11.8a.

3 The Attack on Pearl Harbor

Document 11.8a.3a: Five short accounts of the Day of Infamy by Onondaga

county locals.

[Document from the OHA Newspaper Collection]

Document 11.8a.3b: Account by Mildred Christopher-Bradshaw, who was a
fourteen-year-old girl at the time of the Pearl Harbor bombing.
[Document from the OHA Archives]
Document 11.8a.3c: Account by Phoebe Y. E. Groot, who was a young Chinese
American girl living in Honolulu, Hawaii at the time of the Pearl Harbor bombing.
[Document from the OHA Archives]
Document 11.8a.3d: Account by Herbert A. Johnson, who was a young African
American man living in Syracuse at the time of the Pearl Harbor bombing.
[Document from the OHA Archives]
Document 11.8a.3e: Account by Marjory Werts Wilkins, who was a twelve-year-old
African American girl living in Syracuse at the time of the Pearl Harbor bombing.
[Document from the OHA Archives]
Context:
At the time of the Japanese bombing, American concerns were focused instead on the
German U-boat menace coming from the Atlantic Ocean. Therefore, an airstrike on
Pearl Harbor was all the more devastating because it came as such a surprise. In part this
surprise was because, as Edwin Palmer Hoyt argues, over the summer months [leading
up to the attack] the Japanese had sent out many clues, which were either misinterpreted
by the American intelligence community or ignored.1

The attack began the morning of December 7, 1941 and was carried out by 353 Japanese
fighter planes, bombers, and torpedo planes in two waves, launched from six aircraft
carriers. Four U.S. Navy battleships out of the eight attacked were sunk, along with three
cruisers, three destroyers, and an anti-aircraft training ship. 188 U.S. aircraft were
destroyed; 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded. 2

The attack on Pearl Harbor deeply impacted Americans throughout the country as well
as the United States decision to enter WWII. As shown by the stories told by Syracusans
in documents 11.8a.3a-e, the attack on Pearl Harbor affected everyone in different ways.
However, each story relays feelings of fear and sadness as well as an aversion to the
violence of war stemming from their own experience of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

1
Edwin Palmer Hoyt, Pearl Harbor Attack, (Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 2008), 14.
2
Jennifer Rosenberg, Pearl Harbor Facts, About Education, http://history1900s.about.com/od/Pearl-Harbor/a/Pearl-Harbor-
Facts.htm.