Eighty Years Ago: Asia Pacific, Dec 4 – 10, 1941

Dec 4, 1941: Japanese navy fans out across the Pacific, with submarine I-10 reconnoitering off Samoa

Japanese invasion force set to hit Malayan beaches three days in the future departs from southern China

Dec 5, 1941: Royal Navy Amiral Tom Phillips, right, recently arrived in the Far East, meets in Manila with General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Thomas Hart to discuss US-British cooperation in case of Japanese offensive, feared to happen soon

Japanese Army beefs up troop numbers in French Indochina, ostensibly to protect northern border from Chinese incursion

Dec 6, 1941: Japanese flight mechanics make last check of aircraft on board Pearl Harbor strike force ahead of the following day’s attack.

Rear Admiral Ugaki Matome, chief of staff of Japan’s Combined Fleet, notes that preparations for Pearl Harbor attack are proceeding smoothly. ‘Hawaii seems to be just like a rat in a trap,’ he writes in his diary. ‘Let it have a dream of peace one more day.’

Dec 7, 1941: Japanese carrier-based planes attack US Navy at Pearl Harbor. Japanese Pearl Harbor strike force launches two attack waves on US Navy’s Pacific fleet, but refrains from a third wave, partly due to fears of counterassault from US aircraft carriers, whose location remains unknown.

Japanese attack kills 2,403 Americans and injures 1,143, but US Navy’s aircraft carriers are intact and important port facilities are unscathed, including invaluable oil tanks

Dec 8, 1941: Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, ‘a day which will live in infamy’, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs declaration of war against Japan

Japanese forces cross border from south China into British colony of Hong Kong

Japanese forces make landing on east coast of British-held Malay peninsula

Dec 9, 1941: Japanese aircraft continue attacks against American targets in the Philippines

Dec 10, 1941: Japanese forces totaling about 4,000 men make landings on two beaches in northern Philippines

British battleship HMS Prince of Wales sinks in Japanese air attack off Malaya

Categories: War

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