Pacific War - Japan Attacks The Western Powers

Japan Attacks The Western Powers

See also: United States Navy in World War II

On 7 December 1941 Japan attacked American bases on Pearl Harbor, Guam, and Wake Island. The same day (8 December on the other side of the International Date Line), Japanese forces attacked the British crown colony of Hong Kong, invaded the U.S.-controlled Commonwealth of the Philippines, invaded Thailand from bases in French Indochina, and invaded Malaya.

Read more about this topic:  Pacific War

Famous quotes containing the words japan, attacks, western and/or powers:

    “I do not know that the United States can save civilization but at least by our example we can make people think and give them the opportunity of saving themselves. The trouble is that the people of Germany, Italy and Japan are not given the privilege of thinking.”
    —Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)

    “Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.”
    —Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)

    “For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”
    —Jacques Attali (b. 1943)

    “I have come slowly into possession of such powers as I have ... I receive the opinions of my day. I do not conceive them. But I receive them into a vivid mind.”
    —Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)