70 Fun Facts About Pearl Harbor

In which year did Japan attack the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor?

The raid came while the United States was still officially neutral in World War II; the declaration of war followed the next day.

Pearl Harbor is on which Hawaiian island?

The harbor lies just west of Honolulu and is still headquarters of the US Pacific Fleet.

At what local time did the Japanese air assault begin?

It was 6:18 p.m. in London and already 3:18 a.m. on December 8 aboard the Japanese carriers, which kept Tokyo time.

How many Japanese aircraft struck the base across the two waves?

Japan had 414 planes available; 350 flew in the raid, and 48 more fighters stayed behind as combat air patrol over the carriers.

The attacking planes were launched from how many Japanese aircraft carriers?

Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku sailed with two battleships, three cruisers, eleven destroyers and eight oilers.

Which admiral, commander of Japan's Combined Fleet, conceived the attack as a pre-emptive strike?

He had studied at Harvard and served as naval attaché in Washington, and privately doubted Japan could win a long war against American industry.

Who commanded the carrier strike force that actually delivered the attack?

He was a torpedo and gunnery specialist rather than an aviator, and would lead the same carriers to disaster at Midway six months later.

Which commander of the first wave at Pearl Harbor later settled in the US and toured as a Christian evangelist?

He was in Hiroshima the day before the atomic bomb fell, was called back to Tokyo, and returned the day after to assess the damage.

The code words "Tora! Tora! Tora!" radioed back to the flagship Akagi signalled what?

Atmospheric conditions carried the low-power transmission all the way to Japan, where the Combined Fleet staff heard it on a ship's radio.

During planning, Japanese naval leaders referred to the attack by which code name?

It was also called the Hawaii Operation and Operation AI; Operation MI was the later Midway plan.

Japanese planners intensively studied a 1940 British carrier air raid on the Italian fleet at which port?

That raid proved torpedoes dropped from aircraft could work in a shallow harbor, which had been thought impossible.

The Japanese task force sailed for Hawaii from a remote bay in which island chain?

The fleet left Hittokapu Bay on Etorofu on November 26 and took a northern route through empty, stormy waters to avoid being seen.

The November 26 US note that Japan took as an ultimatum is named after which Secretary of State?

It demanded that Japan withdraw completely from China; the strike fleet had already put to sea the day before it was delivered.

Emperor Hirohito gave final authorization for the attack on which date?

He had approved the plan on November 5 after the third of four Imperial Conferences, but withheld the final go-ahead for nearly a month.

Spy Takeo Yoshikawa reported on the fleet for months while posing in Honolulu as what?

Under the alias Tadashi Morimura he rented a flat overlooking the harbor, hired small planes to fly over the bases, and even swam the harbor breathing through a hollow reed.

Why were Japan's Type 91 aerial torpedoes given an anti-roll mechanism and rudder extension?

A standard air-dropped torpedo would have buried itself in the harbor mud before it could level out and run.

How many aircraft made up the second attack wave?

It was led by Lieutenant Commander Shigekazu Shimazaki and carried only general-purpose bombs, aimed mainly at the airfields; four planes failed to launch.

Lt Kermit Tyler assumed the radar contacts of Pearl Harbor's first wave were what?

The radar station was still in training mode, and the operators never told Tyler how unusually large the formation was.

What fills the blank in the Patrol Wing Two message 'Air raid Pearl Harbor. This is ___'?

The clumsy grammar is authentic; it is usually misquoted as "This is no drill."

How many US battleships were in the harbor when the attack began?

All were damaged and four were sunk, yet six eventually returned to service during the war.

What was the total number of Americans killed in the attack?

Nearly half of them died in a single instant when a bomb set off the forward magazine of one battleship.

How many aircraft did Japan lose in the raid?

Nine were lost in the first wave and twenty in the second, with 74 more damaged by ground fire; 130 Japanese personnel died in total.

How many crewmen died aboard USS Arizona when her forward magazine exploded?

That was 1,177 of the 1,512 men aboard, roughly half of all the Americans killed that morning.

Which battleship rolled over and capsized within about twelve minutes after taking multiple torpedo hits?

429 of her men were killed or missing; a civilian yard worker, Julio DeCastro, organized the team that cut 32 trapped sailors out through the hull.

The capsized battleship was righted in 1943 but never repaired. What finally happened to her in 1947?

