LIFE Pearl Harbor

Eighty years have passed since Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and only a few survivors are left to recall that shocking day. Even after they are gone, however, the memory will remain. “Remember Pearl Harbor” is branded on the collective American consciousness. This is true for many reasons. Pearl Harbor is America’s preeminent symbol of innocence and victimization, coupled with “righteous fury,” as Henry Luce called it in the essay that opens this volume. Japan’s attack propelled the United States out of isolationism. It triggered the country’s emergence as a great power in the most devastating war of modern times, a global conflict against Nazism, fascism, and Japanese aggression that ended in thoroughgoing victory. And World War II, in turn, set the stage for American…

“How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don’t think.”— ADOLF HITLER In the aftermath of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles created hardship and resentment in Germany, but no one foresaw that from the ashes of the Great War an Adolf Hitler would rise. He seemed, by turns, a loser, a petty radical, a thug, a threat and, finally, a vanquishing force to be dealt with. Yet by the time democracies paid Hitler the attention he required, it was too late. The seeds of World War II were sown on June 28, 1919, when the treaty was signed by France and Britain, who carved up Germany without considering that its citizens might resent suddenly being assigned different nationalities. Then the victors ordered monetary reparations that were as…

“As a nation we may take pride in the fact that we are soft-hearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.”— FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT In 1940, Churchill was desperately wooing Roosevelt to enter the war raging in Europe, arguing that Hitler and Tojo posed a global threat. But America was reeling from the Depression, with two-thirds of its people favoring neutrality. Despite sympathy for the oppressed abroad, no one wanted to send our boys to fight. To secure reelection for his historic third term in 1940, Roosevelt ran on a platform that promised to keep America out of the war. Yet in the midst of public isolationism, he quietly oversaw the investment of $3.2 billion in military upgrades and instituted the first peacetime draft. Roosevelt, not a hawk but a…

“Tora! Tora! Tora!”— FUCHIDA MITSUO Adm. Yamamoto called the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor “a dagger pointed at our throat.” Secretary of State Hull said of the Japanese: “Nothing will stop them but force.” President Roosevelt could only sit and wait, knowing the blow that would force America to arms would come from Japan—not Germany—and that the U.S. must let it land rather than issue a first strike. In the last week of November, Vice Adm. Nagumo Chuichi assembled the staffs of his carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines and for the first time revealed to them that their target was Pearl Harbor. In three days they would start making their way east-southeast. On November 29 Hull received a copy of a speech Tojo had just given in Japan. While…

“Air raid, Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill!”— LT. COMDR. LOGAN RAMSEY The siege was swift and ruthless. Within moments a peaceful Sunday morning became an unimaginable nightmare. Soldiers and civilians, medics, clergy and children watched in horror as the Japanese torpedoes fell from the sky and exploded into the great ships. Children and wives were bundled up into the relative safety of the mountains, while their fathers and husbands rushed to duty, some of them never to be seen again. Hospital personnel were immediately inundated with the wounded and dying. Amid the chaos, noise and smoke, brave ship crews rushed to man their turrets, still blinking away the previous evening’s merrymaking. 03:42 Ensign R.C. McCloy, aboard the minesweeper Condor, spots a periscope in the darkness. 03:57 The Condor…

“The casualties, I am sorry to say, were extremely heavy.”— FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT In the aftermath of the attack, Battleship Row lay in ruin. The island of Oahu was filled with death and destruction. Makeshift aid stations were set up all around the island. Losses sustained during the attack were stunning: 2,403 Americans killed, 1,178 wounded; 18 ships and 347 planes destroyed or damaged. But U.S. forces had fought back with a vengeance: Twenty-nine Japanese planes were shot from the skies that day. By early evening on December 7, several hundred men, women and children had gathered outside the White House in Washington, D.C., awaiting word, keeping vigil, seeking some kind of communion. Inside, the president was dictating a draft of the message he would deliver to Congress asking for…