At dawn on 7 December 1941 more than half of the United States Pacific Fleet, approximately 150 vessels and service craft, lay at anchor or alongside piers in Pearl Harbor. All but one of the Pacific fleet’s battleships were in port that morning, most of them moored to quays flanking Ford Island. By 10:00 a.m. the tranquil Sunday calm had been shattered, 21 vessels lay sunk or damaged, the fighting backbone of the fleet apparently broken. Smoke from burning planes and hangers filled the sky. Oil from sinking ships clogged the harbor. Death was everywhere.

The attack on Pearl Harbor and other nearby sites on December 7, 1941 was one of the most significant events of this century. Journalists rate Pearl Harbor the #3 "Most Important News Story of the Century" (after the atom bomb and landing men on the moon ). It signaled the entry of the U.S. into WWII, fought in two great theaters of war — across the Atlantic in Europe and North Africa, and across the Pacific from Pearl Harbor to the Japanese home islands.

Click on any of the links below to learn more about Pearl Harbor:

• Eyewitness accounts of the attack
• Other attacks that day
• The Ships of Pearl Harbor
• Articles
  

Photo: President Bush addresses the ceremony for the Fiftieth Commemorative Anniversary of Pearl Harbor at the Arizona Memorial, 12/07/1991.