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Remembering Pearl Harbor: Looking back 79 years

HOUGHTON — Imperial headquarters at Tokyo declared war late today against both the United States and Britain after Japanese bombers had attacked the great Pearl Harbor naval base at Honolulu,” the AP story began. Appearing in the Monday, Dec. 8, 1941 edition of the Daily Mining Gazette, under the headline: “President Roosevelt to Ask Congress Today for War Declaration,” it marked the official military entry of the United States into World War II, a war of which initially the majority of the American people wanted to avoid.

At 7:55 a.m., on Dec. 7, Japanese carrier-based planes attacked the American naval base at Honolulu, killing 2,042 Americans, wounding 1,247 more, not including civilian casualties.

The attack was in retaliation of the U.S. for its embargoes against Japan, Which were in response to that Japan’s unprovoked 1937 invasion of China. The invasion was condemned by the U.S. and several other members of the League of Nations, including Britain, France, Australia and the Netherlands.

Early in 1938, the U.S. adopted a series of trade restrictions against Japan, including stopping 90 percent of Japan’s access to oil. At the same time, all exports of steel and scrap iron to Japan were banned, and Japan was also denied all access to rubber. The embargoes isolated Japan, crippling its economy, as well as its military. Rather than deter the Japanese government from continuing its conquest of Asia, the embargoes instead led to Japan signing the Tripartite Pact with the fascist countries of Germany and Italy, in 1940, forming the Axis Powers.

Jeffrey Record, author of Japan’s Decision in 1941: Some Enduring Lessons, published by the Army War College, wrote: “Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, and enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and industrial base 10 times that of Japan?”

The Japanese launched two attack waves, involving 353 planes, launched from six aircraft carriers, which sailed more than 4,000 miles to make the attacks. The resultant damage report was five of eight American battleships sunk, with the other three badly damaged, nearly all of the U.S. planes at Hickham Air Base were destroyed on the ground, and more than 2,388 American service personnel and civilians were dead. Astoundingly, however, and unfortunately for the Japanese Imperial Navy, maintenance, shipyard, and headquarters facilities were undamaged, and fuel storage tanks were left unhit.

As with the rest of the world, even Hitler was surprised by the Pearl Harbor attack. Seeing what he thought was an opportunity, Dec. 11, 1941, Italian Dictator, Benito Mussolini, declared war on the United States, claiming the powers of the pact of steel required Italy to defend its ally, Japan.

Hitler, in turn declared war the same day, claiming he had tried to avoid war with the United States, but under the Triparte Agreement, Germany, too, was obliged to defend its ally, Japan. Hitler then accused Roosevelt of waging a campaign against Germany since 1937, blamed him for Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, and claimed Roosevelt was planning to invade Germany in 1943.

“After victory has been achieved,” the BBC’s On This Day reported Hitler as saying, “Germany, Italy and Japan will continue in the closest cooperation with a view of establishing a new and just order.”

Hitler, the BBC stated had been hostile to the U.S. since the early 1930s, seeing the nation as an “ideological enemy, racially mixed and therefore inferior.”

Hitler, delusional, also believed that while the U.S. was preoccupied fighting the Japanese as Germany conquered the USSR, and once that was completed, he would turn his attention on the Americans and the British.

In retrospect Hitler’s decision to declare war on a major world power such as the US seems like a major strategic error, the BBC stated.

“But he could no longer ignore,” the BBC stated, “the amount of economic and military aid America was giving the UK and the Soviet Union via the lend-lease programme.”

Mussolini’s war against the Allies was short lived. An Allied invasion occurred on Sept. 3, 1943, with an amphibious landing. Italy surrendered five days later. The Italian people had not wanted the war, had not wanted an alliance with Germany, and had not wanted Mussolini. Mussolini was relieved by King Victor Emanuel, replacing him with General. Pietro Baoglio, who in turn, began surrender negations with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower weeks before the Allied invasion was made.

According to the National WW II Museum, the war saw more than 16 million Americans serve in the military. Of the 16,112,556 Americans who served in combat, only 1.8 percent died at the hands of the enemy, a combat likelihood roughly on par with the First World War, the museum statistics reveal.

Hitler established Mussolini as figurehead of a puppet government set up in northern Italy, and as the Allies continued to push Nazi forces up the Italian Peninsula, On Apr. 28, 1945, Mussolini and his mistress were shot by Italian partisans. Hitler committed suicide two days later, as Soviet forces closed in around his bunker headquarters in Berlin. What was left of the German High Command surrendered unconditionally to Allied forces on May 8, 1945. Japan, which received the full wrath of the U.S. via two atomic bomb attacks, surrendered in August.

For every 1,000 Americans who served in the war, 8.6 were killed in action, three died from other causes, and 17.7 received non-fatal combat wounds. Only 1.8% of the died at the hands of the enemy, a combat death likelihood roughly on par with World War I. According to the National World War II Museum,

Across all branches of the military, U.S. casualties in World War II totaled 407,316 killed, and 671,278 wounded.

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