It was 68 years ago today that the Imperial Japanese Navy surprise attacked the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in the early morning of December 7^th.  It consisted of two aerial attacks consisting of 353 planes launched from six Japanese aircraft carriers.  The Japanese claimed it was a preventative strike to keep the United States navy out of the war Japan was waging in Southeast Asia.  The attack did not have the desired effect. Instead, they awoke the sleeping giant of the United States military.  Here are five facts you might not have known about the attack on Pearl Harbor:

The attack started at 7:55am on Sunday morning.  Two privates, Joseph Lockheed and George Elliot reported a large group of planes incoming at 7:02am but were told not to worry about it because American planes were due to land after a training mission.  The two privates were monitoring the only radar station turned on at the time – and only for training purposes.  The remaining radar stations were turned off as was the standard procedure at the time.

There were 96 American ships tightly packed into Pearl Harbor.  Additionally, we had a total of 394 airplanes on three airfields.  After the attack was over, 21 ships and 188 planes had been destroyed completely.  Several other ships and 159 more planes were damaged.  American casualties included 2,403 deaths including 68 civilians, while 1,178 more were wounded.  Japanese forces lost a handful of miniature submarines and only 29 out of their 353 planes.  At the time, it was the greatest American disaster in history, only surpassed by the attacks on 911.

The attack lasted just over two hours.  The Japanese missed all of our aircraft carriers that were out to sea at the time.  Of the ships that were sunk or damaged, all but three of them were refitted to fight again.  The result of the attack unified congress who had been debating whether to remain at peace or join the war against Japan and Germany.  There is a conspiracy theory that Franklin Roosevelt knew that the Japanese were going to attack, but ignored the warning because he wanted to get America into the war.  The conspiracy theorists claim that the U.S. had cracked Japanese codes on the attack and that the Imperial Navy had broken radio silence hours before the attack occurred, but both were hidden from the American people.  As recently as 1995, investigations have been launched to uncover the truth, but some records are still considered confidential.  The truth may never be known.

Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, was Harvard educated and was very aware of how the American people would react to the attack.  He warned the Japanese command that the Pearl Harbor attack had to be a crushing blow to the American fleet or that they would invoke the wrath of a “sleeping giant”.  The attack, while devastating, did not have the Japanese desired effect and the resulting war ended with Japan being hit by the first two atomic bombs to used against enemy targets.

Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Major General Walter C. Short were held responsible for America’s inability to respond to the surprise attack through errors in judgment – although they avoided being convicted of dereliction of duty after a committee conducted an investigation on the attack.  The report took five years to complete and was not announced until 1946.  By this time, both Kimmel and Short had retired.

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