Tomorrow is the 82nd anniversary of the Japanese attack which launched the United States into World War II. The surprise attack caught America off-guard. Most of the 160 million Americans (about half our current population) couldn’t find Hawaii on a map. Few, if any, had heard of a place called Pearl Harbor.
In fact, the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet had been stationed at Pearl Harbor for only six months. Before that, San Diego was the home port, but with increasing tensions, the Roosevelt Administration decided to forward deploy the fleet to Hawaii. FDR hoped this move would dissuade the aggressive Japanese, but it only served to provoke the militant nation.