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How Did Pearl Harbor Change America

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An event on December 7th, 1941 changed the history of the United States forever, and it was all over by 9:55 a.m. Dale Gano, eyewitness to the attack, states, “Watching Pearl Harbor get destroyed and thousands of lives lost put most of us in a state of shock.” The people of Pearl City, home to over 47,000 today, were close enough to witness the attack on Pearl Harbor. The witness said that he saw sunken U.S. Navy ships on both sides of Ford Island burn furiously. Gano could not locate his wife until four months after the attack because of the chaos. He serves as just one example of the thousands of people who lost their family and friends. This surprise attack brought much dismay to everyone in the United States. To the people of Hawaii …show more content…

A couple hours before the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan landed in northern Malaya. Japan wanted to attack Malaya because it was a large producer of rubber and tin. This attack would also capture Singapore; Japan would use that land as a military base. The commander in charge of this attack was General Yamashita. His army was made up of 60,000 soldiers who all had war experience against China. This invasion escalated into the Battle of Singapore; British troops were also fighting this battle against Japan. This invasion ended with over 138,000 British killed or captured (Chen). The British troops were defeated in this battle and Prime Minister Winston Churchill considered the British defeat at Singapore “one of the most humiliating defeats of all time” (Winston Churchill). The question now was why. Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor? The Japanese mindset was simple; it was time to get the “easy” countries in the Pacific before Germany ended the war altogether. Easy was meant to mean large countries that the Japanese thought they could take down. Japan was convinced on a naval war because they believed that they had more supplies, ships, planes, and more overall more advanced than the Americans. Overall, they believed that they were qualitatively better than the United States. This mindset led them into some trouble regarding the outcomes of the

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