This Day in History: United States attacked By Japan at Pearl Harbor

If you remember reading this yesterday, you're not losing your mind,  But I may be losing mine.  I mistakenly published it on December 6.

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The surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II.

Although war was being wagged in Europe since September 1939 and in the Far East since the Japanese invasion of China in 1937.  Holding fast to neutrality, the United States had stayed out of both conflicts.  A great deal of aid had been provided to Great Britain, in spite of a policy of declared American neutrality, but the United States would not consider declaring war unless there was a "deliberate provocation."   As in “Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan…

The surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii, by the Japanese precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. The attack brought to a head a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. Japan’s invasion of China in 1937, its subsequent alliance with the Axis powers (Germany and Italy) in 1940, and its occupation of French Indochina in July 1941 prompted the United States to respond that same month by freezing Japanese assets in the United States and declaring an embargo on petroleum shipments and other and other goods.

In addition to commemorating the 71^st anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor; Yesterday, December 6,  Americans also celebrated the 147^th anniversary (1865) of the ratification of the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery in the United States.

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