Questions to Ask About Pearl Harbor
For students, teachers, book groups and visitors to the memorial who want better questions about the attack on Pearl Harbor than 'what happened'. The list follows the order of events: the road to December 7, the attack and its losses, the warnings that were missed, the American response including the removal of Japanese Americans, and how the day is remembered. The notes say what a full answer contains or where a weak one goes wrong, and the last group is for interviewing a relative who is passing on a family member's memories.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Road to war
Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?
Why ask it
A full answer starts in Asia and not in Hawaii: Japan wanted the oil, rubber and tin of Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Fleet was the one force able to interfere. Be wary of an answer that treats the raid as the goal. It was meant to buy time for conquests somewhere else.
What had Japan been fighting for in Asia before 1941?
Why ask it
The story needs a decade of run-up: the seizure of Manchuria in 1931, open war with China from 1937, and the aim of an empire that did not depend on foreign raw materials. If someone's account opens with the carriers already at sea, ask this first and the rest of the answers improve.
Why did the United States cut off Japan's oil in 1941, and what choices did that leave Tokyo?
Why ask it
After Japanese troops moved into southern Indochina that July, Washington froze Japanese assets, which stopped the oil sales Japan relied on for most of its supply. Press for the dilemma that followed: give up the war in China or seize the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies. A good answer shows each government expecting the other to back down.
Why was the Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor and not on the West Coast?
Why ask it
It had been moved forward from California in 1940 as a warning to Japan, over the objections of its own commander, Admiral James Richardson, who thought it exposed there and lost his job after saying so. This makes a strong opening for an essay, because a deterrent that became a target sets up everything after it.
Were the two countries still negotiating when the attack came?
Why ask it
Yes. Japanese envoys were in Washington into December, while the carrier force had sailed in late November under orders to turn back if the talks succeeded. Ask whether either side still believed in the talks by then. Most historians doubt it, and a careful answer will say what the doubt rests on.
Who planned the attack, and how confident was he in the war it would start?
Why ask it
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who had studied at Harvard and served as a naval attaché in Washington, pushed the plan through against doubts inside his own navy. He also warned his government that Japan could not win a long war against American industry. Keep both facts in the answer: the planner of the raid was one of the war's skeptics.
What did Japan's leaders expect the United States to do afterwards?
Why ask it
They hoped that a crippled fleet and a ring of fortified islands would make Americans settle for a negotiated peace instead of a long fight across the Pacific. For an essay on why the gamble failed, start here, because the mistake was about American opinion and not about ships.
What else did Japan attack within hours of Pearl Harbor?
Why ask it
Malaya, Thailand, Hong Kong, Guam, Wake Island and the Philippines, and the landing in Malaya began before the first bomb fell on Oahu. An answer that names only Hawaii has missed that Pearl Harbor guarded the flank of a much larger offensive. Plot the targets on a map, and watch the date line: it was already December 8 on the far side.
The attack
What happened on the morning of December 7, 1941, in order?
Why ask it
Roughly 350 aircraft from six carriers struck in two waves, beginning a few minutes before eight on a Sunday morning, and it was over in under two hours. Build a timeline in Hawaiian time before anything else. Accounts written in Washington or Tokyo time make the same events look hours apart.
How did six aircraft carriers cross the Pacific without being found?
Why ask it
They took a stormy northern route far from the shipping lanes, kept their radios silent and launched from a point a little over two hundred miles north of Oahu. A good follow-up is where American intelligence believed those carriers were that week, because the honest reply at the time was that nobody in Hawaii knew.
Why did the Navy think the harbor was safe from torpedoes?
Why ask it
An aircraft torpedo normally plunged deep before leveling off, and Pearl Harbor is only about forty feet deep, so the anchorage was thought safe from them. Japanese crews fitted wooden fins that kept the weapon near the surface. 'No one could have imagined it' is the weak answer here: British planes had torpedoed Italian battleships in the shallow harbor at Taranto a year earlier.
Which ships were sunk or damaged, and how many of them fought again?
Why ask it
All eight battleships in port were hit, yet only the Arizona and the Oklahoma never returned to service. The other six were repaired, some within months and some after years of work. If a source says the fleet was destroyed, check it against this answer.
What happened to the USS Arizona?
Why ask it
A bomb reached the forward magazine and the explosion killed 1,177 of her crew, close to half of all the Americans who died that day. Most of them are still inside the hull. That fact should set the tone for any question you put to a guide at the memorial, since you are asking about a grave.
