HISTORY

Beyond Pearl Harbor: Things You Probably Didn’t Know

“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy”

Pearl Harbor. (Photos courtesy U.S. Navy, public domain.)

On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, as part of a plan to eliminate any potential challenge to Japanese conquests in Asia.

The USS Arizona. More than half the casualties were on this ship.

The Japanese attack force-which included six aircraft carriers and 420 planes-sailed from Hitokappu Bay in the Kurile Islands, on a 3,500 mile voyage to a staging area 230 miles off the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

The attack killed 2,403 service members and wounded 1,178 more, and sank or destroyed six U.S. ships,. They also destroyed 169 U.S. Navy and Army Air Corps planes.*

The USS West Virginia.

THERE ARE a lot of things that happened that are seldom noted when we remember this historic event. That same day, the Japanese followed up with assaults on the Philippines, Guam, Midway Island and the Wake Islands. They…