The surprised Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, sunk or badly damaged 18 ships, destroyed 188 planes and damaged 159 more. More than 2,400 Americans were killed (nearly half in the explosion of the U.S.S. Arizona) and 1,178 were wounded. In two hours, the Navy had lost about three times as many men as in the Spanish-American War and World War I combined.
The next day, a grim President Roosevelt went before Congress, On December 7, he said, “a day that will live in infamy,” the Japanese had launched an “unprovoked and dastardly” attack on American soil; he asked for a declaration of war. The Senate approved his request 82-0; the House 388-1; only Representative Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who had voted against the war resolution in 1917, cast a negative vote. Three days later, Germany and Italy announced that they were at war with the United States.
Asked to describe World War II, Franklin Roosevelt responded that it was simply “the survival war.”
The attack not only brought the United States into the fighting, but united the country as no other event could have. Americans everywhere responded to it with anger and determination.
Of the 31 million men who registered for the draft, nearly 10 million were inducted. Thirty-six percent of registrants were put in the rejected class of 4-F, in part because doctors were now more skilled than in World War I at detecting mental instability. Hundreds of thousands more were turned down as illiterates. By war’s end some 15 million men and women had seen service; 10.4 million in the Army, 3.9 million in the Navy, 600,000 in the Marines and 242 thousand in the Coast Guard. More than 200,000 women served in the armed forces as nurses or in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) or other auxiliaries.
By the end of the war, American workers had produced 297,000 planes, 86,000 tanks, 6,500 naval vessels, 64,500 landing craft, 5,400 cargo vessels, 315,000 artillery pieces, 4.2 million tons of artillery shells, 17 million rifles and mor that 41 billion bullets, about 1,400 for each enemy in uniform.
World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the 2.3 billion (est.) people on Earth in 1940. Deaths directly caused by the war (including military and civilian fatalities) are estimated at 50–56 million, with an additional estimated 19–28 million deaths from war-related disease and famine. Civilian deaths totaled 50–55 million. Military deaths from all causes totaled 21–25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war. More than half of the total number of casualties are accounted for by the dead of the Republic of China and of the Soviet Union.
American military casualties were approximately 407,000. This number includes deaths of regular military forces from combat as well as non-combat causes, the deaths of prisoners of war in captivity and personnel missing in action.
- Battle deaths (including POWs who died in captivity, does not include those who died of disease and accidents) were 292,131: Army 234,874 (including Army Air Forces 52,173); Navy 36,950; Marine Corps 19,733; and Coast Guard 574 (185,924 deaths occurred in the European/Atlantic theater of operations and 106,207 deaths occurred in Asia/Pacific theater of operations).
- During World War II, 14,059 American POWs died in enemy captivity throughout the war (12,935 held by Japan and 1,124 held by Germany).
- During World War II, 1.2 million African Americans served in the U.S. Armed Forces and 708 were killed in action. 350,000 American women served in the Armed Forces during World War II and 16 were killed in action. During World War II, 26,000 Japanese-Americans served in the Armed Forces and over 800 were killed in action.
On September 2, 1945, victors and vanquished gathered on the U.S. battleship Missouri gathered in Tokyo Bay. Amidst what one observer called “the hush of history,” General Yoshijirō Umezu and Mamoru Shigemitsu signed to complete Japan’s surrender. Three years eight months and 26 days after Pearl Harbor, the war was over.
Note: General Umezu opposed surrender in August 1945; he believed that the military should fight on, forcing the Allies to sustain such heavy losses in an invasion of Japan, that Japan could negotiate for peace under better terms. He was personally ordered by Emperor Hirohito to sign the instrument of surrender on behalf of the armed forces and was thus the Army’s senior representative during the surrender ceremonies on the U.S.S. Missouri, officially ending World War II.
After the war, Umezu was arrested by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) authorities and tried as a war criminal at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo. He was found guilty of waging a war of aggression and sentenced to life imprisonment on November 12, 1948. While in Sugamo Prison, he became a convert to Christianity. Umezu died on January 8, 1949 while still incarcerated.
Mamoru Shigemitsu served as Minister of Foreign Affairs three times during and after World War II as well as the Deputy Prime Minister of Japan. As civilian plenipotentiary representing the Japanese government, Shigemitsu co-signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender.
Despite Shigemitsu’s well-known opposition to the war, at the insistence of the Soviet Union, he was taken into custody by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers and held in Sugamo Prison, as an accused war criminal. Despite a signed deposition by Joseph Grew, the former ambassador of the United States to Japan, over the protests of Joseph B. Keenan, the chief prosecutor, Shigemitsu’s case came to trial. He was convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for waging an aggressive war and not doing enough to protect POWs from inhumane treatment. However, the tribunal was extremely lenient on the grounds that Shigemitsu had regularly opposed Japanese militarism and protested the inhumane treatment of POWs. Shigemitsu was sentenced to 7 years in prison, which was the lightest punishment handed down to anyone convicted at the trial. He was paroled in 1950.