On December 7th, 1941 at 7:48 AM Hawaiian time, the Japanese Empire launched its aerial assault on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor. By the time the attack ended, more than 2,000 American servicemen had been killed, hundreds of aircraft were destroyed or damaged and all of the Pacific Fleet’s battleships were either sunk or damaged. The attack’s key objectives, though — the Fleet’s aircraft carriers — were nowhere to be seen.
The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress for a formal declaration of war:
We remember Pearl Harbor.