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hi everyone welcome back to the history and 20 podcast hope you're all all right so this time it's a first over here at history in 20 we are talking about some american history which i am a fan of but it's not nowhere near one of my specialties or anything i'm big big fan of it so i thought well why not do something on it so the starting point is today's episode which is pearl harbor better known as the japanese attack on pearl harbor which you might have heard of because it was the main event which brought the usa into the second world war so very short overview of it it happened on the 7th of december 1941 so almost exactly 79 years ago um belligerents were of course the usa and japan um and casualty wise there were uh well 2043 sailors soldiers and civilians were killed and approximately a further 1 000 were injured uh as for like battleships and stuff there was four battleships that were sunk four battleships were damaged 29 aircraft were destroyed and 74 aircraft were damaged so as ever we look at the background of these things so where is a good starting point for pearl harbor well if you remember in my last episode about the gunpowder plot it was again it was one day's worth of stuff that was the event and we just looked a few months back or maybe a year back this time i'm going to go a bit further back when going 10 years before pearl harbor why are we going 10 years back well hopefully it makes sense from here so i'm going 10 years back to the manchurian crisis of 1931 which i think i did about in my gcse history so that was the last time i heard about that but i had to do a bit more research on it for this one so here's a little bit on that so the manchurian crisis was basically japan invaded manchuria which is a province in china as you should be able to see on your screen now and they'd implemented some dynamite along a chinese railway which in turn blew up a japanese train now it was made to look as if the chinese had done this on purpose to blow up a japanese train and it made it look as if they'd done this so that the japanese had a reason to invade so obviously japan did invade with little hesitation and then they established the puppet state of manchuko now over the next decade japan continued invading aries of china and the japanese attack on the uss pane which was a battleship on the 12th of december 1937 helped to further turn western opinion against the japanese but how did this inversion of an area of china even before the attack on the uss planet spark american interest in japan and china now america was particularly dissatisfied and unhappy with japan's increasingly belligerent attitude towards china now the japanese government believed that the only way to solve its economic and demographic problems it was experiencing was to expand into china's territory and take over its import market now eventually japan declared war on china in 1937 so in response to this the u.s imposed a number of economic sanctions and trade embargoes on japan which only made japan more determined to stand their ground now during these months of negotiations between both tokyo and washington dc neither side would budge at all which made war seem almost inevitable so fearing a japanese invasion because of these stubborn attitudes and their belligerence towards china the us the uk and france all assisted china with its loans for war supply contracts further aggravating the japanese that all these western powers are going against the japanese and what the japanese viewers their right to these things but so come 19 mid 1940 the us president who was franklin delano roosevelt also known as fdr he moved the pacific fleet from san diego california to pearl harbor hawaii now we also ordered a military buildup in the philippines too and this was an attempt to discourage japanese aggression in the far east um so we'll fast forward a year from there so by july 1941 the us had frozen japanese assets in the uh in the us following the seizure of french indoor china after the fall of france um you'll i'll put up a map of that on your screen so you might be able to see that because it's quite hard to explain really um which thereby like thereby imposing a virtual embargo on all trade including oil now this step made it just about certain that japan would have to seize oil fields to fulfill its strategic needs while also ejecting the us from the asian theater to stop the us's interference so come the 17th of august 1941 president roosevelt warned japan that america was prepared to take opposing steps if neighboring countries i.e china were attacked so japan was now faced with a dilemma they either withdraw from china and lose face and obviously japanese pride was a big thing then still is or the sea's new resources of raw materials in the resource-rich european colonies of southeast asia now because the japanese high command was mistakenly certain that any attack on europe southeast asian colonies including singapore would bring the us into the war a devastating preventive strike appeared to be the only way to prevent american naval interference and that is why they decided to attack pearl harbor so the attack itself we'll talk a little bit just before we get into that so where is pearl harbor well pearl harbor is in hawaii and it's situated about 2 000 miles from the u.s mainland and about 4 000 miles from japan and that is exactly the problem because nobody thought or expected that japan would start a war with an attack on the distant islands of hawaii practically in the middle of the north pacific and these small small set of islands that belong to the us right in the middle of the pacific uh why would japan attack there so because of this thought that japan would never attack and start a war from there american intelligence officials were absolutely confident that any japanese attack if it were to take place would take place in one of the european colonies in the pacific which includes the dutch east indies french indoor china or singapore now as a result of the american military leaders not expecting an attack so close to home pearl harbor itself was actually left relatively undefended so almost the entire pacific fleet that if we remember earlier fdr moved from san diego to pearl harbor almost the entire pacific fleet was moved around ford island in the harbour and hundreds of airplanes as well were packed onto adjacent airfields so to japan pearl harbor was an irresistibly easy target so japan's plan was simple they just had to destroy the entire pacific flight and by doing that the us would be unable to fight back and then that meant that japan's armed forces would spread right across europe's south pacific colonies like ranch and indoor china the dutch east indies malaya singapore etc that was japan's plan now after months of tactical planning japan launched their attack so the actual attack the uh interesting bit the bit that hopefully you've all clicked on this video for so at 7 48 am hawaii time on sunday the 7th of december 1941 the skies over pearl harbor were filled with japanese planes and bullets and bombs just rained down onto the vessels below which were moored in the harbour just like sitting ducks so at 8 10 am an 800 pound bomb smashed through the deck of the battleship uss arizona and landed in its forward ammunition magazine and the ship obviously exploded upon impact immediately and it sunk with more than one thousand american men trapped inside and then torpedoes also pierced the body of the uss oklahoma and that