HISTORY The Attack on Pearl Harbor WARM-UP VOCABULARY 1. 2. 3. 4. 53 Traduci le seguenti parole in italiano aiutandoti con il dizionario. Official: ............................................................................... Battleship: ....................................................................... Sailor: .................................................................................... Bombing: ......................................................................... 5. 6. 7. 8. Fleet: ...................................................................................... Vessel: .................................................................................. Aircraft: ............................................................................... Assault: ............................................................................... A surprise attack A regular Sunday morning Pearl Harbor is a US naval base near Honolulu, Hawaii, which was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by the Japanese forces on December 7th, 1941. Hawaii is in the centre of the Pacific Ocean, about 2,000 miles from the US mainland and about 4,000 miles from Japan. No one believed that the Japanese would start a war with an attack on such distant islands: American Intelligence officials were sure that any attack would take place in one of the European colonies in the South Pacific (the Dutch East Indies, Singapore or Indochina). That Sunday started as a day of rest for the soldiers. The sun was shining and everything was quiet. Some of the soldiers were ready to attend the church service, others were having breakfast or writing letters. At 7.20 am, some American officials saw something strange on their radar: several unidentified aircraft flying towards the base. At 7.55 am, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on the base at the command Tora! Tora! Tora! Japanese for tiger which, in this case, was used to define a successful surprise attack and started massive bombings on the American base. The Americans were not ready, so the Japanese fleet destroyed or damaged nearly 20 American ships and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and about 1,000 people were wounded. Battleship USS Oklahoma, one of the biggest of the American fleet, sunk and 429 sailors died. The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan. Consequences of the attack Attack on Pearl Harbor GLOSSARY decade: decennio fighter: combattente mainland: terraferma rest: riposo sanction: sanzione 104 to shine: splendere to sink: affondare successful: di successo unidentified: non identificato Despite the heavy losses, the US Navy was able to recover quickly and after the attack the American people were united in their determination to go to war. The single vote against Congress s declaration of war against Japan came from Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a pacifist who had also voted against the American entrance into World War I. As a woman, she said, I can t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else. On December 8th, Congress approved of Roosevelt s declaration of war against Japan. Three days later, Japan s allies, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.