Pearl Harbor

& Japanese
Internment
Lesson Goals
Be able to explain the background to the Pearl Harbor attack
and why the Japanese chose it as a target

Describe and identify the damage inflicted to the US Navy as

a result of the attack

Describe the conditions of the Japanese Internment Camps

 Pearl Harbor is a US Naval base near Honolulu Hawaii
Throughout the 1930s Japan had been taking aggressive
Pearl Harbor: actions against China which the US was against

Background This came to a head in 1937 when Japan declared war on

China and engaged in the Nanking Massacre
The US issued sanctions and embargos on Japan in response
with the hopes that this would cause Japan to stop
Pearl Harbor: The
Japanese Attack
On December 7th, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor with the goal of wiping out
the American Pacific fleet of battleships.

Japan chose to attack Pearl Harbor for a few reasons

◦ 1st the US didn’t think Japan would attack Pearl Harbor when there were
closer targets like the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, and Indochina. Because
of this Pearl Harbor wasn’t well defended
◦ 2nd Japan was worried that if the US entered WWII their Pacific fleet would
give them trouble so they decided a preemptive strike was best
◦ 3rd almost the entire pacific fleet was located at Pearl Harbor so if the attack
was successful it would wipe out a large amount of the US’s navy

The Japanese launched their attack at 8 am on December 7th and was quite
effective.
 The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor destroyed 20 American
ships and over 300 airplanes, killed 2,400 people, and
wounded another 1,000

Pearl Harbor: The entire US Pacific battleship fleet was destroyed.

The Results of However, Japan failed to destroy any American aircraft

carriers as they were all away
the Attack They also failed to destroy facilities like oil storage depots,
repair shops, shipyards, and submarine docks. This allowed
the US to recover from the attack relatively quickly
This attack also led to the US to enter WWII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lIm06JOBtw&t=5s&ab_chann
el=hasan15m

Pearl Harbor
Footage
Japanese Internment
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor both non-Japanese US
citizens and the US government looked at Japanese-
Americans with suspicion
They felt that anyone of Japanese descent could be a
potential enemy
Because of this President Roosevelt issued Executive Order
9066
This order allowed the Secretary of War and the US Army to
designate certain areas of the country as military zones and
allowed them to gather Japanese-Americans and Japanese
people who immigrated to the United States in camps.
Families were taken from their homes on the West Coast and
sent to these camps
 Between 110,000-120,000 Japanese-Americans were
interned from February 1942 to March 1946

Japanese Of these 80,000 were American citizens

Internment These people lost their homes and jobs in many cases

Camps Because of the Ex Parte Endo case the continued

imprisonment of people who were loyal to the US was
Continued deemed unconstitutional in December of 1944 and many of
the imprisoned Japanese Americans were freed
 https://archive.org/details/Japanese1943

US Japanese
Internment
Camp Video
TED-Ed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI4NoVWq87M&ab_c
Japanese hannel=TED-Ed

Internment
Camp Video
Lesson Recap
Be able to explain the background to the Pearl Harbor attack
and why the Japanese chose it as a target

Describe and identify the damage inflicted to the US Navy as

a result of the attack

Describe the conditions of the Japanese Internment Camps