Pearl Harbor Research Paper

Pearl Harbor Article: There were no winners in the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Introduction:

At 7.50AM on Sunday the 7th of December, 1941 the American servicemen were beginning to wake up and were heading off to church. However this was no ordinary Sunday for the American people when the bombs began to drop on the sleepy Island of Oahu. The attack on Pearl Harbour was a devastating atrocity that led to a greater event that was not thought possible, the atrocity of the atomic bombs. The attack in Hawaii was by Japanese fighter planes that swarmed the American naval base on Oahu in 1941, resulting in the bombing of Pearl Harbor. However this event pushed the United States into World War Two which resulted in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The most significant retaliation by the United States was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the first nuclear bombs ever used in war. After four years of conflict in World War 2, the United States aim was to force Japan's surrender as fast as possible to minimise the continuation of American casualties. As well as this, they wanted to use an atomic bomb before the Soviet Union did to try establish dominance and to show that they are the greater power. This act of aggression, dominance and arrogance led to the death of approximately 280,000 innocence Japanese civilians in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th, 1945. This immense suffering was more than what anyone could have imagined. The event was unnecessary and an act of pure aggression, which lead to the falling of the Japanese empire and the murder of innocent civilians for the sake of American nuclear experimentation. The devastation that occurred was no accident on behalf of the United States, as stated by Franklin D. Roosevelt “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way”. On September 2nd 1945, Japan officially surrendered to the United States and allied powers on board the battleship USS Missouri. This was a complete tragedy for the Japanese empire with so many innocent

Thousands of New Zealand troops were sent to fight the Japanese as an anti-invasion precaution, in three main locations; Singapore, the Solomon Islands and in the waters surrounding Japan. With Japan’s advancements over the Pacific, New Zealand began to fear for their own countries safety. As a result many soldiers were captured and put into Japanese war camps. The majority of New Zealand troops were overseas occupied in countries such as Nissan, Mono and North Africa. The government did not want to pull them from those conflicts so they asked for aid from the United States. After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan’s surrender, New Zealand and the rest of the world were able to see the catastrophic damage the world had encountered and how pointless the conflicts were. The world and us in New Zealand learnt the importance of peace and global harmony to avoid devastation like the events that had just occurred in World War Two. As a gift to New Zealand, Japan offered clippings from a camphor tree that survived the bombing of Nagasaki, as a token of Peace to the Featherston War Memorial. This new perspective on peace is a reminder that we are a part of a global world and need remember the conflict that impacted us all. The atomic warfare had a great influence on New Zealand and was partly because of this that the New Zealand public fought for a nuclear-free nation. Another non directional