How many people were killed and wounded, and who is counted?
Why ask it
The usual American figures are 2,403 dead, 68 of them civilians, and 1,178 wounded. Japan lost 29 aircraft and five midget submarines. Totals differ a little from one reference to the next, so name the source you took yours from and say whether civilians are in it.
What happened at the airfields, and why were so many planes caught on the ground?
Why ask it
Hickam, Wheeler, Kaneohe, Ewa and Ford Island were hit in the opening minutes so that no fighters could rise to meet the bombers or follow them back to their carriers. The planes had been parked close together in the open, which made them easy to guard against saboteurs and easy to strafe. An account that covers only Battleship Row has left out half the raid.
What did the attack miss?
Why ask it
The American carriers, which were away from the harbor that morning, along with the fuel tanks, the repair yards and the submarine base. This question separates a raid that succeeded from a strategy that failed, so follow it by asking what each of those spared things made possible in 1942.
Why did the Japanese commander not send a third wave?
Why ask it
Admiral Nagumo did not know where the American carriers were, his losses had risen in the second wave, and he had already done what his orders asked. Historians disagree about whether another strike was ever seriously proposed or could have been flown before dark. Treat any answer that calls it a simple blunder with caution.
What was that day like for civilians in Honolulu?
Why ask it
Shells fell in city streets, many of them American anti-aircraft rounds coming back down, and civilians were among the dead. Hawaii was a territory then, not a state, and by nightfall it was under martial law, which lasted into 1944. Ask this when a class has reduced the day to ships and planes.
Who is remembered for what they did during the attack, and why?
Why ask it
Doris Miller, a mess attendant on the West Virginia, fired an anti-aircraft gun he had never been trained on and received the Navy Cross. Two Army pilots, George Welch and Kenneth Taylor, got fighters into the air from a small outlying field. The follow-up for Miller is why he had no training: the Navy then kept Black sailors in the messman's branch.
Warnings
Did the United States know the attack was coming?
Why ask it
Washington knew war with Japan was close and expected the blow to land in Southeast Asia or the Philippines. No intercepted message that named Pearl Harbor was read in time. The answer to listen for keeps those two things apart, and the one to distrust slides from 'they knew war was coming' to 'they knew where'.
Had the United States broken Japan's codes before the attack?
Why ask it
Partly. American codebreakers were reading Japan's diplomatic cipher, and what they learned went under the cover name Magic, but they could read very little of the navy's operational code. Japan's diplomats were never told the target, so their cables could not reveal it. When someone says the codes were broken, ask which code, because the whole argument turns on it.
What was the 'war warning' sent to Hawaii ten days before the attack, and what did the commanders do with it?
Why ask it
The Navy's message of November 27 opened by calling itself a war warning and listed the Philippines, Thailand and Borneo as likely targets, with no mention of Hawaii. General Short answered by guarding against sabotage, and Admiral Kimmel did not order long-range air searches. The text is short enough to read aloud in class, so have students say what they would have done on reading it.
Were there any warnings on the morning itself, before the first bombs fell?
Why ask it
Two. The destroyer Ward fired on and sank a midget submarine at the harbor entrance more than an hour before the attack, and her report was still being checked when it began. At the Opana Point radar site two privates tracked a large flight coming in from the north and were told not to worry, since American bombers were due from California. Use the pair to show the difference between having information and acting on it.
Why did the last warning from Washington reach Hawaii after the attack?
Why ask it
General Marshall sent it around noon Washington time on December 7, with little more than an hour to spare, and because Army radio could not raise Hawaii it went by commercial telegram. It reached General Short hours after the raid was over. Ask who could have picked up a telephone instead, a point the later inquiries kept returning to.
Did Japan declare war before it attacked?
Why ask it
No. Tokyo meant its envoys to hand over a final note about half an hour before the first bombs, but the embassy was slow to decode and type it, and it was delivered after the raid had begun. That note only broke off the talks and was not a declaration of war in any case. This is why Americans remembered a 'sneak attack', and it explains the anger in Roosevelt's speech the next day.
Were Admiral Kimmel and General Short fairly blamed?
Why ask it
Both were relieved within days, and the first inquiry accused them of dereliction of duty. Later investigations spread the blame to Washington, which had kept back intelligence the two men never saw. It makes a good classroom debate. Give each side the same documents, and do not accept an argument that depends on knowing how the day ended.
