Pearl Harbor Day is December 7. On this day, Americans spend time thinking about all the people that died on that day. The bombing of Pearl Harbor became the reason that Americans entered World War II, one of the deadliest wars in history.

Pearl Harbor is a port near Hawaii that got bombed by Japan in 1941. Japan made this attack as a strategic move to take out America’s navy. America responded by launching two nukes on two Japanese cities Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

This was a devastating and controversial attack because most of the 226,000 people that died in the attacks were civilians; many were farmers living in small towns, having nothing to do with the Pearl Harbor attacks.

“It’s a tricky situation because a lot of people who had nothing to do with the assault on Pearl Harbor died,” said Destiny Murphy. “It did have a heavy impact on Japan which helped end the war. I think Japan started it, though, so they had to have known something was going to happen.”

People wonder if the war would have continued if not for the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “It probably would have since it was such a severe attack, but I guess we’ll never know,” said Trey Pinkley.