A Day We\'ll Live In Infamy

1 Pages 314 Words

Pearl Harbor, inlet of the island of Oahu, Hawaii, 10 km (6 mi) west of Honolulu, and the site of one of the principal naval bases of the United States.
Early in the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese submarines and carrier-based planes attacked the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. Nearby military airfields were also attacked by the Japanese planes. Eight American battleships and 13 other naval vessels were sunk or badly damaged, almost 200 American aircraft were destroyed, and approximately 3,000 naval and military personnel were killed or wounded. The attack marked the entrance of Japan into World War II on the side of Germany and Italy, and the entrance of the United States on the Allied side.
Soon after the attack, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed a commission of inquiry to determine whether negligence had contributed to the success of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. The commission's report found the naval and army commanders of the Hawaiian area, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Major General Walter C. Short, guilty of “derelictions of duty” and “errors of judgment”; the two men were subsequently retired. Other later inquiries, however, differed in their conclusions. The Congress of the United States, in an effort to dispose of the controversy, decided on a full, public investigation after the war.
The bipartisan congressional committee opened its investigation in November 1945. Testimony from many people reviewed all known information about the attack on Pearl Harbor. The committee reported its findings in July 1946. It placed the primary blame on General Short and Admiral Kimmel, who, however, were declared guilty only of errors of judgment, and not of derelictions of duty. The committee recommended the unification of the U.S. armed forces, which occurred the following year. The USS Arizona National Memorial, standing above the remains of the battleship in Pearl Harbor, commemorates the Americ...