Is there any evidence that Roosevelt knew and let it happen?
Why ask it
The claim has been examined in one inquiry after another since the 1940s, and no document or witness has shown that he had advance knowledge of the target. Most historians reject it. Ask what such evidence would have to look like and why none has surfaced in eighty years, which is a better exercise than arguing about motives.
Response
How did Pearl Harbor change the Second World War?
Why ask it
It joined two wars into one. Until that week the fighting in Europe and the fighting in Asia ran separately, and within four days the United States was at war in both. Japan bought roughly half a year of free movement across the Pacific and paid for it with a united enemy. 'America joined the war' is the thin answer. A stronger one weighs what Japan gained against what it set in motion.
What did Roosevelt say to Congress on December 8, and why was the speech so short?
Why ask it
He spoke for under ten minutes, listed the places Japan had struck and asked for a declaration of war. Look at his typed draft, where 'a date which will live in world history' is crossed out and 'infamy' written in by hand. A student who can explain that one edit has understood what the speech was for.
Did anyone in Congress vote against going to war?
Why ask it
One member did: Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a pacifist who had also voted against entering the First World War in 1917. The Senate was unanimous and the House voted 388 to 1. Follow it by asking what the vote cost her. She needed a police escort out of the Capitol and did not stand for re-election, which shows how little room for dissent there was that week.
If Japan attacked, how did the United States come to be at war with Germany?
Why ask it
Congress declared war on Japan alone. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on December 11, and Congress answered the same day. 'Pearl Harbor brought America into the war in Europe' skips that step, and it is one of the most common slips in student essays.
How did the attack change the argument over staying out of the war?
Why ask it
Through 1941 a large movement, with the America First Committee its best-known voice, had argued that the wars in Europe and Asia were not America's business. The committee dissolved within days. Compare a hometown newspaper from the week before with one from the week after, and you can watch opinion move.
How were the sunken ships raised, and where did they turn up later?
Why ask it
Divers and salvage crews worked for well over a year in oil and darkness to refloat ships from the harbor mud. Five of the battleships hit on December 7 were in the line at Surigao Strait in 1944. The shallow water that was supposed to protect the fleet from torpedoes is what made the salvage possible, a point most summaries leave out.
How did the United States strike back in the first six months?
Why ask it
The Doolittle Raid bombed Tokyo in April 1942, and at Midway in June American carrier planes sank four of the six carriers that had launched the Pearl Harbor attack. Tie this back to what the raid missed. The Enterprise, at sea on December 7, was in the thick of it at Midway.
What was Executive Order 9066, and what did it lead to?
Why ask it
Roosevelt signed it on February 19, 1942, giving the Army power to remove people from military zones it drew. About 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast, roughly two thirds of them American citizens, were sent to camps. Read the order itself and notice that it names no group, then ask how it came to be applied to one.
Why were Japanese Americans on the West Coast removed when most of those in Hawaii were not?
Why ask it
People of Japanese descent were more than a third of Hawaii's population and its economy could not run without them, so only a small number were detained there. The contrast undercuts the claim of military necessity, since Hawaii was the place that had been attacked. A federal commission in the 1980s blamed race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.
How did Japanese Americans respond to removal, and what did the government say about it later?
Why ask it
Some went to court, and the Supreme Court upheld the removal in 1944 in a ruling it has since disowned. Thousands of others volunteered, some of them from inside the camps, for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, among the most decorated units of the war. In 1988 Congress apologized and paid surviving detainees. A full answer has all three: the challenge, the service and the apology.
Memory
How is December 7 marked each year?
Why ask it
It is National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day in the United States, a day of observance and not a public holiday, with flags at half-staff and a ceremony at the harbor timed to the minute the attack began. Ask how your own school, town or veterans' post marks it. Customs differ from place to place, and some places do nothing.
What will I see at the USS Arizona Memorial, and how should a visitor behave there?
Why ask it
A white structure spans the sunken battleship without touching it, with the names of the dead on a marble wall and oil still rising from the hull. Treat it as a cemetery: quiet voices, no joking for photographs. How to get out to it, and whether you need a reservation, changes, so ask the memorial how visits work before you travel.
Why does oil still leak from the Arizona, and why was the ship never raised?
