Dec 7 is a memorable day in history. On the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941,
United States Pacific Fleet base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was attacked by the Empire of
Japan's Imperial Japanese Navy. This event made the United States enter World War II.
Two aerial attack waves, totalling 350 aircraft, were launched from six aircraft carriers with
the intent to destroy the United States Pacific Fleet.

The attack wrecked two U.S. Navy battleships, one minelayer, and two destroyers beyond
repair, and destroyed 188 aircraft; personnel losses were 2,333 killed and 1,139 wounded.
Damaged warships included three cruisers, a destroyer, and six battleships (one deliberately
grounded, later refloated and repaired; two sunk at their berths, later raised, repaired, and
restored to Fleet service late in the war). Vital fuel storage, shipyards, and submarine facilities
were not hit. Japanese losses were minimal, at 29 aircraft and five midget submarines,
with 65 servicemen killed or wounded.

The intent of the strike was to protect Imperial Japan's advance into Malaya and the Dutch
East Indies – for their natural resources such as oil and rubber – by neutralizing the U.S.
Pacific Fleet. Both the U.S. and Japan had long-standing contingency plans for war in the
 Pacific, continuously updated as tension between the two countries steadily increased
during the 1930s. Japan's expansion into Manchuria and French Indochina were greeted
with steadily increasing levels of embargoes and sanctions by the United States and others.
In 1940, under the Export Control Act, the U.S. halted shipments of airplanes, parts, machine
tools, and aviation gas, which Japan saw as an unfriendly act. Nevertheless, the U.S. continued
to export oil to Japan, in part because it was understood in Washington cutting off oil exports
would be an extreme step, given Japanese dependence on US oil exports, likely to be
taken as a provocation by Japan. In the summer of 1941, after Japanese expansion into
French Indochina, the U.S. ceased oil exports to Japan, in part because American restrictions
on internal oil use were beginning. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had earlier moved the
Pacific Fleet to Hawaii and ordered a buildup in the Philippines, hoping to deter Japanese
aggression in the Far East. The Japanese high command was (mistakenly) certain an attack
on the United Kingdom's colonies would inevitably bring the U.S. into the war, so a pre-emptive
strike appeared to be the only way Japan could avoid U.S. interference in the Pacific.

The attack was one of the most important engagements of World War II. Occurring as it did
before a formal declaration of war, it pushed U.S. public opinion from isolationism to an acceptance
war was unavoidable, as Roosevelt called December 7, 1941 "… a date which will live in infamy."