The battlewagons were moored alongside Ford Island

in their usual berthings on what was called Battleship Row.

Japanese bombers came to Pearl Harbor

on December 7 to destroy the strength of the Pacific Fleet―its battleships and aircraft carriers. Fortunately for the United States, the carriers were at sea that morning.

When the attack began, 96 U.S. warships in Pearl Harbor

were preparing to raise the flag. Twenty battleships, cruisers, destroyers and auxiliaries would soon be heavily damaged, capsized or sinking.

In the first week of December 1941, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku,

commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Combined Fleet, was aboard his flagship, the battleship Nagato, at Kure, on Hiroshima Bay in Japan's Island Sea. He was awaiting news from the Mobile Force of aircraft carriers he had sent to execute an operation that he had personally insisted upon adding to Japan's war plans for southward expansion.

Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto

WAR! OAHU BOMBED BY JAPANESE PLANES

Honolulu Star-Bulletin 1st EXTRA

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1941

WAR! OAHU BOMBED BY JAPANESE PLANES

SAN FRANCISCO, DEC. 7.―President Roosevelt announced this morning that Japanese planes had attacked Manila and Pearl Harbor.