Territory of Hawaii · Sunday, 7 December 1941
Pearl HarborA Sunday morning, two waves of aircraft, and a date which will live in infamy.
At 0755 on 7 December 1941, aircraft from six Japanese carriers struck the U.S. Pacific Fleet at its moorings and the airfields of Oahu. In under two hours they sank or damaged eight battleships and more than a dozen other ships, wrecked nearly two hundred aircraft and killed 2,403 Americans. This collection follows the morning minute by minute, with an atlas of the harbor built on the real coastline, nine chaptered articles, all fifteen Medals of Honor, the warnings that went unheeded and the honest numbers.
- 353Japanese aircraft in two waves, launched from six carriers about 230 miles north of Oahu (NHHC)
- 8battleships sunk or damaged; all but Arizona and Oklahoma fought again
- 2,403Americans killed, 68 of them civilians. How the figures fit together
- 15Medals of Honor, ten of them posthumous. Every name
Photograph: USS Arizona burning, 7 December 1941. National Archives 195617; public domain. Toned for this page; aircraft, smoke and flak are illustrations.
Start here · Why Pearl Harbor
A fleet anchorage two thousand miles out, and a gamble to put it out of the war.
Pearl Harbor is a drowned river valley on the south shore of Oahu: three lochs branching around Ford Island, entered through a single narrow channel. In 1941 it held the Navy Yard, the fuel tanks and the anchorages of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which President Roosevelt had kept in Hawaii since the spring of 1940 as a check on Japan, over the objections of its commander at the time, Admiral James O. Richardson. His successor, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, shared Oahu with the Army’s Hawaiian Department under Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, whose airfields and coast defenses were meant to protect the fleet in port.
By the summer of 1941, with Japanese troops in Indochina and the United States, Britain and the Netherlands cutting off Japan’s oil, Tokyo prepared to seize the resources of Southeast Asia by force. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto argued that the Pacific Fleet had to be crippled at the outset or it would stand on the flank of the southern advance. His plan sent six carriers across the North Pacific in radio silence to strike the fleet in its own harbor on a Sunday morning.
It nearly worked as designed. The battleships were caught at their moorings. But the carriers were at sea, the shipyard, the submarine base and about 4.5 million barrels of fuel oil were left standing, and the attack united a divided country behind a war that ended in Tokyo Bay. Start with the atlas below, or follow the story in order through the nine chapters.
Inside the campaign · A growing collection
Special units & extraordinary stories.
Look inside the larger campaign: the people, teams and individual acts that give its broad outline a human scale.
Explore the other special-unit stories → · Read the full Flying Tigers feature →
Interactive harbor atlas
Watch the morning unfold, berth by berth.
The real coastline of Oahu and Pearl Harbor from OpenStreetMap, every ship hit, the airfields, the radar station and the memorials of today. Step through eight moments from 0645 to 1000 and every ship changes to its state at that minute; switch to Oahu to see the attack routes, or to the Pacific to follow the carriers. Every record cites its source.
Berths are placed after the NHHC and National Park Service berthing charts and are accurate to tens of yards at best; ship outlines are drawn to scale in the zoomed harbor view and enlarged elsewhere. The modern shoreline includes landfill and piers built after 1941. Statuses are simplified: a ship marked “damaged” at 1000 may have sunk later that day or over the following days, as California did.
One morning, eight moments
From the first shot to the last plane.
Each card sets the atlas above to that minute. Times are Hawaii time, then half an hour and ten hours behind Greenwich; Washington was five and a half hours ahead, so 0755 in Honolulu was 1:25 p.m. at the State Department.
The reading journey
Follow the attack in order.
Nine chapters, each a full article of about six thousand words with interactive maps of the harbor and the island, charts and tables of the numbers and their limits, every Medal of Honor won in that phase, captioned photographs and sources cited in the text. Start with the road to war, or open any chapter; each one links to the next.
Chapter 1 · 1937 – Nov 1941
The Road to Pearl Harbor
Oil, the embargo and Yamamoto’s gamble: why the fleet was in Hawaii, why Japan struck it, and what Washington read in the Japanese codes.
Read chapter 1 →
Chapter 2 · 26 Nov – 7 Dec 1941
The Kido Butai
Six carriers and the northern route: the striking force, its 350-odd aircraft, the midget submarines and the launch 230 miles north of Oahu.
