Few know that Clark Field in the Phillipines was to have been hit at the same time -but there was heavy fog on Formosa delaying the attack for 8 hours. It didn't matter because once again we let our guard down and the "surprise" attack cost us our B-17s and the advantage in the Pacific. The other main factor was the combination of the depression and WWI isolation mentality had us unprepared for war while Hitler and Japan ignored pacts building their war machines right in front of our faces -sorta like Iran and Russia/China/N. Korea business today.

Thanks Rick. I am glad some still remember that day. It is somewhat like 9/11. Now, people have more sympathy for Japan via Nagasaki and Hiroshima but I don't. They brought the fight to us and we finished it. I hope we can do the same with radical Islam despite the left's help. ww

9/11 was, in my opinion (and feel free to disagree), much worse than the Pearl Harbor attack. 9/11 was an attack mostly upon defenseless civilians, not armed military personnel who had pledged their very lives to defend this country. This is not to downplay the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, but to enforce that as unimaginably tragic as it was, 9/11 was much more so.

And to nobody's surprise, Bing.com has PH day front and center, but over at Google it is just another day.

I still often wonder how the Dirty Japs could not have planned an attack on the oil supply depot at Pearl Harbor. Probably one of the greatest military errors of all times. It was the Oil Supply at Pearl that was the greatest Military Objective and the Japs ignored it. Edmond Dantes

Jason, we've been at war with radical Islam since the 80's.

Hence their attack on 9/11 was not so much a 'sneak' attack as was the Japanese attack at Pearl. Both served the same purpose though, it awoke a sleeping giant at the cost of many lives.

My uncle served in the Navy during WWII and was based at Pearl, he never said much about it, I never asked.

That looks like an obvious civilian car all shot up with Japanese aircraft machine gun bullets. That's just plain dirty.

There was also the submarine base and the repair facilities that the Japs missed. These were crucial in the outcome of the war. If the Japs had taken out the fuel supplies, the repair facilities and the sub base, the Navy would've been forced to port out of San Diego or other West coast port.

The submarines were sent out within hours of the bombing with orders to sink all Japanese shipping. They had their teething problems, but by the end of 1943, they had finally figured out a cohesive strategy. The subs sank more Japanese shipping than all of the other means that were employed.

The most telling strategic blunder the Japs made was striking on a day the aircraft carriers were out to sea. They formed the nucleus of the Navy as we know it now and carried the war to the shores of Japan faster than the Japs had planned for. The carriers were instrumental in the major defeat of the Japs at Midway.

That looks like an obvious civilian car all shot up with Japanese aircraft machine gun bullets. That's just plain dirty.

That is a civilian car and the people in the car were civilians. The Japs strafed everything and everyone that moved. They didn't give a shit. Now you know why the Japanese were so and in some places are still hated. They were the WW2 equivalent of the Islamic terrorist of today. Only the American people were not politically correct back then. They called a spade a spade.

Another thing on the oil reserves and the Japs. Some of the lower echelon officers, such as Genda and Fujita wanted to launched a third wave to strike at the oil stocks and the repair facilities, but Admiral Naguomo nixed that. They even begged to have this done, but to no avail. The Nagoumo decision was also a major blunder.

As later air attacks proved, heavy flak and massive fighter protection, could not keep a determined enemy from laying waste to a target and the Americans had lost most of its air power in the first and second wave attacks.

The top photo is actually "friendly fire." The car was hit by shrapnel from anti-aircraft rounds that failed to hit anything and rained down onto civilian areas.

Were I to be allowed to determine who'd fired those bullets into that car I'd say they don't look like a pattern that would be derived from a plane's guns. Rather, I'd surmise the bullets came from an overeager gunner in a ground emplacement. Anyway why would a Japanese pilot shoot at an obvious civilian auto? Would you, when there were many military targets about?

I wasn't there of course, but I've seen the photo before many years ago, and the explanation was an anti-aircraft shell.