rolled onto its side sinking with a further 400 americans on board now remarkably this devastating surprise attack actually lasted less than two hours and every single battleship in pearl harbor and i will list them because there's only a few the uss arizona the uss oklahoma uss california uss maryland uss nevada uss pennsylvania uss tennessee uss utah and uss west virginia if you've guessed they're all named after u.s states so every single one of those ships had sustained significant damage and all of them but the uss arizona and uss utah were eventually salvaged and repaired so what sort of impact did this attack have so the japanese attack on pearl harbor crippled almost 20 american ships and over 300 airplanes airfields were likewise destroyed in the statistics i mentioned earlier i'll just reiterate those once more 2043 soldiers sailors and civilians were killed along with a thousand more engine if we remember just before of those 2043 there was over a thousand of them were on the uss arizona but thankfully from an american point of view japan had failed to destroy the pacific fleet because by the 1940s battleships were no longer the most important naval vessels in war aircraft carriers were and as it actually happened all of the pacific fleets aircraft aircraft carriers were away from pearl harbor on the 7th of december as some had returned to the mainland usa and others were delivering planes to troops stationed on midway and the wake islands which we'll mention in a little bit now additionally the attack on pearl harbor left the base's most important onshore facilities undamaged remarkably including oil storage depots submarine docks shipyards and repair shops so as a result the u.s navy was actually able to rebound fairly quickly from the attack so what sort of responses did we have to this attack then well we'll start in the uk with the then prime minister winston churchill so uh the usm ambassador to the uk was a guy called john g winant and he was having dinner with the prime minister of the uk winston churchill when they heard of the news of the attack on pearl harbor because i think 7 48 hawaiian time is 18 18 so 6 18 p.m uk time so it would have been presumably the seven o'clock news or roundabout then they'd have heard this news so uh yeah john g when the u.s ambassador was having dinner with churchill when they heard this news and winant recalled churchill's excitement here in the news and he said churchill jumped to his feet and started for the door with the announcement we shall declare war on japan and when roosevelt phoned up churchill his first words to his uk counterpart were we're all in the same boat now so i think roosevelt knew as well that america were due to enter the war so speaking of roosevelt he addressed a joint session of the u.s congress on monday the 8th of december 1941 a day after the attack on pearl harbor and he used one of the most widely remembered lines in us history when he referred to the attackers yesterday december 7th 1941 and he said this line that is remembered and quoted in films all over the place a date that will live in infamy he said a dirt that we're living in for me the united states of america was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of japan and he added that he will make very certain this form of treachery shall never endanger us again and for the first time during the years of negotiations with japan throughout the 1930s the american people were united in their determination to go to war so japan's aim from the attack was rather naively looking at it now was to guard the us and to drop in the economic sanctions they'd placed against them but instead that pushed america into a global conflict that ultimately resulted in japan's first occupation by a foreign power and later in the day on the 8th of december as well congress approved roosevelt's declaration of war on japan three days later on the 11th of december 1941 japan's allies germany and italy declared war against the us so for the second time in three days congress reciprocated declaring war on both germany and italy as well so more than two years after the start of the second world war the us had entered the conflict so what is the legacy of pearl harbor then so the legacy of pearl harbor and the pearl harbor attack was of course bringing the us into the second world war so quite obviously the european powers would not have won the war without the assistance of the us but as ever though i'm not going to be jingo sick about this or like you know anglo-centric or anything like that i want to look at it from all points of view because i think that's the fairest way we get an assessment about this and there were some negative sides which i wanted to shine a light on which you don't often hear unfortunately so the main thing i'm talking about here is of course the internment camps so the attack on pearl harbor through the u.s pacific coast and especially california as that's the nearest state to hawaii into a mass panic with california being deemed as the next location for a japanese attack so the japanese advance across burma malaya and the philippines not only present the threat to the european colonies which we could also argue is one of the problems with colonisation but that's completely different i won't get into that today but it also present the threat to australia who are always deemed as the western power in the south in the southern hemisphere um and it was rumored that this it was this rumored inversion scare which ultimately led to the mass arrest and internment of americans of japanese ancestry across the us but particularly centered in california now on the same day as the attack the 7th of december the fbi who were assisted with the help of sheriff's deputies began rounding up suspected japanese aliens in los angeles county so by the 9th of december 1941 which was a mayor two days after the attack about 500 issai which japanese non-citizens were in federal custody on terminal island in los angeles harbour and then we'll fast forward a couple of months to the 19th february 1942. president roosevelt signed executive order 9066 which allowed the war department to remove suspicious or possibly dangerous people which in their view were japanese people from military areas and they end up going in internment camps which isn't too dissimilar to the sort of concentration camps that we we associate with the war in europe and in germany and even in burma and stuff we associate we don't often think of america getting involved in that but unfortunately that was one of the negative legacies of this attack now this incarceration was later obviously thankfully unrightly so deemed to be illegal and racially discriminatory uh however america did regain the military initiative in the naval war in the pacific which had obviously been sparked by pearl harbor in the battles of coral sea which was may 1942 in the battle of midway in june 1942 and they then begun the long series of island hopping campaigns to reconquer japanese held territory in the south and central pacific now ultimately the us would go on to formally end the second world war in japan itself with of course the atomic bombings of hiroshima on the 6th of august and nagasaki on the 9th of august 1945. so that's what i've decided and discussed as the legacy of pearl harbor as ever if you've got any comments let me know if you've got any requests let me know in the section below don't forget to like share comment subscribe and i'll catch you next time hope you enjoyed that one see you next time