Why bomb Pearl Harbor?

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The question is often asked, “Why, of all places in the United States, did the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor?”

According to information provided by the Pearl Harbor Historic Sites, the Japanese, who were already involved in World War II, needed to secure oil reserves and other resources for the war, and were planning to invade vast areas of Southeast Asia and the Pacific to do so. To prevent America from interfering, they sought to destroy the U.S.’s Pacific Fleet in a surprise attack, and their bombers managed to fly, undetected, 4,000 miles across the Pacific under strict radio silence.

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese planes attacked the airfields in Oahu, Hawaii, first, crippling aircraft on the ground. Then torpedoes began raining down on Pearl Harbor’s Battleship Row. A half hour later, a second wave of bombers pounded the airfields, while dive-bombers struck more ships and fighter planes while the servicemen below scrambled to defend themselves.

When it was over, the Japanese had destroyed or significantly damaged 21 vessels and more than 300 aircraft. More than 3,500 people were killed or wounded.

Thousands of people from around the world visit the war memorials in Pearl Harbor each year, and particularly the Arizona Memorial. The sunken USS Arizona is the final resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines who died when the ship was attacked. A wall in the memorial lists the names of all the victims. USS Arizona survivors still have the option, when they die, of being cremated and buried in the USS Arizona with their comrades.

A series of ceremonies, symposiums and tributes commemorating the 75th anniversary of what President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously called “a date which will live in infamy” will take place in Oahu next week.