MILITARY · HISTORICAL MARKER
USS Arizona Memorial
Military
8
On December 7, 1941, at 07:57, Japanese airplanes launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu while America was not yet at war. In the first thirteen minutes, the battleship U.S.S. Arizona, commissioned in 1916, sank after being hit by one aerial torpedo and eight bombs, the last bomb striking the forward gunpowder magazine and dealing the death blow to the ship. The Arizona had served with the Atlantic Fleet until 1921, was assigned to the Pacific Fleet until 1929, was modernized, and returned to the Pacific Fleet in 1931; on December 6, 1941, she had arrived at Pearl Harbor from a training exercise, never to leave again. The attack killed 1,177 men aboard the Arizona, including Billy Edwin Gibson of Atchison County, and overall killed 2,403 military personnel and civilians and wounded 1,178. On December 8, President Roosevelt delivered his "Day of Infamy" speech calling for a declaration of war on Japan, and by December 11 America was also at war with Nazi Germany and Italy, making World War Two a global conflict.
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