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• ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR FULL

The signing of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, which allied Japan with Germany and Italy, aggravated tensions between the United States and Japan as the latter nation joined the Axis Powers. Compounding the matter was a bloody undeclared war the Japanese were waging in China and the weakening of European control in Asian colonies as a result of the Second World War.

After taking a fix on the island’s westernmost point, one of the aircraft dropped its bombs into the sea.Nationalistic and militaristic fervor in Imperial Japan and a strong belief in Japan's destiny and divine right to rule all of Southeast Asia brought Japan and the United States into increasing diplomatic confrontation throughout the 1930s. Blackout conditions and oppressive weather made it difficult to see the island, let alone a specific repair facility in Pearl Harbor. Lost and separated, the pair of Japanese flying boats made runs on the island individually. Simultaneously, the Navy launched PBY patrol planes to look for the Japanese air carriers they mistakenly assumed must be skulking nearby. Curtiss P-40s were scrambled to intercept, but they too had trouble in the pea soup clouds over the island. The American forces saw them coming on radar, first over Kauai and later at O’ahu. The weather over French Frigate Shoals was clear as they made their refueling stop, but as the two aircraft cruised toward O’ahu, the Hawaiian Islands were socked in with clouds. Submarine I-23, which had been tasked with surfacing off the south shore of O’ahu to give a weather report, had been lost at sea days before, so the pair of attackers went in blind. The planned five aircraft to execute Operation K became two the only long-range “Emily” flying boats available. There, the flying boats would land, get fuel from a waiting submarine, and then take off again to cruise southeast for the final 310 miles to O’ahu. The aircraft would have to fly from the Marshall Islands, crossing 1,900 miles of ocean to a remote atoll named French Frigate Shoals. The mission was a nightmare when it came to the factors of distance, weather, and logistics.

ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR FULL

In an effort to take advantage of a full moon, the attack was scheduled for March 4, 1942. Each Kawanishi H8K “Emily” flying boat hefted four 250-kilogram bombs meant for the 1010 dock at Pearl Harbor. However, in order to sow panic with the locals, the planes would bring along some bombs too. Operation K was conceived by the Japanese as a scouting mission to investigate the American recovery efforts from the December 7 attack. As oil-soaked debris from the doomed vessel, along with victims of the attack, washed up on Maui’s Hana coast, it was clear that the islands were not safely out of reach of Japanese aggression. There were 60 men on the Frank 36 of them survived the attack. Frank was hauling soldiers between islands when it blundered into the path of a Japanese submarine on patrol in Alenuihaha Channel. On the night of January 28, 1942, the US Army transport General Royal T. On the night of December 30-31, the subs were back, not only hitting Kahilui, but also hitting Nawiliwili on Kauai and Hilo on the Big Island. Three of the projectiles hit a pineapple cannery, doing $700 worth of damage. At sunset on December 15, 10 shells from a Japanese deck gun crashed into the port facilities at Kahului on Maui. Instead, the subs attacked softer targets. The attackers avoided the patrol aircraft and keyed-up destroyers surrounding the naval base on O’ahu. Under cover of night, Japanese submarines would silently slide close to the beaches. Even after their attack planes departed the area, the Japanese were not completely gone. The anxiety was more than simple paranoia. School children walked to class carrying gas masks and the paper bills of the islands carried “Hawaii” overprints, making the money useless should it fall into Japanese hands. Locals installed black-out curtains and volunteered to become watch wardens. The sunny beaches of the islands were quickly entangled in barbed wire as Army crews looked to set up firing positions at critical points. As the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island came under attack, it only seemed like a matter of time before the Japanese turned their attention to invading Hawaii. The weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were tense for the residents of the Territory of Hawaii. Top Image courtesy of the National Museum of Naval Aviation.