The attack on Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor naval base · Honolulu, Hawaii, United States · 1941-12-07

On the morning of 7 December 1941, Japanese carrier aircraft attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at anchor in two waves, sinking or damaging nineteen ships and killing 2,403 Americans. USS Arizona exploded and sank with 1,177 of her crew; her hull remains where she settled, beneath the white memorial that spans it. The attack ended American neutrality in a single morning; Congress declared war the next day.

The record

Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.

Finding photographs

Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.

• Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
• The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
• Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
• National and municipal archives of United States, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.

Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.

Footage

Films are matched to this event editorially or by search; if one is wrong, tell us and we will replace it.