Remembering Pearl Harbor: 70th Anniversary of the 'Day of Infamy'

Dec. 7, 1941

It was an unforgettable moment in American history, called a "date which will live in infamy" by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.

The 7:55 a.m. aerial bombardment by Japanese forces on the U.S. naval fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, began the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, and caught the Americans by surprise. But tensions had been building between the countries.

It dragged the U.S., which had been taking an isolationist position, into World War II. The Pearl Harbor toll: 2,400 dead, 1,800 wounded, and many U.S. battleships and aircraft were destroyed or damaged.

Many people now only know Pearl Harbor from and from older people. But some actually remember the news first-hand.

To put the era in perspective: The U.S. then had only 48 states (Hawaii was a territory that gained statehood in 1960), and the , credited with halting the polio epidemic in the U.S., had not been developed.