What is happening in this photo? Can you identify what significant event in U.S. history is taking place?
Not only Pearl Harbor, but every military installation on the island of Oahu
(Ohwahoo) was attacked on December
7, 1941.
Chart 1: December 7, 1941 losses
Personnel Killed United States
Navy 1998 64
Marine Corps 109
Army 233
Civilian 48
Personnel Wounded
Navy 710 Unknown
Marine Corps 69
Army 364
Civilian 35
Ships
Sunk or beached * 12
Damaged 9
Aircraft
Destroyed
Damaged
164
159
5
29
74
Japan
Of the total number of men killed at
Pearl Harbor, approximately 1,177 were sailors and marines serving on the USS
Arizona. Approximately 333 men aboard the USS Arizona survived the attack.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was the culmination of a decade of deteriorating relations between Japan and the
United States over the status of China and the security of
Southeast Asia. This breakdown began in 1931 when
Japanese army extremists, in defiance of government policy, invaded and overran the northern-most Chinese province of Manchuria. Japan ignored American protests, and in the summer of 1937 launched a full-scale attack on the rest of China. Although alarmed by this action, neither the United States nor any other nation with interests in the Far East was willing to use military force to halt Japanese expansion.
Over the next three years, war broke out in Europe and
Japan joined Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the Axis
Alliance. The United States applied both diplomatic and economic pressures to try to resolve the Sino-Japanese conflict. The Japanese government viewed these measures, especially an embargo on oil, as threats to their national security. By the summer of 1941, both countries had taken positions from which they could not retreat without a serious loss of national prestige. Although both governments continued to negotiate their differences,
Japan had already decided on war. The attack on Pearl
Harbor was part of a grand strategy of conquest in the western Pacific.
The objective was to immobilize the Pacific Fleet so that the United States could not interfere with invasion plans.
The principal architect of the attack was Admiral
Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the
Japanese Combined Fleet. Though personally opposed to war with America, Yamamoto knew that Japan's only hope of success in such a war was to achieve quick and decisive victory. If there were a prolonged conflict,
America's superior economic and industrial power would likely tip the scales in her favor.
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Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory
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Pearl Harbor movie
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The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest single campaign of the Second World War. As the countries of
Europe fell to the control of the Axis Power, less and less territory on the continent became accessible to the Allies and choked off what resources these territories could provide. As a consequence of this, access to munitions and supplies from North America and beyond became increasingly important.
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The system of convoys, particularly from the port of
Halifax, was crucial to continuing access to supplies to
Britain. Canada's merchant marine formed an important part of the system of supply vessels. The Royal Canadian
Navy (RCN) also played a significant role in the protection and shepherding of the merchant marine convoys on their way to Britain.
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As the war progressed, the battle spread closer and in a more concentrated form towards North America and the Caribbean.
Throughout the North Atlantic, German U-boats patrolled further and further, and made increasing numbers of sinkings in the North Atlantic. By 1943, the success of the RCN in limiting the effectiveness of the German U-boats in disrupting supply lines had begun to escalate. Between 1940 and 1942, the number of tonnes of supplies lost in sunk merchant vessels in the North Atlantic had doubled to over 6 million tonnes. By
1943, the tonnage lost was less than 10% of the 1942 lost tonnage, and by 1944, had dropped to almost 5% of the 1942 tonnage. By the end of the war, the RCN had helped over
25,000 ships cross the frigid North Atlantic and had become the third largest navy in the world.
Hundreds of corvettes like this one escorted freighters from Halifax to
European ports in World War II, helping to combat preying German submarines.
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The Battle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence was a part of the Battle of the Atlantic. In this part of the Battle of the Atlantic, the threat posed by German U-boats approached within 300 km of
Quebec City. As a result, Canada's ability to ship supplies was at risk, since shipping out of Quebec City, along with Montreal and Trois-Rivieres, accounted for nearly 50% of the tonnage exported during the war. This threat became sufficiently large that on September 9, 1942, trans-Atlantic shipping through the
Gulf was halted by the Canadian government, leaving only domestic shipping to ports such as Sydney, Nova Scotia available. The Gulf stayed closed until 1944.
A convoy of Allied
Ships
HMCS HAIDA
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You will be put into groups of appox. 4 and review read page 118 of the textbook.
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Decide on who will be the recorder and create the following chart on a piece of paper.
Causes of the Raid Why it Failed Effects
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3 names will be selected at random.
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If a member of your group appears, then you will present a column from your cause and effect organizer.
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Only 3 groups will have to present their findings.
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Write your names on the chart and hand it in to me at the end of class.
• http://classtools.net/education-games-php/fruit_machine/
Summer
Dacia
Alex
Gabe
Graham
Jamie D.
Juanes
Adam
Logan
Colin
Dustin
Salma
Sam S.
The Dieppe Beachfront
Corpses on the beach next to two
Churchill tanks of the 14th Armoured
Regiment
(Calgary) stuck in pebbles. Behind them, thick smoke coming from LCT
5.
Department of
National Defence /
National Archives of Canada C-
014160.
Officer and soldiers examining a Churchill tank stuck on the beach in front of the boardwalk after the battle, its left track broken.
Wounded men lying on the ground are about to be evacuated.
Dieppe, August 19th, 1942.
"The second the boat scraped the beach, I jumped out and started to follow the sappers through the barbed wire. My immediate objective was a concrete pillbox on top of a 12foot parapet about 100 yards up the beach. I think I had taken three steps when the first one hit me. You say a bullet or a piece of shrapnel hits you but the word isn't right. They slam you the way a sledgehammer slams you.
There's no sharp pain at first. It jars you so much you're not sure exactly where you've been hit-or what with."
- LtCol Dollard Ménard, Fusiliers Mont-Royal
Canadian prisoners escorted by
German guards marching through
Dieppe,
August
19th,
1942.