The Japanese strike force -- six aircraft carriers under Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo -- had crossed the northern Pacific undetected, launching 353 aircraft in two waves from a position roughly 230 miles north of Oahu. The first wave hit at 7:48 a.m., targeting airfields and Battleship Row along the southeast shore of Ford Island. Torpedo bombers skimmed low over the harbor while dive bombers and high-altitude bombers struck from above. The second wave arrived around 8:50 a.m. Within the space of those two hours, eight battleships were damaged and four sunk, including USS Arizona, which exploded when a bomb detonated her forward magazine, killing 1,177 of her crew. USS Oklahoma capsized with 429 men trapped inside. Three cruisers, three destroyers, and a minelayer were also hit, and 188 aircraft were destroyed on the ground.

Even amid the devastation, individual acts of courage reshaped the battle's margins. Ensign Joseph Taussig Jr. was severely wounded aboard USS Nevada but remained at his antiaircraft guns. Lieutenant Commander F. J. Thomas got Nevada underway in the captain's absence -- the only battleship to attempt escape from the harbor -- before she was deliberately grounded to avoid sinking in the channel and blocking it. Captain Mervyn Bennion of USS West Virginia led his crew until he was cut down by fragments from a bomb that struck the ship moored alongside. One destroyer got underway with only four ensigns aboard, none with more than a year at sea; she operated independently for 36 hours before her commanding officer could return. Fifteen Medals of Honor were awarded for actions that morning, more than for any single engagement in Navy history to that point.

As a tactical strike, the attack achieved much of what Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had planned. The Pacific Fleet's battleship force was temporarily destroyed, and American airpower on Oahu was crippled before it could respond. But the attack missed its most valuable targets. The three Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers -- Enterprise, Lexington, and Saratoga -- were all away from port that morning. The submarine base, fuel storage facilities holding 4.5 million barrels of oil, and the repair yards were left largely untouched. Had Japan destroyed those fuel reserves, the Pacific Fleet would have been forced to withdraw to the West Coast, setting back American operations by months or years. Nagumo chose not to launch a third wave, a decision that remains one of the most debated in military history.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed Congress the following day, calling December 7 "a date which will live in infamy." Congress declared war on Japan with only one dissenting vote, cast by pacifist Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States three days later, making the conflict fully global. The attack transformed American public opinion overnight. Isolationism, which had kept the United States out of the European war for over two years, evaporated. Recruitment offices were overwhelmed. Industrial production shifted to a wartime footing at a speed that stunned both allies and enemies. The very thing Yamamoto had feared -- awakening a sleeping giant -- had come to pass.

Pearl Harbor today is both an active naval base and a national memorial. The sunken hull of USS Arizona still leaks oil into the water above, drops that visitors call the "tears of the Arizona" or "black tears." The USS Arizona Memorial, a white structure that straddles the wreck without touching it, receives more than a million visitors each year. Nearby, the battleship USS Missouri -- on whose deck Japan signed its surrender in 1945 -- was moved to Pearl Harbor in 1999 and positioned behind the Arizona, its bow facing the memorial in a symbolic gesture of watchfulness. Every Navy, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine vessel entering Pearl Harbor participates in the tradition of manning the rails, standing at attention and saluting the Arizona Memorial as the ship passes. The harbor holds the beginning and end of a war, separated by less than a quarter mile of water.