Pearl harbor: from 'infamy to friendship: seventy-five years after the attack, a look at how the U.S. and Japan went from wartime enemies to the closest of allies.

• Author: Berger, Joseph
• Position: TIME PAST 1941

Donald Stratton, a 19-year-old from Nebraska, strode out of the mess hall onto the deck of the battleship Arizona. It was Dec. 7, 1941, and the ship was anchored in Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. On this clear, bright morning, Stratton noticed some fellow crewmen pointing at the sky. Looking up, he saw fighter planes approaching. Dozens of them.

"I watched one of them bank and saw the rising sun symbol under the wings and thought, 'Boy, that's the Japanese, and they're bombing us,"' he recalled decades later.

Within seconds, Japanese bombers were dropping bombs and torpedoes, targeting the Arizona and seven other battleships.

Suddenly, Stratton felt the Arizona heave violently and rise several feet out of the water. A bomb had breached the ship's ammunition room and the tremendous explosion that followed sent the Arizona-and the more than 1,000 sailors and Marines aboard--to the bottom of the harbor.

"A 600-foot fireball just engulfed us, burning all of us real bad," Stratton recalled. "After that it was all about self-preservation, buddy. We weren't thinking about anything but getting the hell out of there."

That attack 75 years ago on America's Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor was a day that would "live in infamy," in the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who addressed the nation the next afternoon. Despite a strong desire to keep out of World War II (1939-45), the U.S. was forced to declare war not only on Japan, but also on Japan's allies, Germany and Italy (see Timeline, p. 20).

The brutal war in the Pacific would last four years and end with the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 200,000 people (see box, p. 21). Remarkably, however, the way America handled the seven-year occupation of Japan that followed led to the two countries becoming warm and devoted friends, which they remain today.

"In the decades since [the war], the relationship between the two countries has been about partnership, economic security, political partnership," says Peter Grilli, the president emeritus of the Japan Society of Boston. "America has been Japan's best ally since."

A Militaristic Japan

The attack on Pearl Harbor was conducted by two waves of Japanese aircraft--353 planes in all--taking off from six aircraft carriers. For two hours, the planes rained bombs and torpedoes on eight U.S. battleships in Pearl Harbor, as well as on four destroyers, three cruisers, and dozens of planes parked on nearby airfields. In the end, 2,403 U.S. personnel were killed, making Pearl Harbor the worst naval disaster in American history.

Yet the attack shouldn't have come as a complete surprise. For more than a decade, a militaristic Japan had expanded into neighboring territories. By 1942, much of Asia was under Japanese occupation, including the Philippines; what is today Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos; and large swaths of mainland China. Japan justified its actions by arguing that it needed natural resources like oil, and as a regional power had a right to dominate the continent. The U.S., with help from Britain and the Netherlands, responded by imposing an embargo that cut off 90 percent of Japan's oil, jeopardizing its economy.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Harvard-educated commander of the Japanese fleet, persuaded Japan's leaders that a single decisive strike like the one on Pearl Harbor would force the U.S. to end the embargo.

Instead, the devastating blow unified America for an all-out fight. President Roosevelt, a former secretary of the Navy, knew how unprepared the U.S. was militarily, but he inspired Americans to bear down and build a war machine. The result was a breathtaking mobilization that produced enough planes and ships to ultimately defeat the Japanese.

In August 1945, Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman, ordered the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--a controversial decision that is still debated today. On August 15, the Japanese announced their surrender.

After the war, General Douglas MacArthur and his staff shrewdly sent in shiploads of food to a decimated Japan. They allowed Japan to keep its emperor but downgraded him to a figurehead without real political power. Closely studying Japan's sociology and politics, they worked diligently to reshape the nation's militaristic mindset...