Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese launched a surprise air attack on the US Harbor of Pearl Harbor that lasted 2 hours on the Sunday morning, claiming the lives of over 2,500 American lives. the day after this surprise attack, the United States declared war on the Japanese Empire. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor without formally declaring war upon the United States, and so the only way soldiers could tell it was the Japanese was by the red circle on the airplanes. Later, the United States would drop two bombs on Japanese to end the Pacific War, killing nearly 200,000 people, and over 150,000 more from the earlier fire bombing campaign. These attacks and our retaliations really make you wonder why the war was started in the first place.