The USS Oklahoma
Pearl Harbor
The USS Oklahoma was on Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. That was the morning the Japanese Empire attacked the United States by surprise. The Japanese used dive-bombers, fighter-bombers, and torpedo planes to sink nine ships, including five battleships, and severely damage twenty-one ships. There were 2,402 US deaths from the attack. Of those deaths, 1,177 were from the USS Arizona, and 429 were from the USS Oklahoma. The crew of the USS Oklahoma did everything they could to fight back. In the first ten minutes of the battle eight torpedoes hit the Oklahoma and it began to sink. A ninth torpedo hit the battleship as it sank in the mud.
After the battle, the Navy decided that they could not salvage the Oklahoma due to the amount of damage it received. They decided to right the ship and then salvage any equipment or steel they could for other ships to use. They finally finished salvaging everything they could in 1946, and then sold the hull of the Oklahoma to a private company that tried to tug it to California. On the way to California, the hull began taking on water and finally sank to the bottom of the Pacific about 500 miles east of Hawaii. Today, there is a memorial to the USS Oklahoma and the 429 sailors and marines lost on December 7, 1941, located on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
The Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor made people in the United States angry. The Japanese military had attacked without warning, and without a formal declaration of war from the Empire of Japan. The next day, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt went before Congress and asked them to declare war on the Empire of Japan. Congress passed the declaration of war with only one person voting "no." Three days later, the German Empire declared war on the United States because Germany was Japan's ally. On December 11, 1941, the United States declared war on Germany, making it the official day that the United States entered World War II.
A Japanese pilot took these three photographs during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The USS Oklahoma from the port side after it was refloated in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, November 1943. The ship was refloated to salvage all usable material due to the shortages caused by World War II (2012.201.B0927.0338, Oklahoma Publishing Company Photography Collection, OHS).
