Attack on Pearl Harbor

On 7 December 1941, the Japanese attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, the event which precipitated the entry of the United States of America into World War II.

Japan's pre-emptive strike against the US Navy anchored at Pearl Harbor, (PROSE: Only Connect) represented the beginning of a new phase of the world war as a whole, with consequences felt in both the Pacific theatre (PROSE: Endgame) and the Western (PROSE: Autumn Mist) and Eastern theatres in Europe. (PROSE: Just War)

Its impact also lasted well beyond the end of the war and into the Cold War, as it forced the United States out of isolation and onto the world stage. (PROSE: Fear Itself)

The attack was long remembered for its infamy. (PROSE: Just War, The Devil Goblins from Neptune, Only Connect)

Origins
Rivalry between the United States and Japan dated back almost a century before the attack. In the mid-19th century, the warships from the United States Navy stormed into the harbour in Edo (later Tokyo) as a show of force to convince the Japanese to open up their borders to trade. Refusal on the part of the Japanese risked war between the two nations, but the shogun accepted, ending over 200 years of Japanese isolationism and allowing the nation to modernise. (AUDIO: The Barbarians and the Samurai)

Seeking to spread her influence across the Asian continent by establishing the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy) Japan established her own empire by exploiting the opportunities presented by the contemporary fall of the Chinese Empire. (PROSE: The Shadow of Weng-Chiang) By 1900, Japan had annexed parts of China but its expansionism was threatened by potential competition. Russia also annexed parts of China, the British Royal Navy amassed a massive fleet in Fragrance Harbor, and the United States stationed many thousands of troops in the Philippines. (PROSE: Warring States) Japan went to war with Russia in 1905. (TV: The War Games)

China fell prey to further Japanese aggression throughout the 1930s and the two powers engaged in full-scale war in July 1937. (PROSE: The Shadow of Weng-Chiang) Japan's actions led to the rise of anti-Japanese sentiment in the United Kingdom and the United States. (TV: Captain Jack Harkness)

Since 3 September 1939, Britain had been waging war against Nazi Germany, (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) Japan's primary European ally in the Axis powers. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia) With few remaining allies of her own, Britain's Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, urged the United States to enter the conflict. (GAME: Amy's History Hunt) President Franklin Delano Roosevelt nevertheless stuck by America's position of neutrality (PROSE: Illegal Alien) and commitment to isolationist foreign policy. (PROSE: Fear Itself)

Forewarning
On 6 March 1941, the Seventh Doctor warned SS Standartenführer Joachim Wolff that Pearl Harbor was among a number of names on a map which would be given "new and terrible meaning" during the ongoing war. (PROSE: Just War)

The attack
On Sunday, 7 December 1941, the Japanese launched the Imperial Army Air Fleet at the US Navy while is was anchored at Pearl Harbor, a US naval base in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Americans remained ignorant of the impending attack. It was a civilian pilot, Ray Budnick, who, while out on a morning flight over Honolulu, became the first American to engage the Japanese in combat. Japanese Zeroes opened fire on him but he was able to escape.

The attacking aircraft descended on the naval base and proceeded to bomb the anchored ships in what the Fourth Doctor called "the greatest airborne attack" of the 20th century. (PROSE: Only Connect)

Half of the family of American weapons instructor, Jeff Kovacs, were among those who suffered during the attack. This instilled Kovacs with a desire for revenge on the Japanese. (PROSE: Autumn Mist)

Aftermath and reaction
Few were impressed by the American performance at Pearl Harbor. Rumours circled that Roosevelt knew the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming but kept quiet so he could use it as justification to enter World War II. (PROSE: This Town Will Never Let Us Go) Bill Filer of UNIT later considered Pearl Harbor a big "series of balls-ups." (PROSE: The Devil Goblins from Neptune)

Even the American forces stationed in the Philippines voiced their contempt, just as the islands became one of Japan's next objectives. On Tuesday, 9 December, 48 hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, the Philippines garrison believed they were far more prepared for meeting the oncoming onslaught. However, Lieutenant Terrence Moody of the United States Air Force was shot down without ever spotting the Japanese pilot who dispatched him. (PROSE: Happily Ever After Is a High-Risk Strategy)

As demonstrated in the Philippines, Pearl Harbor was simply the first of numerous Japanese attacks launched against Asian and Pacific territory held by the United States and the British Empire. Islands throughout the Pacific Ocean were captured and had to be wrested from Japanese control through years of fierce fighting. (PROSE: Endgame, Lunar Lagoon) Britain's Far East colonies also came under attack in the Far East Campaign. (AUDIO: The Forsaken, PROSE: Letters from the Front)

