The Attack on Pearl Harbor

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What is happening in this photo? Can you identify what significant event in U.S. history is taking place?

The Attack on

Pearl Harbor

Hawaii and Japan.

Not only Pearl Harbor, but every military installation on the island of Oahu

(Ohwahoo) was attacked on December

7, 1941.

Pearl Harbor from Above

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.

Background

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.

Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory

Pearl Harbor movie

Battle of the Atlantic and the Gulf of St. Lawrence

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.

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.

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.

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

The Raid on Dieppe

You will be put into groups of appox. 4 and review read page 118 of the textbook.

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

Class Activity – Cause and Effect Organizer

3 names will be selected at random.

If a member of your group appears, then you will present a column from your cause and effect organizer.

Only 3 groups will have to present their findings.

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.

Class List – Period 1

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.

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