Magazine of the USS Shaw explodes at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 More than 2,300 U.S. military personnel were killed, more than 1,100 were wounded, and eight battleships were damaged or destroyed when the American naval base at Pearl Harbor was, in the words of U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” The attack, orchestrated by Japanese Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku, was as much of a tactical success as it was a strategic failure. The U.S. Pacific Fleet’s three aircraft carriers were all at sea and thus escaped harm, and the overwhelming majority of the ships damaged on December 7 were repaired and returned to duty. While the USS Arizona was completely destroyed and the Oklahoma capsized (these two ships accounted for roughly two-thirds of American casualties), recovery of the remaining ships was aided by numerous factors. Pearl Harbor has an average depth of just 45 feet, meaning that many ships that were “sunk” were resting with their decks well above the waterline, and the harbor’s shipbuilding and dry dock facilities were largely unscathed. In addition, the extensive oil-storage facilities on the island were not treated as a high priority by Japanese planners, who focused on military rather than logistical targets. Had these crucial forward-deployed fuel reserves been destroyed, the war-making capacity of the Pacific Fleet would have been severely hampered. U.S. Adm. Chester Nimitz stated that the destruction of the oil tanks “would have prolonged the war another two years.” It is often forgotten, but the attack on Pearl Harbor was just one element of a larger Japanese offensive that was unfolding that day. On December 8 (local time—the following locations are on the other side of the International Date Line), several hours before the first planes were sighted over Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces began an amphibious invasion of Malaya; by that evening, the Japanese had established a str...