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Best Pearl harbor tours

Transportation, entry ticket & guide  included

Discover the highlights of Pearl Harbor, along with skip-the-line admission to the USS Missouri and USS Arizona Memorial, plus a sightseeing tour of downtown Honolulu during this 7-hour trip. History buffs will especially appreciate this in-depth visit to the site of one of America’s most famous military moments.

Pick times are between 6:30 AM – 8:00 AM. You will receive your finalized pick up time and location via text on the day prior to your tour date, please be sure to put your correct phone number. Guests staying at hotels in Ko Olina Area will need to find own transportation to Pearl Harbor Tours Office. Pearl Harbor Tours Office Address 891 Valkenburgh St, Honolulu, HI 96818 Park at the empty lot next door to the fire station. Your guide will be in contact for further instructions on where to park and will pick you up at this office.

 

Pearl Harbor National Memorial Completely immerse yourself in WWII History and let history come alive with this tour. An extraordinary opportunity to see the 608-foot-long USS Arizona as she rests on the floor of Pearl Harbor. Below the waterline, you will see the mammoth Arizona guns that were never fired in battle. Tour guide will come escort you inside Visitor Center but not on the memorial. Our tour guide will give you a short orientation inside the Visitor Center and will wait outside for you. 2 hours • Admission Ticket Included

Battleship Missouri Memorial Enjoy a guided tour of the battleship Missouri where the Japanese surrendered in WWII.USS Missouri is the site where World War II formally ended; it is our primary artifact; it is the place we work and explore, it is an obligation to future generations, it is an inspiration to millions of visitors; it is quite simply America’s Battleship.

1 hour • Admission Ticket Included

USS Missouri has served proudly through WWII, the Korean War, and the Gulf War for a 51-year long career. Launched from the Naval Shipyard in Brooklyn in 1944, USS Missouri entered the Pacific Theatre in early 1945. She participated in the invasion of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. She joined in on air strikes and shore bombardment on mainland Japan. Most famously, the battleship hosted the surrender ceremony of Japan on 2 September 1945.

USS Missouri returned to the Pacific for the Korean War. Deployed from September 1950 to March 1951 and again from September 1952 to March 1953, the battleship supported the final days of the Battle of Inchon by providing shore bombardment and was present for the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, providing fire cover for the Marines. Throughout the war, she steamed with and provided anti-aircraft cover for aircraft carriers in their task force in addition to bombarding Korea’s coastline.

Decommissioned in 1955, the battleship found new life in 1986. She participated in Operation Earnest Will in the Middle East, escorting Kuwaiti tankers flying under the U.S. flag. In the 1990s, Missouri returned to the Middle East to bombard Iraqi forces in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and participated in the Battle of Kafji.

In 1992, the battleship was decommissioned for a final time. In 1998, she opened her water-tight doors again as a historic museum.

  • On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
  • The surprise attack by some 350 Japanese aircraft sunk or badly damaged eighteen US naval vessels, including eight battleships, destroyed or damaged 300 US aircraft, and killed 2,403 men.
  • Across the nation, Americans were stunned, shocked, and angered. The attack turned US public opinion in favor of entering the Second World War. The United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941.
  • Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy, declared war on the United States on December 11. The United States responded in kind, and therefore entered World War II.

The Pearl Harbor attack

The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor began just before 8 a.m. local time Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. For over an hour, in two waves, some 350 Japanese aircraft—having taken off from six aircraft carriers 230 miles north of Oahu—attacked the naval base. Japanese forces wreaked havoc on US naval vessels and on US aircraft on the island’s airfield. In all, 2,403 Americans, including 68 civilians, died in the attack. In comparison, Japan suffered relatively light causalities—it lost only 29 aircraft and a few mini-submarines.
 
Photograph of USS Shaw exploding at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
The USS Shaw explodes during the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Image courtesy National Archives.
The American people were shocked, bewildered, surprised, and angered by the attack. On December 8, President Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress in the Capitol, his words broadcast on radio to the nation: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
In his address, Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war against Japan, which it did that day. Three days later, Japan’s allies Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, and Congress reciprocated the same day. All previous domestic opposition to US entry into the war ceased. The United States was now immersed in a war it would conduct simultaneously in Europe and the Pacific.

Motive for the attack

The Japanese government decided to attack Pearl Harbor after the United States cut off US oil exports to Japan in the summer of 1941. Japan relied on the United States for eighty percent of its oil, and without US oil supplies its navy would be unable to function. In attacking Pearl Harbor the Japanese hoped to cripple or destroy the US Pacific fleet so that the Japanese navy would have free reign in the Pacific.
Japan was also motivated strategically by ideas of creating an Asian co-prosperity sphere—“Asia for Asians”—in which Japan would take over the Asian colonial holdings of Europe and the United States. With the British, French, and Dutch caught up in the war in Europe, the Japanese believed the European powers would be unable to defend their Asian colonial holdings. Indeed, in the eight hours following the Pearl Harbor attack, Japan also attacked British-held Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaya, and the US territorial possessions of the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island.

Forewarnings about the attack

The United States was caught unprepared for the attack on Pearl Harbor, but things might have turned out differently were it not for some bad luck. The United States had broken the Japanese diplomatic code in project “Magic,” and General George Marshall, having been handed a decoded Japanese message on the very day of the attack, had sent word to the US base at Pearl Harbor prior to the assault to “be on the alert.” Atmospheric conditions delayed transmission of Marshall’s message, and it did not arrive until after the attack.
Moreover, the United States had known that a Japanese attack was imminent somewhere in the Pacific, but US military and government personnel had thought the Philippines or some other area of the South Pacific closer to Japan was the likely target. Pearl Harbor was 3,500 miles from Japan and had seemed to the US government and military an unlikely target.
After Pearl Harbor, the United States rapidly mobilized for World War II.

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