Why ask it
She had taken on fuel shortly before the attack, and a little of it still seeps out each day and spreads on the water in a sheen that visitors call the black tears. The Navy took off the guns and upper works for reuse and left the hull where it lay, too badly broken to repair and holding most of her crew. Ask a ranger about the survivors who chose, decades later, to have their ashes placed inside the ship. The last living member of her crew died in 2024.
Why is the battleship Missouri moored a short distance from the Arizona?
Why ask it
Japan's surrender was signed on the Missouri's deck in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. Placing her near the Arizona puts the beginning and the end of America's war within sight of each other. On a visit, ask your group which ship they would see first and why, since the order changes how the story feels.
How is the attack remembered in Japan?
Why ask it
It tends to take up less room in public memory there than the firebombing of Japanese cities and the atomic bombs do. In December 2016 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the memorial with President Obama and offered condolences, without an apology, a few months after Obama had gone to Hiroshima. A class that asks only how Americans remember the day has half the answer.
Which films about Pearl Harbor can be trusted, and for what?
Why ask it
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), made by American and Japanese directors, is careful about the sequence of events on both sides. Pearl Harbor (2001) is a love story that takes liberties with the history. Use either as a checking exercise: the famous line about waking a sleeping giant comes from the 1970 film, and there is no record that Yamamoto ever said it.
Why is Pearl Harbor so often compared with September 11, and where does the comparison fail?
Why ask it
Both were surprise attacks on American soil with dead in the thousands, and each took the country into a war within weeks. One was a navy striking a naval base on behalf of a government, and the other was a small group killing civilians at work. Have a book group list the differences first, since the likeness is what everyone already knows.
What does Pearl Harbor teach about why warnings get missed?
Why ask it
The historian Roberta Wohlstetter argued that the true signals were there but buried in noise, and only stood out once everyone knew the ending. Add two more causes: Army and Navy commands that did not share what they had, and a habit of underrating Japanese pilots and aircraft. An essay earns marks here by resisting hindsight.
What do people most often get wrong about Pearl Harbor?
Why ask it
Four mistakes come up again and again: that the fleet was wiped out, that Hawaii was a state, that the United States declared war on Germany the next day, and that the codebreakers had read the plan. Use it as a closing quiz. Each person names one thing they believed at the start that turned out to be wrong.
Family
Where was our family living in December 1941, and how did the news reach them?
Why ask it
On the mainland most people heard it from a radio bulletin that Sunday, around lunchtime in the West and mid-afternoon in the East, and the memory usually comes with a room and a person in it. Write down the town and who was there. Then ask whose memory this is, because by now you are most likely hearing a parent's or grandparent's story at second hand.
Who first told you this story, and what do you think was added along the way?
Why ask it
A story that has passed through two or three tellers picks up details from films and from other families. Asking it early, and kindly, lets your relative sort what they heard directly from what they assume. Mark each part of your notes with the name of the person it came from.
Was anyone in the family in Hawaii that day, or in uniform somewhere else?
Why ask it
If the answer is yes, ask for the ship, unit or base by name and write it down exactly, since that is what lets you look for records afterwards. Hold a vague 'he was at Pearl Harbor' lightly: many such stories turn out to be about a later posting there, and that is still worth recording. How to request service records depends on the country and the archive, so ask the archive how it works.
Who joined up or was drafted in the months after, and who stayed behind?
Why ask it
Ask for both halves. The enlistment tends to be the story that got told, while the mother who took a factory job or the brother who was turned down and minded the farm is the one that got lost. Ages help: work out how old each person was that December.
What did they say about that day, and what would they never talk about?
Why ask it
Many people who were there said almost nothing for decades, and the family learned to stop asking. 'He never spoke of it' is an answer in itself, so record it and ask what the silence was like to live around. Do not fill the gap with guesses about what he must have seen.
Did the family know anyone who was sent to the camps, or was our own family sent?
Why ask it
Ask it plainly and then give the answer time. In families that were removed, the subject often went unspoken for a generation, so a short reply may be all your relative has ever been told. In other families, ask what happened to the neighbor's farm or shop, who looked after it, and whether anyone spoke up.
How did the family talk about Japan and Japanese people afterwards, and did that change?
Why ask it
You may hear wartime language that is ugly today. Write down that it was said and by whom, without repeating it as your own words. The second half matters most: a grandfather who later worked alongside Japanese colleagues, or one who never forgave, tells you how long the day lasted in one household.
Did anyone keep a newspaper, telegram, letter or photograph from those weeks?