Read chapter 2 →
Chapter 3 · 7 Dec, 0342 – 0755
The Warnings That Did Not Land
The Ward’s first shot, the Opana radar contact and the fourteen-part message: seven hours of warnings, and why none raised the alarm.
Read chapter 3 →
Chapter 4 · 7 Dec, 0755 – 0825
Battleship Row
The first wave: torpedoes in shallow water, Oklahoma rolling over, West Virginia settling upright and the explosion that destroyed Arizona.
Read chapter 4 →
Chapter 5 · 7 Dec 1941
The Airfields
Wheeler, Hickam, Kaneohe, Ewa, Bellows and Ford Island: planes parked wingtip to wingtip, B-17s landing into the attack and the few fighters that got up.
Read chapter 5 →
Chapter 6 · 7 Dec, 0840 – 1000
The Second Wave
Nevada’s run down the channel, the destroyers in the dry docks, Shaw’s magazine, the shells that fell on Honolulu and the third strike that never came.
Read chapter 6 →
Chapter 7 · 7 – 9 Dec 1941
Fifteen Medals of Honor
Courage and rescue: every Medal of Honor citation, Doris Miller’s Navy Cross, the nurses and the 32 men cut out of Oklahoma’s hull.
Read chapter 7 →
Chapter 8 · 7 – 11 Dec 1941
A Date Which Will Live in Infamy
Martial law in Hawaii, the Niihau incident, Roosevelt’s speech, the votes in Congress and the declarations that made it a world war.
Read chapter 8 →
Chapter 9 · 1941 – today
Raising the Fleet and the Reckoning
The salvage that returned 18 ships to the war, the nine investigations, Kimmel and Short, and the memorials and identifications of today.
Read chapter 9 →Hour by hour
From Hitokappu Bay to a declaration of war.
- The striking force sails. Six carriers, two battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines and oilers leave Hitokappu Bay in the Kurils for a northern route across the Pacific, in radio silence. The same day Secretary of State Cordell Hull hands Japan’s envoys the American terms.
- “A war warning.” Washington warns Kimmel that an aggressive Japanese move is expected within days, most likely in the Philippines or Southeast Asia. Short, told to expect hostile action, puts the Army on alert against sabotage, and his aircraft are parked in tight rows where they can be guarded.
- “Climb Mount Niitaka.” The signal confirming the date reaches the force at sea: the attack will go in on 8 December, Japan time, a Sunday morning in Hawaii.
- The fourteen-part message. Army and Navy code breakers in Washington decode Japan’s long final note; the last part, and an instruction to deliver it at 1:00 p.m. Washington time, are in hand on Sunday morning.
- A periscope. The minesweeper Condor sights a periscope near the harbor entrance and signals the destroyer Ward, which searches without result.
- The first wave launches. About 183 aircraft take off from a point roughly 230 miles north of Oahu, led by Cmdr. Mitsuo Fuchida.
- The first shot. Ward fires on and depth-charges a midget submarine trailing the target-towing ship Antares toward the entrance, and at 0653 reports it. The report moves slowly up the chain.
- Opana radar. Pvts. Joseph Lockard and George Elliott track a large flight 132 miles north. At the information center at Fort Shafter, the officer on duty assumes it is a flight of B-17s expected from California.
- “To, to, to.” Fuchida signals the attack; a few minutes later comes “Tora, tora, tora”: surprise achieved.
- The bombs fall. Dive bombers strike the Ford Island air station and Hickam Field; Wheeler and Kaneohe are hit at nearly the same moment. Torpedo planes run in low on Battleship Row and the northwest side of Ford Island.
- “This is not drill.” From Ford Island, Lt. Cmdr. Logan Ramsey orders the radio message that tells the world: AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NOT DRILL.
- Arizona explodes. A converted armor-piercing shell dropped as a bomb sets off her forward magazines. 1,177 of her crew are killed, among them Rear Adm. Isaac Kidd and Capt. Franklin Van Valkenburgh. Oklahoma has already rolled over; Utah capsizes at about 0812.
- Nevada gets under way. With one torpedo hit and fires forward, she backs out of her berth and heads for the open sea. North of Ford Island, Monaghan rams a midget submarine.
- The second wave. About 167 more aircraft come in over the windward side and the mountains. Dive bombers go for Nevada in the channel and the ships in the Navy Yard; level bombers hit Hickam and Kaneohe again.
