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The Empire of Japan's 1941 attack plan on Pearl Harbor. Preliminary planning for an attack on Pearl Harbor to protect the move into the "Southern Resource Area", the Japanese term for the Dutch East Indies and Southeast Asia generally, began early in 1941 under the auspices of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, then commanding Japan's Combined Fleet.
In putting the Pearl Harbor attack into context, Japanese writers repeatedly contrast the thousands of U.S. citizens killed there with the hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians killed in U.S. air attacks on Japan during the war, even without mentioning the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States.
Various unproven conspiracy theories allege that U.S. government officials had advance knowledge of Japan's December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.Ever since the Japanese attack, there has been debate as to why and how the United States was caught off guard, and how much and when American officials knew of Japanese plans for an attack.
The Japanese attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor destroyed almost 200 U.S. aircraft, took 2,400 lives, and swayed Americans to support the decision to join World War II.
Yamamoto did believe that Japan could not win a protracted war with the United States. Moreover, he seemed later to have believed that the Pearl Harbor attack had been a blunder strategically, morally, and politically, even though he was the person who originated the idea of a surprise attack on the military installation.
Two survivors of the bombing — each 100 or older — are planning to return to Pearl Harbor on Saturday to observe the 83rd anniversary of the attack that thrust the US into World War II.
Captured Japanese photograph taken aboard a Japanese carrier before the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 (U.S. National Archives, 80-G-30549, 520599) A series of events led to the attack on Pearl Harbor. War between the Empire of Japan and the United States was a possibility each nation's military forces had planned for after World War I.
One of the sole remaining survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack that launched World War II disobeyed orders and fought back. Now 100 years old, he continues to share his stories.