On this day, December 7, in 1941

The Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the Pearl Harbor air force base in Hawaii, with the intent to disable American naval power in the Pacific. Rather then preventing the US from being able to engage Japan in a full-fledged war, the attacks caused angry resentment within America and served to justify the Japanese internment and abuse that soon followed. Former Japanese ambassador to the US stated that the war was a response to the US Government's longstanding aggression toward Japan, and their racist policies on Japanese immigrants. Just To put Pearl Harbor into context, we can contrast the thousands of U.S. servicemen killed in that attack with the hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians killed later by US air attacks. That's not to mention the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US.