- Aground at Hospital Point. Rather than sink in the channel and bottle up the fleet, Nevada is run aground at Hospital Point.
- Shaw. Fires reach the destroyer’s forward magazine in the floating dry dock, in the explosion that became the most famous photograph of the day. Cassin and Downes burn in Dry Dock No. 1.
- The last attackers leave. Twenty-nine Japanese aircraft have been lost. Nagumo recovers his planes and turns away without a third strike.
- In Washington, 2:20 p.m. Ambassadors Nomura and Kurusu hand Hull the fourteen-part note, about an hour after the bombs began to fall. It broke off negotiations; it did not declare war.
- “A date which will live in infamy.” Roosevelt asks Congress to declare war. The Senate votes 82 to 0 and the House 388 to 1; he signs the declaration that afternoon.
- A world war. Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, and Congress answers the same day.
The numbers, honestly
Why casualty totals for Pearl Harbor disagree.
The standard figures come from the Navy’s and the Park Service’s compilations, but sources count different people over different days: men who died of wounds weeks later, civilians killed by falling American shells, sailors from one ship listed with another. Where the major sources disagree, both figures are given.
| Service | Killed | Wounded |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. Navy | 2,008 | 710 |
| U.S. Marine Corps | 109 | 69 |
| U.S. Army (including Army Air Forces) | 218 | 364 |
| Civilians | 68 | 35 |
| Total | 2,403 | 1,178 |
Source: Naval History and Heritage Command and National Park Service. The Park Service’s own list of civilians names 49 killed on Oahu; civilian totals vary with who is counted. Some Army compilations differ by a few. More in chapter 7.
Deaths by ship
Nearly half of all the Americans killed that day died in Arizona.
Sources: NHHC, NPS, ship histories. Oklahoma’s own count was 428; Utah is often given as 64; California 103 or 105. Chapter 4 explains each.
The fate of the fleet
Eight battleships. Six fought again.
The Navy raised, patched and rebuilt almost everything it could reach. Five of the battleships hit that morning were in the line at Surigao Strait on 25 October 1944, the last battleship action in history. Only Arizona, Oklahoma and the old target ship Utah never returned.
Arizona (BB-39)
Forward magazines exploded; 1,177 killed. Never raised; her guns and superstructure were salvaged.
A war grave beneath the USS Arizona Memorial.
Oklahoma (BB-37)
Several torpedoes; rolled over within minutes; 429 killed. Righted and refloated in 1943 but never repaired.
Sank under tow to the scrapyard, 17 May 1947.
West Virginia (BB-48)
Several torpedoes and two bombs; settled upright. Refloated May 1942 and rebuilt.
Surigao Strait; present in Tokyo Bay at the surrender.
California (BB-44)
Two torpedoes and a bomb; flooded slowly and sank at her berth. Refloated March 1942.
Rebuilt by 1944; the Marianas and Surigao Strait.
Nevada (BB-36)
One torpedo and several bombs; beached at Hospital Point. Refloated February 1942.
Attu, Normandy, southern France, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
Tennessee (BB-43)
Two bombs and fire from Arizona’s burning oil. Ready for sea by 20 December 1941.
Surigao Strait, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
Maryland (BB-46)
Two bombs; protected from torpedoes by Oklahoma outboard. Ready for sea by 20 December 1941.
Surigao Strait; hit by a kamikaze off Leyte.
Pennsylvania (BB-38)
The fleet flagship, hit by a bomb in Dry Dock No. 1. Left the yard 20 December 1941.
The Aleutians and Surigao Strait; torpedoed off Okinawa, August 1945.
Sources: NHHC ship histories; Wallin, Pearl Harbor: Why, How, Fleet Salvage and Final Appraisal. The fate of every ship hit, including the cruisers, destroyers and auxiliaries, is tabled in chapter 9.
The feature · Evidence and hindsight
Five warnings, and why none of them raised the alarm.
Every investigation after the attack came back to the same chain of signals. Each was real; each was read at the time in a way that made sense to the people reading it. Laid end to end, with the knowledge of what came next, they look like a siren. In the hours before 0755 they looked like noise.
The war warning
- What was sent
- Navy and Army messages warning that an aggressive move by Japan was expected within days.
