Why in news?
- Donald Trump has said the COVID-19 pandemic is a worse “attack” on the U.S. than either Pearl Harbor or 9/11.
- The Japanese assault on the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii drew the United States into Second World War.
- The September 11, 2001 jihadist attacks on that killed about 3,000 people and triggered two decades of war.
Attack on Pearl Harbor
- The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, preemptive military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States (a neutral country at the time) against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii.
- The attack led to the United States’ formal entry into World War II the next day.
- Japan intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the United States Pacific Fleet from interfering with its planned military actions in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States.
