Attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941)

Tragic in that several thousand young men were killed. But you have to remember that, in 1941, Hawaii was not part of the USA. It was, as The Onion put it, a "colonially occupied US non-state."

It didn't happen its a conspiracy PROVE ME WRONG.

What effect did WWII have on Hawaii becoming a state many years later?

yea it's tragic, but we was the victems on a cold jap bitch slap. killed a lot of ppl and hurt the navy really bad.

An attack on a military installation, appalling as the result may be, must take a back seat to some of the events on this list. That being said, the long term consequences of this event, and the millions of deaths that resulted move it well up the list. 4.5 stars

I've met a few old salts who were at Pearl on that day, and one even had to swim for it when his ship went down. They and most other vets had no love lost for Nippon. Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave them a grim satisfaction, if you know what I mean.If you are looking for sympathy for Japan in the Greatest Generation, you are looking in the wrong place.  My generation has no love for them either.  I guess we listened too much to our parents and grandparents about the atrocities.

My father was onboard the Saratoga steaming back to Pearl and arrived a day or two after she was attacked. I have a friend who's father fought in the Pacific Theater on a battleship that was hit hard and sunk. And what did the Japanese Navy do about survivors...they let them die in the cold Pacific waters. My friends father died that day also in the Pacific, I have no feelings for what they have done and I have no guilt about dropping bombs on two Japanese Islands...An eye for an eye and a life for a life.

Of course this is horrible, what if you had children or family serving in the Navy, and you saw the harbor was a bunch of smoldering ruins? You also have to remember that the fear of invasion was very real...after all, the Navy in the Pacific was just obliterated! Many people were scared! However, from a political standpoint, it was another US government ploy to get support for a war against the Japanese, which would have benefited Britain and their own interest. Historical documents clearly prove this.

Like Louie the 20th said, Pearl Harbor was avenged when bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The men of Pearl Harbor, the USS Arizona, and Hickam Airfield were avenged at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Maybe we would have entered World War II eventually even without this event, maybe we wouldn't have. Still, it was an attack on our base by a country that was talking peace to our face, during a war we were not fighting in yet.

This is kind of like the 9/11 attacks to me. It was tragic, unexpected, and horrible, but doesn't rate all that high in terms of national tragedy. The lives lost here are nothing compared to the lives lost in the subsequent war, but we did manage to bring the Axis to their Knees and end the war.

We were going to war anyway.

An awful tragedy, but at least some good came out of it. It awoke a sleeping giant, one that had the potential to wage two wars at once and could bring the Axis to their knees. History could have taken a much different route if America hadn't been slapped out of isolationism.

I have to elevate this to a 4 based on the number of lives lost, and the fact that it was carried out not as an act of war but as an act of naked aggression (which caused us to declare war on Japan. ) I, therefore, consider it murder on the part of the japanese, just as the islamofascists murdered our innocents on 9/11/01. I don't differentiate between the loss of civilian and military lives, because they're all Americans. Remember, Hawaii was not a US state at the time, it became one in 1958, I believe. Maybe that's a technicality. We criticize FDR for not reading the tea leaves of war and we got caught un-prepared. Prior and subsequent presidents were guilty of the same thing. The only real prevention for war is overwhelming might. Sorry, peaceniks, but if you want to be safe from this kind of attack, history has shown that you need to have enough firepower. Thank heaven Reagan understood that.

Tragic and horrifying, but I agree with irishgit--it was a military target during an obvious time of high military tensions between the US and Japan. Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but I think 9/11 was a greater tragedy because the people killed there were civilians; they had done no wrong and posed no threat to their killers.

This was a military attack that was largely isolated to military targets and should not be considered a national tragedy. The military failed to protect themselves but were obviously capable of defense.

A horrible tragedy that easily could have been prevented had Roosevelt had the brains to keep a watchful eye on Japan (he made the same mistake a few years later in trusting the Soviet Union). Roosevelt seemed to believe that peace was achievable by naivity alone. So many Americans were killed in this heinous attack on our nation, and millions more killed on the battlefield in its aftermath.