- How it was read
- The likeliest targets were the Philippines, Thailand or the Kra Peninsula. In Hawaii the Army alerted against sabotage.
- Result
- Aircraft bunched on the ramps; no full air search.
A periscope
- What was seen
- Condor sighted a periscope near the entrance buoys.
- Who was told
- The destroyer Ward, by blinker. She searched and found nothing.
- Result
- No report ashore; the entrance net was opened for ship traffic.
The Ward’s attack
- What happened
- Ward sank a midget submarine and reported it at 0653.
- How it was read
- Earlier false submarine reports made officers ask for confirmation before acting.
- Result
- The report was still moving up the chain when the bombs fell.
Opana radar
- What was seen
- A large flight 132 miles north, tracked in to about 20 miles.
- How it was read
- The officer at the information center took it to be B-17s due from California.
- Result
- No warning passed to the fleet or the airfields.
The deadline
- What was known
- Washington had decoded Japan’s final note and the order to deliver it at 1:00 p.m. Washington time: 0730 in Hawaii.
- How it was sent
- Marshall’s warning went by commercial cable when Army radio could not raise Hawaii.
- Result
- Delivered and decoded in Hawaii hours after the attack.
We have attacked fired upon and dropped depth charges upon submarine operating in defensive sea area.USS Ward to the Commandant, 14th Naval District, 0653, 7 December 1941; Naval History and Heritage Command. The first American report of combat in the Pacific war, sent an hour before the attack.
Sources: Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Report (1946); Army Pearl Harbor Board; NHHC. Times and ranges differ slightly between accounts; chapter 3 sets them side by side.
Honors
Fifteen Medals of Honor.
Fifteen Navy men earned the Medal of Honor at Pearl Harbor, ten of them posthumously. A sixteenth that day went to 1st Lt. George H. Cannon, USMC, mortally wounded when Japanese destroyers shelled Midway. Each name opens the citation at the Congressional Medal of Honor Society; ranks are as of December 1941.
- Capt. Mervyn S. BennionPosthumousCommanding West Virginia
- Chief Aviation Ordnanceman John W. FinnNAS Kaneohe Bay
- Ens. Francis C. FlahertyPosthumousOklahoma
- Lt. Cmdr. Samuel G. FuquaArizona
- Chief Boatswain Edwin J. HillPosthumousNevada
- Ens. Herbert C. JonesPosthumousCalifornia
- Rear Adm. Isaac C. KiddPosthumousBattleship Division One, in Arizona
- Gunner Jackson C. PharrisCalifornia
- Radio Electrician Thomas J. ReevesPosthumousCalifornia
- Machinist Donald K. RossNevada
- Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Robert R. ScottPosthumousCalifornia
- Chief Watertender Peter TomichPosthumousUtah
- Capt. Franklin Van ValkenburghPosthumousCommanding Arizona
- Seaman 1st Class James R. WardPosthumousOklahoma
- Cmdr. Cassin YoungCommanding Vestal; killed off Guadalcanal, November 1942
The Navy Cross
Doris Miller, West Virginia
A mess attendant in a segregated Navy that allowed Black sailors few other ratings, Miller helped carry his mortally wounded captain from the bridge, then manned an antiaircraft machine gun he had not been trained to fire until ordered off the sinking ship. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz pinned the Navy Cross on him aboard Enterprise on 27 May 1942. He was killed when the escort carrier Liscome Bay was torpedoed off the Gilberts in November 1943; a future aircraft carrier bears his name.
Myths and the record
What popular memory gets wrong, and what the record shows.
Roosevelt knew the attack was coming and let it happen.
Washington read Japan’s diplomatic codes and knew war was near, but no intercept named Pearl Harbor as a target, and the Navy’s operational code was not being read. The Joint Congressional Committee found no evidence that anyone in Washington knew of the attack in advance; mainstream historians agree.
Joint Committee Report (1946); Prange, At Dawn We SleptJapan declared war, but the message arrived late.
The fourteen-part note broke off negotiations; it did not declare war. It was meant to be delivered at 1:00 p.m. Washington time, minutes before the attack, and was handed to Hull at 2:20 p.m., after the bombs had fallen. Japan’s formal declaration of war was published in Tokyo only after the attack.
Joint Committee Report; State Department recordsA bomb went down Arizona’s smokestack.