Why ask it
A front page from December 8 or a letter with a censor's stamp will bring back more than any question can. Ask before you photograph or borrow anything, and note who is in each picture while someone still knows. A dated object also lets you test the family's timeline against the calendar.
What would you like the youngest people in the family to carry forward from this?
Why ask it
Ask it last. The reply shows which part of the story your relative feels responsible for handing on, which is often not the part the history books stress. Put both in your write-up and say where they differ.
Using these questions in class, at the memorial and at home
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Picking questions for the job
For an essay or a class assignment
Take two from Road to war, three from The attack, two from Warnings, two from Response and one from Memory. Ten questions spread like that show the raid had causes and consequences, which is what separates a history essay from a retelling of one morning.
For a book group
Skip the hour-by-hour material, which the book has already covered, and spend the time on the questions people can disagree about: whether the commanders were fairly blamed, why the third wave never flew, how the West Coast removals were justified. Three of those fill an evening.
For a visit to the memorial
Read The attack before you go and carry four or five from Memory with you. Rangers and volunteers answer the same handful of questions all day, so one about the salvage or about civilians in Honolulu tends to get a longer and better reply. Opening hours, boat access and reservations change, so ask the memorial directly how a visit works.
For a teacher with a full class
Give each small group one tag and ten minutes, then have them report the answer they were least sure of. Warnings works well as a role play, with each student holding only the message their commander really received.
Keep three clocks straight
The same moment was early Sunday morning in Hawaii, early Sunday afternoon in Washington and before dawn on Monday in Tokyo. Pick Hawaiian time for your notes and convert everything into it. A good share of the confusion about who knew what, and when, is a time zone error.
Reading the evidence
Start with one short document
The war warning of November 27, Roosevelt's marked-up draft of December 8 and the text of Executive Order 9066 each fit on a page or two. Reading one of them yourself is worth more than three summaries, and it gives an essay a quotation nobody else in the class will have.
Survivor accounts were mostly recorded late
Oral histories from sailors, nurses and Honolulu residents are vivid and usually reliable about what one person saw. They are weaker on times and sequences, and some have absorbed scenes from films. Go to them for what the morning felt like and to the official chronology for the order of events.
Expect the numbers to vary
Casualty totals, aircraft counts and the size of the removals from the West Coast are given slightly differently in different references. Say which source your figure comes from. A round number such as 'about 2,400' is safer in speech than a precise figure quoted from memory.
Mind the words for the camps
'Internment' is the word most people search for and most older books print. Many historians and Japanese American organizations now prefer 'incarceration' for the mass removal, since most of those held were citizens and internment is a legal term for holding enemy nationals. Ask your teacher or the museum which term they prefer and why, and be consistent.
When a relative is passing the story on
Say whose memory it is
Very few people who were adults in 1941 are alive to ask, so you will usually be talking to a son, a daughter or a grandchild. Begin each note with who saw it and who told it: 'Grandpa Joe, as told by Aunt Ruth'. That one habit keeps a family story honest.
Collect names you can check
A ship's name, a unit, a base, a street address in Honolulu, a date on a telegram. Each one can be compared with public records later, and each makes the story easier for the next person in the family to find again. How to request records differs by country and archive, so ask the archive what it needs from you.
Do not correct the story in the room
If the family version has Grandpa on a ship that was not in port, write it down as told and check afterwards. The mismatch is often interesting in itself: a later posting, a brother's story borrowed, a newsreel remembered as experience. Bring what you find back gently, as a question.
Go carefully around the camps and around loss
A family that lost someone on December 7, or that was removed from its home in 1942, may have a rule of silence older than the person you are asking. Offer the question once, accept a short answer and move on. People often return to it by themselves later in the conversation.
Mistakes that weaken an answer
Starting the story in December
An account that begins with planes over Oahu cannot explain why they came. Whatever the assignment, spend at least one question on China, oil and the failed talks.
Judging 1941 by what we know now
Every missed warning looks obvious once you know the ending. Before blaming anyone, list what that person had been told by that hour and what else was competing for attention. Then decide.
Calling it the day the fleet was destroyed
The raid killed more than two thousand people and wrecked the battle line for a time. It left the carriers, the fuel, the repair yards and the submarines, and most of the damaged ships came back. Both halves belong in the answer.
Leaving the removals out
The forced removal of Japanese Americans is a direct consequence of December 7 and belongs in any full account of the American response, not in a separate unit. If a list of questions has none about it, add one.