Japanese planes take off from their carrier.

This story is dedicated to the people who died in the attack on pearl harbor.

Destroyed planes

One beautiful morning in Hawaii, a sailor aboard the Oklahoma sudd-enly heard the bugle blare telling everybody to get to their guns. Everybody was surprised because they knew that there aren’t supposed to be drills on Sunday.  This was no drill.  353 Japanese planes were attacking.  That included fighters, level and dive bombers, and torpedo bombers which came in two waves.  In this attack, which lasted about two hours, the Japanese sunk and/or destroyed 18 ships and 347 planes.  More than 2,400 Americans died and 1,000 wounded.

Memorial of Pearl Harbor.

Destroyed city

There were two effects of the attack.  The attack caused the Americans to become suspicious of the Japanese living in the U.S. and sent them to prison camps where they were kept away from Americans.  More than 40 years later in 1988 the congress apologized because they had nothing to do with the attack and were given $20,000 to each living person.  The attack also caused the Americans to enter world war II.  “Sometimes wartime fears bring out the worst of people and the stress of battle can bring out the best in people” says Tim from BrainPop.  Later Japan and the United States became the closest of allies.

 

The attack was a turning point in history.  If the Japanese didn’t attack, America would not have joined the allies and the axis powers would have taken over and the world would be a totally different.

News of attack