![]() Mostly by chance, the Pacific Fleet’s carriers were at sea on December 7. No US Navy aircraft carriers appear in the picture. What is missing from this dramatic photograph is almost as important as what it shows. The next day President Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war, calling Japan’s surprise attack “unprovoked and dastardly,” and famously describing Decemas a “day which will live in infamy.” Congress and America responded with a grim determination to crush Japanese power at any cost, even if that cost included the civil liberties of Japanese-Americans, suspected of harboring secret agents for Tokyo. Tokyo directed its diplomats in Washington to deliver a war declaration some thirty minutes before Pearl Harbor was attacked, but that plan went awry and the diplomats were late. The result was a shock to the United States. Washington knew that war could come, but did not appreciate the power and daring of the Imperial Japanese Navy. FDR calculated the move would deter Japanese aggression in East Asia, but instead it provoked Tokyo and gave Japan’s militarist government a clear target. Roosevelt shifted the Pacific Fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor during the previous year. To be sure, relations with Japan had been strained for some time, which is why President Franklin D. The photograph illustrates how the Japanese attack utterly surprised American forces in Hawaii and the United States at large. The Army’s commander in Hawaii understood those orders to include a danger of sabotage from Japanese agents, hence the planes at Hickam were lined up wingtip-to-wingtip, making them easier to guard but also leaving them easy targets for Japanese pilots bombing the field. The Army and Navy had both received the same warning from Washington ten days earlier: be ready for war with Japan, but do nothing to alarm the civilian population. For now the view extends to an air base in the distance the white smoke in the background rises from Hickam Field, a US Army installation guarding Pearl Harbor. The sky for now is still clear of smoke from burning ships and the black puffs of American anti-aircraft fire that would soon cloud the picture. The aircraft crewman who captured this instant with his camera did so during that interval he probably rode on a torpedo bomber climbing away from the harbor after dropping its ordnance. Minutes later, at 8:06 am, a bomb will explode her ammunition magazine and break the ship in two. The attack began about 7:53 am, and the USS Arizona still appears unscathed. ![]() We do not know just which Japanese aviator snapped this picture, but we can time it almost to the minute. The Oklahoma will soon capsize in the shallow waters, trapping hundreds of sailors in her shattered hull. A geyser from one hit can be seen alongside the West Virginia, rising as high as the battleship’s masts, and both the West Virginia and the Oklahoma are already listing to port. Several torpedoes have already hit the hulls of two ships, West Virginia and Oklahoma, and waves from their explosions are rippling back across the hitherto calm waters. Japanese bombers had roared into the harbor only seconds before, dropping the torpedoes that left white streaks heading toward the American battleships. The photograph captures a moment when something violent has disturbed the tranquil morning. The USS California rests farther back, along the picture’s right edge, beyond the fleet oiler Neosho. Starting from the bottom left corner and scanning rightward they are the USS Nevada the Arizona, anchored beside the supply ship Vestal the West Virginia and Tennessee moored together with the Oklahoma and Maryland side-by-side and behind them. At anchor in the foreground is the pride of the US Pacific Fleet, seven aging but still-powerful battleships. The scene is an aerial view looking southward over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, shortly after sunrise on Sunday, December 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor from the cockpit of a Japanese Torpedo Bomber Context This snapshot is a stunning exception, covering in clarity and detail much of a major battle, just after the combatants engaged. Usually they present one observer’s hazy corner of a large picture, leaving much to the imagination. ![]() ![]() Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor | 7 December 1941īattlefield photographs ordinarily do not show much, being shot in haste, or from a safe distance. ![]()
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