The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor arguably remains the single most important event in American military history, leading as it did to the United States' entrance into World War IL Although hardly flawless in their execution, the Japanese landed a very heavy blow against America's military on the morning of 7 December 1941. A substantial portion of the U.S. Navy's battle line was either sunk or damaged at its moorings, and American airpower in Hawaii was crushed. Thousands of U.S. servicemen lost their lives. Most important, Pearl Harbor wounded the pride and shook American confidence to its core. The next six months would witness a harrowing series of Japanese victories that were only definitively checked at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. One of the most persistent questions surrounding Pearl Harbor remains how the Japanese were able to surprise America so completely, despite the fact that U.S. code-breakers were reading substantial quantities of Japanese diplomatic messages before the attack. Many factors played into this lack of awareness, of course. And not surprisingly, given a defeat of this magnitude, a number of theories have also been advanced purporting to show that various parties in the United States had foreknowledge of the attack.
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