![]() ![]() ![]() Japanese torpedo planes wheeled in over the harbor and started attack runs on Battleship Row. And so that’s what they thought it was at first, because they heard some explosions and things, and thought, ‘Oh they’re playing real good today.’” It was normal for the navy to play war games. "You see, that was normal for on a Sunday morning. So about that time, why, the General Quarters sounded, and everyone went to their battle stations.”Īt Hickam Field, DeForest’s Art Rortvedt noticed Japanese fighters swooping in as he headed for the bathroom to prepare for his day. We noticed the Rising Sun emblem on the planes, and then we knew that it was the Japanese. But when they started releasing the torpedoes it started becoming evident that it was something else. “We even thought it was training when they started diving on the battleships. “While we were standing there we noticed the planes coming in which we first naturally took as being our own planes and that it was training,” he later recalled. Madison’s Charlie May was aboard cruiser USS Phoenix waiting for a launch to take him over to church services aboard battleship USS Arizona. Nonetheless, the Japanese achieved surprise as they started their attack at 7:55. Japanese midget submarines were spotted and sunk off the harbor’s mouth in the 90 minutes before Fuchida sent his signal. Fatefully, the American carriers were all at sea.Īmerican radar picked up the incoming Japanese planes, but they were mistaken for American bombers due to arrive from California. (The eighth battleship, USS Pennsylvania, was in a nearby dry dock undergoing repairs.) Destroyers, cruisers, and submarines grouped in other places around the harbor. ![]() The fleet’s centerpiece was Battleship Row, where seven of the eight battleships moored, four of them in tandem. On December 7, most of the fleet was moored in the harbor around Ford Island, which was home to the U.S. This latter target involved sending six carriers over 4,000 miles from Japan to launch a surprise attack, with the goal of knocking out the American battleships and aircraft carriers. Far East Air Force in the Philippines, and the U.S. At the start of the war, Japan aimed to eliminate the three great pillars of Allied Pacific defense: the British Force Z at Singapore, the U.S. When war looked imminent in 1941, the Japanese military decided to launch simultaneous attacks across the Far East. Japan had been on a collision course with the United States and its allies for a long time. This article, along with other sections of this magazine, tells the story of Pearl Harbor through their eyes, using accounts and information from the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Collection. More than 200 Wisconsin service members were on Oahu that day eighty years ago, with over fifty-five killed. popular opinion against Japan and its German and Italian allies in the Axis Powers and marked a watershed in U.S. The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. Those on the ground did not know it, but the United States was enjoying its last minutes of peace. naval base at Pearl Harbor and other points on the island. The formation broke apart as groups of planes zoomed toward their targets in and around the U.S. Their commander, Fuchida Mitsuo, surveyed the scene and signaled for the attack to begin. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, 183 Japanese planes winged in over Kahuku Point, the northernmost tip of Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands. Wisconsin in the Civil War: Battle Flags and Wisconsin Regimental Historiesįifteen minutes before 8 a.m. ![]()
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