This December 7^th marks the 82^nd anniversary of what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed as “a date which will live in infamy.” On that quiet Sunday morning in 1941 American military personnel, and civilians, of the United States Pacific naval and army bases at Pearl Harbor were completely taken by surprise when 360 Japanese aircraft had launched an undetected attack.  No one can doubt that the Japanese had gained a great military success, as the hour and five minute attack on Pearl Harbor severely crippled American military strength in the Pacific. Other American and Allied military strongholds throughout the Pacific were later attacked on December 7^th and 8^th. But, the extent of the disaster in the Pacific did not sway the United States to immediate capitulation toward Japanese militant imperialism across the east and southeast Asia continent and Pacific, which the Japanese government believed would have occurred; rather, a unified public swept away all earlier support for neutrality, the hardships of the depression, and became resolute “in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.”

The United States government believed that the Japanese military was not daring nor resourceful enough to launch an attack on the Pacific stronghold that was some 4,000 miles away from Japan. In 1936 the mastermind of the attack, Admiral Yamamoto Isoruku, stated that such an attempt would be a game of chance. Ships linearly anchored in the harbour were perfect targets for the Japanese torpedoes and dive bombers. Fighter planes closely lined up parallel to the runways were easy targets for strafing. 

The super-dreadnought battleships U.S.S. Arizona (BB-39) and the Oklahoma (BB-37) were completely destroyed, six other battleships suffered varying degrees of damage. The dreadnought battleship U.S.S. Utah (BB-31) was a total loss. Three cruisers, three destroyers, and a complement of other vessels were also damaged. More than 180 military aircraft were destroyed. In total there were more than 3,400 military and civilian casualties, including 2,404 who were killed during the attack. Japanese loss of aircraft and men was surprisingly minimal.

Total victory at Pearl Harbor slipped away from Admiral Yamamoto since the Pacific fleet was not completely destroyed as hoped; the three aircraft carriers of the United States Pacific fleet, the U.S.S. Enterprise (CV-6), U.S.S. Lexington (CV-2), and the U.S.S. Saratoga (CV-3) were by chance out on maneuvers.
 

It would take 3 years, 8 month, and 25 days for the resolute American public to see Roosevelt’s assertion of “absolute victory.” It was a cloudy morning in Tokyo Bay on Sunday, September 2^nd, 1945 when somber imperial delegates of the Empire of Japan boarded the battleship U.S.S. Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay to sign the Instrument of Surrender. The United States has always been formal about how it symbolically accepts the surrender of its defeated enemies. Keeping with such a tradition, Admiral Chester Nimitz’s armada of over three hundred Allied vessels anchored in the bay as a symbol of the occupation forces’ combined might in the Pacific. Of the warships present that Sunday morning was the dreadnought battleship U.S.S. West Virgina (BB-48), which was one of the surviving moored battleships from the Pearl Harbor attack.

The United States recognizes two days known as Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day). August 14^th would be remembered as the day that Japan reluctantly announced its unconditional surrender to the Allied forces, following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6^th and Nagasaki three days later. But World War II officially did not come to a peaceful end until the official surrender of the Empire of Japan on September 2^nd. On this day the overwhelming pre-war senses of defeatism of the Depression and anxiety of the Second World War both yielded to a national feeling of exhilaration for President Roosevelt’s promised “absolute victory.”

Before the war the diplomacy of isolationism kept the United States from exerting leadership in international affairs; afterwards, the practice was laid to rest due to the allied war effort abroad as America rose as a World Superpower. What the war taught us was that all nations are indeed politically and economically interdependent. Following the war the free world looked towards the United States as an international power to not only maintain peace, both politically and militarily, but to rebuild the economies of war-torn Europe and Japan.