Her exact resting place in the Pacific is unknown; the tow line was cut when she began going down.

Which battleship was the only one to get underway during the attack, before being deliberately beached?

She was run aground on purpose so that, if she sank, she would not block the harbor entrance channel.

The battleship that got underway that morning was repaired and served at both Pearl Harbor and which 1944 invasion?

She went on to bombard Iwo Jima and Okinawa, survived two atomic bombs at Bikini in 1946, and was finally sunk as a gunnery target in 1948.

Which former battleship, a disarmed target ship, was torpedoed off Ford Island and never raised?

Japanese pilots were hunting the carriers that usually moored where she lay; a memorial was built beside her wreck in 1972.

USS West Virginia was hit by how many torpedoes, the last of which tore away her rudder?

Quick counter-flooding by Lieutenant Claude Ricketts stopped her capsizing; she settled upright on the bottom and was rebuilt in time for the Battle of Surigao Strait.

The Pacific Fleet flagship USS Pennsylvania escaped serious damage largely because she was where?

The dock walls shielded her from torpedoes; the two destroyers sharing the dock with her, Cassin and Downes, were burned out.

Which destroyer sank a midget submarine outside Pearl Harbor an hour before the planes arrived?

Doubters questioned the kill for decades until the wrecked submarine was found in 2002 with a single shell hole in its conning tower.

How many two-man midget submarines did Japan send against the harbor?

Each was carried across the Pacific piggyback on a full-size fleet submarine and released about ten miles off the harbor mouth around 1 a.m.

What happened to the captured midget submarine of Kazuo Sakamaki, America's first Japanese POW?

Japan's high command struck his name from the records and told his family he had died in action.

Which decoration did Doris Miller receive in 1942 for manning a gun aboard USS West Virginia?

He was the first Black sailor to receive it; officially he was credited with one plane, though he and other witnesses put the number at four to six.

Doris Miller died in November 1943 when which escort carrier was torpedoed?

The Ford-class supercarrier CVN-81, named for him in 2020, is the first carrier named for an enlisted sailor.

How many Medals of Honor were awarded for actions during the attack?

Fifty-one Navy Crosses and fifty-three Silver Stars were also awarded, and every veteran of the day later qualified for a Pearl Harbor Commemorative Medal.

Nine Honolulu firefighters who answered the Hickam Field call were later given which unique decoration?

They remain the only fire department members on American soil ever attacked by a foreign power; three were killed and six wounded.

How many US aircraft carriers were assigned to Pearl Harbor but away at sea when the attack came?

Their absence, plus untouched oil tanks and repair yards, meant the fleet could strike back within months.

USS Enterprise was returning from delivering fighters to which outpost when the raid struck?

Bad weather delayed her a day; eighteen of her dive bombers flew into the middle of the attack and seven were shot down.

Which key Pearl Harbor facilities survived because the commander declined a third wave?

The surviving repair shops and fuel let the fleet stage the Doolittle Raid, Coral Sea and Midway from Hawaii within six months.

Japan's 5,000-word "14-Part Message" breaking off negotiations reached the US government when?

The embassy took too long transcribing it, but American codebreakers had already read most of it hours earlier.

Before settling on "infamy", Roosevelt's draft read "a date which will live in ___". What was the first choice?

The address to a joint session of Congress ran barely six and a half minutes.

How long after Roosevelt finished speaking did Congress declare war on Japan?

The Senate voted 82–0 and the House 388–1; Roosevelt signed the declaration at 4:10 that afternoon.

Who cast the only vote in Congress against declaring war on Japan?

A pacifist from Montana and the first woman elected to Congress, she had also voted against entering World War I and hid in a phone booth from reporters afterward.

Which country declared war on Japan roughly nine hours before America did?

Churchill had promised to declare war "within the hour" of an attack on America and did not wait for Washington once he heard of the raids on Malaya and Hong Kong.

How many days after the attack did Germany and Italy declare war on the United States?

The Tripartite Pact did not oblige them to, since Japan was the aggressor; Congress answered with its own declarations the same day.

Admiral Kimmel was struck by what while watching the Pearl Harbor attack from his office window?

It cut his white jacket and raised a welt; he reportedly murmured that it would have been merciful had it killed him.

What happened to Kimmel's career after the attack?

