Pearl Harbor and Midway: From 7 December 1941 to June 1942

Seven U.S. battleships lay moored along the southeast side of Ford Island when the first bombs fell at 07:57 on 7 December 1941, and the message went out: "Air Raid, Pearl Harbor—this is no drill." Twenty-four of the forty Japanese torpedo planes were assigned to this row alone. Arizona, California, Oklahoma and West Virginia were sunk. This is where the attack that pulled the United States into the war did most of its damage.

Location precision: Battleship Row ran along Ford Island's south-east shore; the pin marks the island, not one mooring.

Arizona took the worst of it: an explosion in a forward magazine broke the hull in two. The memorial, built in 1962, marks the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on the ship. It straddles the sunken hull without touching it, so visitors look down through an opening in the floor at the wreck below. More than two million people come every year.

Visitor guidance: The memorial is accessible only by boat.

Japanese planes did not only go for ships. They bombed and strafed Hickam Field to wipe out American air opposition and stop American aircraft from following them back to their carriers. Hickam suffered extensive damage, with 189 people killed and 303 wounded. A flight of B-17s arriving from California, unarmed and out of fuel, came under attack as it tried to land.

Five months later the war turned on a basement. Station HYPO, the codebreaking unit in Hawaii, worked in the Old Administration Building at Pearl Harbor. Its people, led by Rochefort, put in 36-hour stints. To prove that the Japanese target "AF" was Midway, Midway was told to broadcast an uncoded message that its water supply had failed; within 24 hours the Japanese reported "AF was short on water." The decrypts let Admiral Nimitz gamble on an ambush.

Location precision: The station was in the basement of the Old Administration Building; the pin marks the Pearl Harbor naval base, not the exact room.

On 4 June 1942 at 04:30, Admiral Nagumo launched 36 dive bombers, 36 torpedo bombers and 36 Zero fighters against Midway. Aircraft based at Henderson Field on Eastern Island joined United States Navy ships and planes in the fight. Film director John Ford, a naval reserve officer, was on Sand Island during the attack and filmed it. By the end, four Japanese fleet carriers, Akagi, Kaga, Hiryū and Sōryū, had been sunk. Eastern Island is now uninhabited and has no facilities.

Location precision: The fighting was spread over the atoll and the sea around it; the pin marks Midway Atoll.

Yorktown limped into Pearl Harbor and was patched up in dry dock in only three days so she could sail for Midway. She was sunk in the battle. On 19 May 1998, oceanographer Robert Ballard found and photographed the wreck, sitting upright in remarkably good condition, with paint and equipment still visible. It lies in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

Location precision: The pin marks the wreck position given in the Yorktown article; the wreck lies in very deep water and cannot be visited.