Following the attack, fearful of devotion to the Japanese cause, Japanese-Americans living in the US were interned by the government in detainment camps for the duration of the war, even if they were patriotic American citizens. (PROSE: Atom Bomb Blues)

However, the attack also reverberated around the world by bringing the US into World War II, opening a state of war between America and Germany. The attack and the US entry into the war coincided with the stalling of the Nazis' Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Germans were halted outside Moscow during the bitter December winter and were pushed back from the city by the Red Army. US industrial might mobilised to aid the British and the Soviets amidst Germany's own setbacks proved a disaster for Adolf Hitler's Reich, forcing the Germans onto a defensive war which gave rise to defeatist murmurings. (PROSE: Just War) In a letter dated 11 December 1941, Prem Barsar wrote that his brother Kunal was highly optimistic upon hearing about the attack. He viewed the Americans as a "vengeful bunch" and claimed that, as they were now involved in the war, the conflict would be a short one. (PROSE: Letters from the Front)

The Americans first engaged the Germans in North Africa in 1942 and saw the war on the Western Front in Europe through to the end. Jeff Kovacs, however, remained resentful at having been sent to fight the Germans instead of the Japanese. (PROSE: Autumn Mist)

Legacy
The war which started with the bombing of American territory ended with the Americans launching a bombing of their own, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the world's first atomic bombs which forced Japan's surrender on 2 September 1945. (PROSE: Endgame, Atom Bomb Blues, COMIC: Sky Jacks)

After the war, the US did not return to its isolationist foreign policy. The Eighth Doctor noted that it was one of the long-term consequences of Pearl Harbor that the US woke from "an isolationist slumber" to face international dangers. Once the Japanese were defeated, the Americans turned their attention to the next threat facing the world, the Soviet Union, during the Cold War. (PROSE: Fear Itself) They largely replaced the British in this role after crippling war debts sent the British Empire into decline. (PROSE: Endgame)

The Fourth Doctor considered Ray Budnick, the civilian pilot who first faced the Japanese, as important a historical character as the US General and post-war President Dwight D. Eisenhower even though he would not be remembered by history. (PROSE: Only Connect)

The Seventh Doctor considered Pearl Harbor one of the horrors of the war, with suffering comparable to that also experienced at Auschwitz, Kwai, the Battle of Stalingrad, the Bombing of Dresden, the Coventry Blitz, and the destruction of Hiroshima. (PROSE: Just War)

Alternate timelines
In the history in which the Ironsides were never discovered by the Eleventh Doctor, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came after the Ironsides prematurely liberated France and pushed Nazi forces to Germany. When the Japanese attempted to come to Germany's aid with a pre-emptive attack, the Ironsides stepped in, taking on the enemy bombers in a "vicious dogfight" lasting two days. The American Navy was saved and President Harry S. Truman bestowed the Medal of Honor on the Ironsides, finally agreeing to aid the British in the war effort. Two months later, the Allied forces marched on Berlin, and the Nazi stranglehold was broken. (PROSE: The Ironside Advance)

Parallel universes
In one parallel universe, which was later ravaged by the Inferno Project, World War II never occurred and the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was successfully established. It represented Asia collectively as a member of the Conclave. (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy)

Germania
Across the Known Worlds of Germania, hundreds of parallel universes in which Germany won World War II, the history relating to the attack on Pearl Harbor played out very differently.

In Germania XII, President Richard A. Russell kept the US out of the war after Germany spread across Europe. Similar arrangements were in place on more than half of all Germanias, with the US being unwilling or unable to take the fight to Europe.

In another Germania, the US was conquered by both Germany and Japan, for which many US citizens were actually thankful as it help fend of the threat of communism.

In yet another Germania, the US and Germany formed an alliance to fight against the British Empire.

The spoils won by Japan and Germany across the Known Worlds through US neutrality or capitulation were ultimately undone with the Empire of Empires, striking from the worlds of Roma, defeated the Greater German Reich in the Second Time Front. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia)

Behind the scenes

 * The exact phrase "Attack on Pearl Harbor" has not yet been used by any in-universe source, and the attack is normally referred to simply as "Pearl Harbor". Nevertheless, it is made clear that an attack took place there, and there is a need to distinguish the event from the location.
 * The attack has not yet been depicted in the Doctor Who franchise, but the sources which discuss the attack and its aftermath do so without reference to any kind of extraterrestrial involvement. As such, beyond the inclusion of fictional characters such as Ray Budnick and Jeff Kovacs, the information is broadly accurate to the real world events.