A 1944 Naval Court of Inquiry largely exonerated him, and in 1999 the Senate voted to restore his four stars, but no president has acted on it.

Who took over as commander of the Pacific Fleet three weeks after the attack?

He later said it was "God's mercy" the fleet had been in port: sunk in shallow water, the ships could be raised and most crews rescued, whereas at sea they would have been lost with thousands more men.

After Pearl Harbor, a Japanese pilot crash-landed on which small private Hawaiian island and was killed by residents?

The islanders had no phones or radios and did not know about the attack; Ella Kanahele stunned the pilot with a rock before her husband Ben finished him.

Of Hawaii's 150,000-plus Japanese Americans, roughly how many were interned during the war?

On the mainland more than 110,000 were forced into camps, but in Hawaii Japanese Americans made up over a third of the population and the economy could not run without them.

Sixteen B-25 bombers launched the first US air raid on Japan from which carrier?

Fifteen of the sixteen bombers crashed or were abandoned over China; the sixteenth landed in the Soviet Union, where the crew was interned.

Over which island was Admiral Yamamoto's plane ambushed by P-38 fighters in April 1943?

US codebreakers had read his exact itinerary; a search party found him thrown clear of the wreck, still gripping his sword.

The admiral who conceived the attack had lost two fingers decades earlier in which battle?

The gun in his cruiser's forward turret blew up during the 1905 battle against Russia; the wound on his thigh was said to be the size of a baby's head.

The admiral who commanded the carrier strike force at Pearl Harbor died in 1944. How?

By then he had been shunted to a minor naval command in the Marianas after the Midway defeat.

Which chief planner of the air attack later led Japan's Air Self-Defense Force?

In 1961 he said his only regret was that Japan attacked just once when it should have attacked again and again; the US Air Force awarded him the Legion of Merit anyway.

The USS Arizona Memorial's architect was detained as an enemy alien in WWII because he was born where?

Alfred Preis's design sags in the middle and rises at each end, meant to express initial defeat and ultimate victory; critics called it a squashed milk carton.

A 1961 benefit concert by which entertainer raised about $64,000 toward building the Arizona Memorial?

It was his last live performance until his 1968 comeback special.

Oil still rising from the wreck of USS Arizona is sometimes called what?

More than two quarts a day still escape; survivors of her crew can choose to have their ashes placed inside the sunken hull.

The memorial's assembly room has seven open windows on each wall and the ceiling. What do the 21 windows commemorate?

Guides confirm the 21-gun-salute story is a myth, however popular; the memorial straddles the hull without touching it.

In what year was the USS Arizona Memorial formally dedicated?

The dedication came on Memorial Day; every US president since has visited, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came in 2016.

Which battleship, site of Japan's 1945 surrender, opened as a Pearl Harbor museum in 1999?

She was donated to a memorial association in 1998 and sits near Ford Island, so the war's beginning and end face each other across the water.

Which director was hired for the Japanese half of Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) but replaced after two weeks?

Toshiro Mifune had been lined up to play the Combined Fleet commander and left with him; the film went on to win the Oscar for visual effects.

Michael Bay's 2001 film Pearl Harbor won its only Academy Award in which category?

The same film collected six Golden Raspberry nominations, including Worst Picture, and grossed $449 million worldwide.

The Hawaiian name for the harbor, Wai Momi, means what?

Legend made the lagoon the home of the shark goddess Kaʻahupāhau; the alternative name Puʻuloa means "long hill".

In which year did the US Senate grant the Navy exclusive rights to a station at the harbor?

The rights flowed from the Reciprocity Treaty with the Hawaiian Kingdom; the US took possession that November, a decade before annexation.

In what year did Congress designate National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day?

It is not a federal holiday; offices stay open, but the flag is flown at half-staff until sunset.

Of the 402 American aircraft in Hawaii, how many were destroyed in the attack?

Another 159 were damaged; the only aerial opposition came from a handful of P-36 Hawks and P-40s.

Which two destroyers in dry dock were burned out when bombs hit their fuel bunkers?

Flooding the dry dock to fight the fire only made the burning oil rise, and Cassin slipped off her keel blocks onto Downes.

The Japanese strike force sailed from Hittokapu Bay on which Kuril island?

The Kido Butai of six carriers, two battleships, three cruisers, 11 destroyers and eight oilers left on November 26, 1941.