding withdrawal is ignored by Hitler. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcasts the declaration of war on BBC radio. His announcement coincides with the war’s first air-raid warning – a false alarm. 9 April 1940 Germany invades Norway and Denmark. Denmark is subdued within hours, but Norway fiercely resists sea and air landings. British and French troops land in Norwegian ports, but withdraw…

07:48 The first target struck by the Japanese is Kaneohe Bay, on the east coast of Oahu. The bay is home to a navy patrol seaplane base made up of three patrol squadrons, totalling 33 aircraft. Guy Avery, an aviation machinist mate third class, is dozing in his quarters when he hears the throb of engines. Reaching the window, he sees “Zeroes just beginning to fan out over the heart of the station and opening fire promiscuously”. 07:49 In the west, over Pearl Harbor, Fuchida gives the signal to attack, “To, To, To” – the first syllable of totsugekiseyo: “charge”. The message is received with great excitement by Yamamoto and Ugaki aboard the battleship Nagato in Japan’s Inland Sea. 07:53 As he prepares to swoop on Pearl Harbor, Fuchida sends…

09:00–09:15 Kaneohe Bay is attacked by the flight led by Fusata Iida, who is shot down and killed, leaving Sub Lieutenant Iyozo Fujita in command. Re-forming the flight, he leads them towards Wheeler Field in search of fresh targets. On the ground, Lieutenant Philip Rasmussen is one of a handful of pilots uninjured. “I ran down to the hangar line and it was chaos,” he said. “Ammunition was exploding in the hangars. Fires everywhere. An airplane would explode and in turn ignite the plane next to it. The only planes not burning were a few Curtiss P-36s. I jumped into one and got it started.” 09:08 In his dive bomber, Zenji Abe is looking for a target. “My altitude was 3,000 metres and my speed 200 knots,” he remembered. “I…

On 19 February 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which permitted his secretary of war, Henry L Stimson, “to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he, or the appropriate military commander, may determine”. In short, anyone considered an enemy alien could be rounded up and incarcerated in what were euphemistically called ‘relocation centres’, but in reality were internment camps. Particularly affected was the large Japanese-American community living on the Pacific coast: not only were an estimated 110,000 people interned, but the US Department of the Treasury froze the assets of all citizens and resident aliens who were born in Japan. One of those detained was 28-year-old Roy Matsumoto – despite the fact he had been born and schooled in California. “It was very hard…

December 1941 The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and Malaya, invade Guam and land on Luzon in the Philippines. They attack Wake Island and begin an invasion of Thailand and Hong Kong. The US and Britain declare war on Japan. The British surrender in Hong Kong, followed by the fall of Singapore in February 1942. June 1942 The battle of Midway begins in the centre of the Pacific. US torpedo planes and dive bombers destroy three Japanese carriers and disable a fourth. Victory for the US over Japan in this major engagement will prove a turning point in the war. Meanwhile, after completing its conquest of the Philippines, Japan invades the Aleutian Islands in the territory of Alaska. August–December 1942 US marines begin an assault on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands…