70 free Pearl Harbor trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
67 free Pearl Harbor trivia questions with answers. Pearl Harbor is one of those events everyone knows and few know well. This quiz goes past the date and the famous speech into the details: the radar warning that was waved off as friendly bombers, the destroyer that fired first, the only battleship to get underway, the mess attendant who manned a machine gun, and the third wave that never came. It runs from easy questions for a classroom or a family quiz night to genuinely hard ones about the planners, the midget submarines, the declaration of war and what happened to the admirals afterwards, plus a few on the memorial and the films. Difficulty is shown on every question. Every answer has been checked against a source page, mostly the Wikipedia articles on the attack, the individual ships and the people involved, and each question shows its citation, so you can use it for a history lesson or a December 7 remembrance round with confidence.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year did Japan attack the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor?
1941
The raid came while the United States was still officially neutral in World War II; the declaration of war followed the next day.
Q 02Pearl Harbor is on which Hawaiian island?
Oahu
The harbor lies just west of Honolulu and is still headquarters of the US Pacific Fleet.
Q 03At what local time did the Japanese air assault begin?
7:48 a.m.
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.
Q 04How many Japanese aircraft struck the base across the two waves?
353
Japan had 414 planes available; 350 flew in the raid, and 48 more fighters stayed behind as combat air patrol over the carriers.
Q 05The attacking planes were launched from how many Japanese aircraft carriers?
Six
Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku sailed with two battleships, three cruisers, eleven destroyers and eight oilers.
Q 06Which admiral, commander of Japan's Combined Fleet, conceived the attack as a pre-emptive strike?
Isoroku Yamamoto
He had studied at Harvard and served as naval attaché in Washington, and privately doubted Japan could win a long war against American industry.
Q 07Who commanded the carrier strike force that actually delivered the attack?
Chūichi Nagumo
He was a torpedo and gunnery specialist rather than an aviator, and would lead the same carriers to disaster at Midway six months later.
Q 08Which commander of the first wave at Pearl Harbor later settled in the US and toured as a Christian evangelist?
Mitsuo Fuchida
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.
Q 09The code words "Tora! Tora! Tora!" radioed back to the flagship Akagi signalled what?
Complete surprise had been achieved
Atmospheric conditions carried the low-power transmission all the way to Japan, where the Combined Fleet staff heard it on a ship's radio.
Q 10During planning, Japanese naval leaders referred to the attack by which code name?
Operation Z
It was also called the Hawaii Operation and Operation AI; Operation MI was the later Midway plan.
Q 11Japanese planners intensively studied a 1940 British carrier air raid on the Italian fleet at which port?
Taranto
That raid proved torpedoes dropped from aircraft could work in a shallow harbor, which had been thought impossible.
Q 12The Japanese task force sailed for Hawaii from a remote bay in which island chain?
The Kuril Islands
The fleet left Hittokapu Bay on Etorofu on November 26 and took a northern route through empty, stormy waters to avoid being seen.
Q 13The November 26 US note that Japan took as an ultimatum is named after which Secretary of State?
Cordell Hull
It demanded that Japan withdraw completely from China; the strike fleet had already put to sea the day before it was delivered.
Q 21What was the total number of Americans killed in the attack?
2,403
Nearly half of them died in a single instant when a bomb set off the forward magazine of one battleship.
Q 22How many aircraft did Japan lose in the raid?
29
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.
Q 23How many crewmen died aboard USS Arizona when her forward magazine exploded?
1,177
That was 1,177 of the 1,512 men aboard, roughly half of all the Americans killed that morning.
Q 24Which battleship rolled over and capsized within about twelve minutes after taking multiple torpedo hits?
Q 14Emperor Hirohito gave final authorization for the attack on which date?
December 1
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.
Q 15Spy Takeo Yoshikawa reported on the fleet for months while posing in Honolulu as what?
A consular official
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.
Q 16Why were Japan's Type 91 aerial torpedoes given an anti-roll mechanism and rudder extension?
To operate in the shallow harbor
A standard air-dropped torpedo would have buried itself in the harbor mud before it could level out and run.
Q 17How many aircraft made up the second attack wave?
171
It was led by Lieutenant Commander Shigekazu Shimazaki and carried only general-purpose bombs, aimed mainly at the airfields; four planes failed to launch.
Q 18Lt Kermit Tyler assumed the radar contacts of Pearl Harbor's first wave were what?
Six B-17 bombers due in from California
The radar station was still in training mode, and the operators never told Tyler how unusually large the formation was.
Q 19What fills the blank in the Patrol Wing Two message 'Air raid Pearl Harbor. This is ___'?
not drill
The clumsy grammar is authentic; it is usually misquoted as "This is no drill."
Q 20How many US battleships were in the harbor when the attack began?
Eight
All were damaged and four were sunk, yet six eventually returned to service during the war.
USS Oklahoma
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.
Q 25The capsized battleship was righted in 1943 but never repaired. What finally happened to her in 1947?
She sank while under tow to the mainland
Her exact resting place in the Pacific is unknown; the tow line was cut when she began going down.
Q 26Which battleship was the only one to get underway during the attack, before being deliberately beached?
USS Nevada
She was run aground on purpose so that, if she sank, she would not block the harbor entrance channel.
Q 27The battleship that got underway that morning was repaired and served at both Pearl Harbor and which 1944 invasion?
The Normandy landings
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.
Q 28Which former battleship, a disarmed target ship, was torpedoed off Ford Island and never raised?
USS Utah
Japanese pilots were hunting the carriers that usually moored where she lay; a memorial was built beside her wreck in 1972.
Q 29USS West Virginia was hit by how many torpedoes, the last of which tore away her rudder?
Seven
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.
Q 30The Pacific Fleet flagship USS Pennsylvania escaped serious damage largely because she was where?
In dry dock
The dock walls shielded her from torpedoes; the two destroyers sharing the dock with her, Cassin and Downes, were burned out.