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The images of that Day of Infamy, of the burning ships settling in the mud, the slumping foremast of sunken battleship Arizona engulfed in smoke and roaring flame, smashed and ruined aircraft, grainy images of Japanese aircraft lifting off the pitching decks of the carriers, blaring headlines on the day's newspapers, these are all seared into the consciousness of anyone who cares to know how we got here, today, at this point in our history.  

Three quarters of a century ago, barely, now, within living memory, powerful forces of the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked United States military installations on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.  Wheeler Field, Hickham Field, Ewa, Schofield Barracks, and of course the Naval Station at Pearl Harbor would feel the destructive power of the IJN's Kido Butai.  Three hundred fifty Japanese aircraft in two waves had caught the American installations nearly entirely unprepared, despite the political and military signals which may have portended the attack.  

In the end, 180 US Navy, Marine, and Army aircraft were destroyed.  Four battleships, Arizona, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and California, were sunk.  Four others were damaged, Nevada severely.   Target ship Utah was also sunk, as were a handful of auxiliaries and tenders.   Two destroyers in dry dock, Cassin and Downes, were damaged beyond salvage.   Several ships suffered varying degrees of damage.  More than 2,400 US military personnel (and 68 civilians) were killed in the attack, most on Arizona and Oklahoma, and more than 1,100 were wounded.    West Virginia and California eventually would be raised, repaired, and returned to service.  Oklahoma was righted, also, in a two-year project, but she would be written off due to extensive damage and obsolescence.   Utah, and of course, Arizona, remain where they settled.  The hull of the latter is still visible from the beautiful memorial which spans her, honoring the more than 1,100 Sailors and Marines who died aboard her that day and remain entombed still.  

The United States, slow to anger and reluctant to go to war, was on 8 December a nation incensed.  As the US grieved her dead, Roosevelt's famous request for a declaration of war against Japan summed up the mood of the greatest industrial power on the globe.   When the war against Japan ended with unconditional surrender in August of 1945, the Japanese Navy had been completely destroyed.  Much of her army had been killed, pushed back, or left to starve on island outposts across the Pacific.  Her industry lay in ruins, as did many of her cities.  Two of those cities would vanish beneath nuclear detonations.  Such was the price of Japanese aggression, and for the atrocities in captured lands that took the lives of millions of Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, Chamorro, and Papuan civilians, as well as US, Australian, British, Dutch, and Filipino prisoners of war.  

But all that was yet to come on the morning of December 7th, 1941.  Seventy-five years ago today.   URR here, BTW.