The deadly surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, launched without a declaration of war, made 7 December 1941 "a date which will live in infamy", declared President Franklin D Roosevelt. Early that Sunday morning, hundreds of Japanese planes sank or damaged 21 warships and destroyed more than 150 planes on nearby airfields; more than 2,000 Americans lost their lives.
But how much do you know about the attack and its consequences? How did the attack on Pearl Harbor affect the Second World War? And did Adolf Hitler declare war on the US on 11 December 1941 as a result of Pearl Harbor? Here, Professor Evan Mawdsley shares 12 lesser-known facts…
1 Pearl Harbor was not the beginning of the Pacific War
Japanese forces landed in northern Malaya, then a British colony, a couple of hours before the Pearl Harbor attack; meanwhile a larger Japanese force was disembarking off neutral Thailand. What the Japanese called the Hawaiian Operation was a supporting attack; the main blow was the Southern Operation, directed against Malaya, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. And Japan had already been engaged in a full-scale war against China for four-and-a-half years.
