Attack on Pearl Harbor: America Enters World War II

On December 7th 1941 as World War II raged, the focus of attention was snatched from the battlefields of Europe and diverted to the smoke and flames rising from the American Naval Base in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor. The Empire of the Rising Sun had finally struck, piercing the heart of the US navy in a bid to ensure that their plans for an Asian Empire, every bit as ambitious as Adolf Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich, were not threatened. But as the injured were rushed to safety and America reeled from the shock of the Japanese attack, those battling against Hitler, most notably Winston Churchill and the people of Great Britain, were able to find some comfort in the tragedy, because America’s President, Franklin D Roosevelt, could now justify bringing the United States into the war. The story of Pearl Harbor may have been told many times, but it’s nonetheless always fascinating and in this journal, we will have the opportunity to revisit the events of that monumental day as they unfolded, from the bombing of the USS Panay to the attack on Pearl itself, while discovering the reasons why the Japanese fleets travelled far across the ocean, to pick a fight with World War II’s sleeping giant.