That story circulated in 1941. The Navy’s investigators and later surveys of the wreck concluded that an armor-piercing bomb penetrated the deck near the No. 2 turret and set off the forward magazines; the protective grating over her stack was later found intact.
NHHC; NPS submerged resources studiesThe attack destroyed the Pacific Fleet.
It disabled the battle line, but the three carriers were away from Oahu, the submarines and the shipyard were untouched, and all but three of the ships hit returned to service. Within six months American carriers won at Midway.
Wallin; Morison, vol. IIIThe Japanese planned a third wave and lost their nerve.
No third strike was ever ordered. Fuchida’s postwar claim that he pressed Nagumo for one is not supported by the contemporary record; Nagumo’s orders were to strike and withdraw, and he had achieved what he was sent to do.
Parshall, Naval War College Review (2010); Japanese Monograph No. 97No one fought back.
Ships’ antiaircraft guns were firing within minutes, a handful of Army fighters got into the air, and 29 Japanese aircraft never returned to their carriers.
NHHC; Craven & Cate, vol. IRemembrance
The ships that never left, and the men still aboard.
Two hulls still lie where they sank, and more than nine hundred men of Arizona remain inside her. The search for Oklahoma’s unknown dead ended only in 2021.
Pearl Harbor
The USS Arizona Memorial
Dedicated on Memorial Day 1962 to Alfred Preis’s design, the white span crosses the sunken hull without touching it. The shrine room lists the 1,177 dead; survivors may choose to be interred with their shipmates, and oil still rises from the wreck.
National Park Service →
Ford Island · Honolulu
Oklahoma’s unknowns
Most of Oklahoma’s dead were buried as unknowns. In 2015 the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency exhumed their remains; by 2021 it had identified 355 men by DNA and dental records, and the rest were reburied with honors at the Punchbowl.
DPAA →
Northwest Ford Island
The USS Utah Memorial
The old target ship lies on her side off Ford Island with the men who could not get out of her. A small memorial faces the hull; because Ford Island is a military installation, visits are limited to authorized tours.
National Park Service →Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.President Franklin D. Roosevelt, address to Congress, 8 December 1941; National Archives.
Walk the ground, or come close
Where to see Pearl Harbor’s story today.
Pearl Harbor is still an active Navy base. The Park Service visitor center is open to all; the Arizona Memorial is reached by Navy boat, and Ford Island only by authorized shuttle or tour. Check current hours and reservations before you go. Listings are for information only; none is sponsored.
Honolulu, Hawaii
Pearl Harbor National Memorial
Two museums, the Remembrance Circle and the boat program to the USS Arizona Memorial. Admission is free; timed tickets for the memorial program are reserved through Recreation.gov for a small fee.
Plan a visit →
Ford Island
Battleship Missouri and the Aviation Museum
The battleship on whose deck Japan surrendered in 1945 lies near Oklahoma’s old berth on Battleship Row. The Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum fills the wartime hangars nearby. Both are reached by shuttle from the visitor center.
Battleship Missouri Memorial →
Closer to home
From the Carolinas
The Battleship North Carolina memorial in Wilmington, commissioned in April 1941, keeps a Roll of Honor of North Carolinians who died in the Second World War. The National WWII Museum in New Orleans tells the Pacific war in its Road to Tokyo galleries.
Battleship North Carolina →Sources and research notes
Built on the official record, and checked against it.
Facts and figures are cited in the chapters to the investigation reports, the official histories and the Navy’s ship records. Where sources disagree on a time, a count or a name, both are given. Some details rest on a single source and are marked so in the chapters.
- Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Report (Washington, 1946), with the hearings and exhibits.
- Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. III, The Rising Sun in the Pacific.
- Stetson Conn, Rose C. Engelman and Byron Fairchild, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts (U.S. Army in World War II).
- W. F. Craven and J. L. Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. I.
- Homer N. Wallin, Pearl Harbor: Why, How, Fleet Salvage and Final Appraisal (Naval History Division, 1968).
- Gordon W. Prange with Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, At Dawn We Slept (1981).
- Naval History and Heritage Command: Pearl Harbor overview, casualty lists, action reports, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
- Pearl Harbor National Memorial, National Park Service; Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency; Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
- Photographs: U.S. Navy, U.S. Army Air Forces, National Archives and captured Japanese Navy images, public domain unless noted. Map coastline © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); world basemap: Natural Earth.
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