Pearl Harbor Bombing
A tiny peak into the history.
Dec 7, 1941. At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese fighter plane appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A thick swarm of 360 Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow to the U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States into World War II, who had until then, signed pacts of neutrality and was watching the war from the sidelines.
Two atomic bombs rocked Japan, and the entire world, in August 1945. The first, named Little Boy, was dropped on Hiroshima at 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945. The second bomb, named Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki at 11:02 AM on August 9, 1945. Tens of thousands were killed in the initial explosions and many more would later succumb to radiation poisoning. On August 10, one day after the bombing of Nagasaki, the Japanese government issued a statement agreeing to accept the Allied surrender terms, effectively ending WWII.
Let us look at the above 2 events with a slightly different lens, something I call 5 WHYs.
- WHY did Japan surrender? Because they got atomic bombed by the US.
- WHY did US use nuclear weapons on Japan? Because US was provoked by Japan to enter WWII.
- WHY was the US provoked? Because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii, a US territory, even as US had decided to sit out the war and wasn’t participating in WWII directly.
- WHY did Japan bomb…
