Pearl Harbor

US Pacific naval base on Oahu island, Hawaii, USA, the scene of a Japanese aerial attack on 7 December 1941, which brought the USA into World War II. The attack took place while Japanese envoys were holding so-called peace talks in Washington. More than 2,000 members of the US armed forces were killed, and a large part of the US Pacific fleet was destroyed or damaged.

The local commanders Admiral Kimmel and Lt-Gen Short were relieved of their posts and held responsible for the fact that the base was totally unprepared at the time of the attack, but recent information indicates that warnings of the attack given to the USA (by British intelligence and others) were withheld from Kimmel and Short by President Franklin D Roosevelt. US public opinion was very much against entering the war, and Roosevelt wanted an excuse to change popular sentiments and take the USA into the war. The Japanese, angered by US embargoes of oil and other war material and convinced that US entry into the war was inevitable, had hoped to force US concessions. Instead, the attack galvanized public opinion and raised anti-Japanese sentiment to fever pitch; war was declared shortly thereafter.