Pearl Harbor: The First Energy War

Charles Maechling argues that the Japanese attack, which took place on December 7th 1941, was partly a response to the country's limited energy resources.

Charles Maechling | Published in History Today Volume 50 Issue 12 December 2000

Photograph from a Japanese plane of Battleship Row at the beginning of the attack. The explosion in the center is a torpedo strike on the USS Oklahoma. Two attacking Japanese planes can be seen: one over the USS Neosho and one over the Naval Yard. December 7th, 1941 – in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt’s stirring war message to Congress, ‘ … a date that will live in infamy’ – marks the devastating Japanese naval air raid on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, that sank or crippled the US battle fleet and plunged the United States into the Second World War.