No Boots on the Ground in Pearl Harbor Either

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America remembers attack on Pearl Harbor...

US Remembers Pearl Harbor Attack on December 7
December 07, 2015 - Monday is the 74th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

In 1941, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt declared the December 7 attack as "a date which will live in infamy," with the U.S. declaring war on Japan a day later and entering World War II. More than 2,400 American sailors and others were killed in the sneak attack on what is now a U.S. island state in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

In this file image provided by the U.S. Navy, crewmen of the USS Nevada still fight flames on the battleship, battered in the Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.​

Now, Japan is a staunch U.S. ally and there are a fast-dwindling number of aging American veterans who fought in World War II. However, a 110-year-old veteran -- Frank Levingston from Louisiana -- will be the guest of honor at the Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day ceremony at the World War II Memorial in Washington. And the National Park Service along with the U.S. Navy will hold a memorial service at Pearl Harbor's Kilo Pier.

US Remembers Pearl Harbor Attack on December 7

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Attack on Pearl Harbor Remembered
Dec 07, 2015 | At five minutes to eight o'clock, on a Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941, in Hawaii, Japanese planes attacked the United States military base at Pearl Harbor. An hour later, a second wave of Japanese planes continued the attack. By 9:45 a.m. (local Hawaii time), the attack was finished, with all but 29 Japanese planes returning to the safety of their aircraft carriers.

The attack on Pearl Harbor wiped out approximately half of America's military airpower in the Pacific Theater; severely damaged eight Navy battleships, three destroyers and three cruisers; demolished the battleships U.S.S. Oklahama and Arizona; and killed more than 2,300 American servicemen. Pearl Harbor also spurred an isolationist America into World War II. Directly and indirectly, the attack, during the course of the next three-plus years, led the United States to enlist 11.2 million soldiers, 4.2 million sailors, nearly 670,000 Marines, more than 240,000 members of the Coast Guard (the U.S. Air Force had not been created at this time and airpower was under the Army's purview). American manufacturers produced 296,000 planes, 102,000 tanks, 88,000 ships and landing craft during the course of World War II.

Of the attack on Pearl Harbor, historian Paul Johnson writes, "Thus America, hitherto rendered ineffectual by its remoteness, its divisions, and its pusillanimous leadership, found itself instantly united, angry, and committed to wage total war with all its outraged strength." Speaking to a joint session of Congress, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called Pearl Harbor "a date which will live in infamy." America declared war on Japan. Soon, Germany's Adolf Hitler officially drew the U.S. into the European conflict by declaring war on America. Though committed to the task of winning the war, there are myths about the consequences of Pearl Harbor.

Sailors in a motor launch rescue a survivor from the water alongside the sunken USS West Virginia during or shortly after the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor.​

Despite anger concerning the attack, every able-bodied, American male did not immediately rush to enlist to wage war. There was a surge in recruitment following the attack, but "contrary to much later mythology, the nation's young men did not step forward in unison to answer the trumpet's call, neither before nor after Pearl Harbor (and) deferments were coveted," writes historian David M. Kennedy on America's Selective Service process of the early 1940s. The nation's politicians did not set partisan criticism aside for the "common cause." Some people accused Roosevelt of placing the naval forces in Pearl Harbor to intentionally bait the Japanese into an attack (though little evidence has been supplied to support this claim).

Though World War II was one of the most popularly supported wars in American history, there remained periods when people jumped off the patriotic band wagon to voice other concerns. Historian Howard Zinn notes there were approximately 14,000 labor strikes during the war years, with 1 million workers striking from the nation's mines, steel mills, auto and transportation-equipment industries at various times during 1944, a crucial period of the war since the D-Day invasion occurred that same year. Still, these issues aside, following Pearl Harbor, "the United States had embarked on a mobilization of human, physical, and financial resources without precedent in history," Johnson writes. And this spirit of commitment won the war.

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