Attack on Pearl Harbor and aftermath
By Yi Woo-won
It was 80 years ago. That Sunday morning on Dec 7, 1941, could have been another beautiful day of leisure and relaxation for servicemen at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. But, shortly before 8 a.m., like a bolt from the blue, they heard the sounds of explosions, the bursts of machine-gun fire and the screams of fellow servicemen.
The naval base was attacked with no warning by 353 Japanese aircraft which were launched from six aircraft carriers. Of the eight U.S. Navy battleships present, all were damaged heavily with four sunk. A total of 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed, plus 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded.
It was doubtlessly a war crime ― without a declaration of war or any explicit warning. Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Dec. 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy.” The attack prompted the United States' formal entry into World War II the next day.
The surprise assault by Japan was the effect of years of hostility with the United States ever since Japan's aggressive military expansions in Asia ― especially following the invasion of Manchuria in 1931. After the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan continued with its massive expansion campaigns throughout the Southeast Asia-Pacific region.
In 1942 and 1943, allied forces carried out an invasion on the island of Guadalcanal. It was the beginning of a long series of offensives that would eventually force the Japanese out of the Solomon Islands and also from various other Pacific island chains they had seized earlier.
Fighting continued throughout the Pacific in 1944 and early 1945, including battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. By the late spring of 1945, most of Japan's conquests had been liberated, and allied forces were closing in on the Japanese home islands. In the summer of 1945, the allies began heavy bombing campaigns against major Japanese cities, including Tokyo. Finally, in early August of that year, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing Japan to surrender a few days later.
Korea was under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945 during World War II. Korea was forced to sign the Japan-Korea Treaty in 1910 and was annexed to the Japanese Empire. Ostensibly, the treaty was to make Korea Japan's protectorate, but it was a wicked stratagem to take full advantage of Korea's natural and human resources for their war effort.
On Dec. 23, 1948, seven Japanese war criminals from World War II were executed by hanging at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo. They were six generals and one minister, the most prominent of whom being Prime Minister Tojo Hideki. However, bitter controversies have been rekindled after the war over the Japanese prime minister and/or his cabinet members visiting Yasukuni Shrine where the seven A-class war criminals are honored alongside other Japanese war dead.
With the Japanese surrender in World War II, Korea finally gained its independence after 35 years of colonial oppression and exploitation. By the Cairo Declaration (1943) and the Potsdam Declaration (1945), Japan was virtually deprived of all the islands which it had seized or occupied during the war ― and also Korea.
However, in securing the Korean Peninsula from Japanese control, the two victorious forces had to divide the country into two occupation zones, south and north, along the 38th parallel line. Ironically, the Soviets declared war on Japan on Aug. 8, 1945, only seven days before Japan's surrender. So, the Soviet forces occupied northern Korea on Aug. 9, 1945, and the U.S. forces entered southern Korea on Sept. 8, 1945.
Although liberated from Japanese occupation after the war, the originally unified peninsula was now divided artificially into two Koreas by the decision of two rival superpowers: the Soviet Union and the United States. That was the “cause and effect” of the terrible tragedy that followed soon ― the bloody, fratricidal Korean War (1950-53). South Korea was almost defeated and would have been communized by North Korea's invasion if the U.N. (chiefly U.S. forces) had not intervened.
Yi Woo-won (
yiwoowon1988@gmail.com
) lives in Waegwan, North Gyeongsang Province, and has been writing since 1986.