During the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese losses were just a fraction of those incurred by the United States. In total, the Japanese lose 129 men in the attack, mostly aircraft pilots, which was equal to roughly five percent of U.S. losses on the day.

During the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a total of three U.S. ships were destroyed beyond repair, and a further 16 were damaged in some capacity. This was in addition to more than 120 damaged or destroyed Navy Aircraft, and over 2,000 Navy personnel deaths. The sinking of the U.S.S. Arizona battleship alone resulted in the deaths of almost half of all U.S. citizens killed in the attack.

One goal of the attack was to try and destroy the three U.S. aircraft carriers stationed at Pearl Harbor, however all three were at sea performing maneuver drills at the time of the attack. This was seen as one consolation at the time, but proved to be a foundation of the U.S. response in the Pacific.

The surprise Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941, marked the beginning of the United States' involvement in the Second World War. As a result of the attack, a total of 2,403 Americans were killed, and the vast majority of these were from the U.S. Navy. Almost half of all American deaths on the day came were those on the U.S.S. Arizona, where 1,177 servicemen were killed as the ship was sunk. In contrast, just 129 Japanese soldiers were killed in the attack.

During the attack on Pearl Harbor, a total of 169 U.S. aircraft were destroyed beyond repair, while a further 159 were damaged in some capacity. By targeting enemy aircraft on the ground, the Japanese air force greatly weakened the Americans' ability to counter attack - only six American planes made it into the air to repel the first wave of the attack.

A total of 353 Japanese aircraft were mobilized for the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Over 270 of these planes were bombers or torpedo carriers, whose aim was to inflict as much damage as possible. These were accompanied by 79 fighter planes, whose job it was to repel any defensive aircraft sent into the air by the U.S.. The surprise attack destroyed or damaged the majority of the U.S. air fleet, and only six U.S. fighters made it into the air to counter the first wave of the attack.

The Japanese lost just 29 aircraft during the attack, and most of the strike force made it back to the aircraft carriers to fight again. The Japanese military was famous for its use of suicidal kamikaze fighters during the Second World War, however these units were not deployed until late-1944, and their intentional use during the attack on Pearl Harbor is a common misconception.

While the Empire of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor largely came from above - in the shape of fighter aircraft and bomber planes - the attack was launched from a fleet of ships that had positioned itself within 300 miles of the island of Hawaii on the morning of December 7, 1941. The striking force departed from Hitokappu Bay in the Kuril Islands to the north of Japan (present-day Russia, but claimed by Japan) on November 26. The fleet secretly made its way across the North Pacific, successfully avoiding detection by U.S. forces. The attack was carried out by 353 Japanese aircraft, which were launched from six aircraft carriers; and five midget submarines, which were launched from five "mothership" cruiser submarines. The remainder of the naval force (including around 50 aircraft) stayed out of sight of the Hawaiian coast, and were prepared to engage with any counter attack - however the surprise attack was a success, and the U.S. forces were unable to reorganize and respond at the time. On the same day, the Empire of Japan also launched simultaneous attacks on the U.S. territories of Guam, Wake Island, and the Philippines - it was not until the Battle of Midway six months later where the U.S. would win its first decisive victory in battle over the Japanese, where it also sunk four of the six aircraft carriers that had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The study consists of data for over 9,000 events collected from The New York Times Index and, in some cases, The New York Times itself. The events occurred during four international crises: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 1941, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, June 1941, the outbreak of the Korean War, June 1950, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. The data were collected for the principal actors in each crisis and span a period from 18 months prior to the crisis to one month subsequent to the actual crisis. Five primary variables are coded for the data: date of occurrence, initiator and recipient of the event, geographical area, and a classification code based on the World Event/Interaction Survey (WEIS) coding scheme.

The Second World War marked an important development in the history of naval warfare, as it was the time when the aircraft carrier replaced the battleship as the central vessel of the modern navy. Aerial warfare had already emerged in the First World War, but its potential at sea had not yet been realized - the attack on Pearl Harbor was an example of just how destructive air raids from the sea could be, but it was not until the battles of 1942 where the aircraft carrier cemented its position as the most important military vessel. In the war's early years, the Japanese Navy had the numerical advantage over the United States, but U.S. production would then see this balance shift in the Allies' favor in 1943. Japan loses its advantage When the U.S. joined the war in late-1941, Japan had already been at war in the Pacific theater for roughly 4.5 years, and had 11 aircraft carriers in its navy - in contrast, the U.S. navy had seven aircraft carriers in its possession, split between the Pacific and Atlantic. When both navies clashed in mid-1942, Japan lost one carrier in the Battle of the Coral Sea, before the U.S. sunk four at the Battle of Midway at the expense of just one - other U.S. carrier losses were in smaller battles skirmishes. The U.S. steams ahead In 1943, U.S. naval production was at its highest level in the war, and this year's output alone exceeded the total wartime output of all other major powers combined. The Allied counteroffensive against Japan was disrupting its ability to reinforce its Navy, and heavy losses in the previous two years meant that Japan had also lost a large number of its most skilled pilots and engineers. The Imperial Japanese Navy never truly recovered from Midway, and would possess a total of 18 aircraft carriers throughout the war, but 14 of these were ultimately lost - the majority of which fell around the Philippines, with three sunk during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The U.S. lost just one aircraft carrier after 1942, at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and it would finish the war with 29 aircraft carriers in its navy, compared to just four for the Japanese.

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The Battle of Midway is considered one of the most important battles of both the Second World War and naval warfare in general. The surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (Dec. 1941) had highlighted the devastating potential of aircraft in naval warfare, while the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 1942) was the first major naval battle where neither fleet saw or fired upon the other as attacks came only from the air. One month later, the Battle of Midway then cemented the aircraft carrier as the central vessel of the modern navy.

The U.S. went into the battle with three aircraft carriers against four Japanese carriers, however their larger capacity meant that both sides had roughly 230 combat aircraft on board before the fight. The U.S. Navy also had support from its airbase on the Midway Atoll, where around 130 additional aircraft were based. Japanese fighters and bombers may have been able to travel greater distances than American aircraft, however the United States had the advantage of superior intelligence, radar, and organization. The battle resulted in the U.S. Navy sinking all four Japanese aircraft carriers, losing just the USS Yorktown in the process. The outcome of the battle was that the number of American aircraft carriers in the Pacific was now greater than the Japanese number - a fact that the Japanese were never able to recover from due to the American disruption of Japanese shipbuilding, and the significantly larger manufacturing power of the U.S..

Although the Japanese invasion of China, known as the Second Sino-Japanese War, lasted for more than eight years, it was the battle against the United States and local defenses for control of the Philippines that resulted in the largest share of Japan's military losses in the Second World War. The Japanese invasion of the Philippines began on December 8, 1941, on the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese were able to take de facto control of the region by May 1942. Japan faced strong, underground resistance from locals in the two years that followed, until the U.S. military began its counteroffensive in the Leyte Gulf in October 1944, which continued until the war's end. Around 420,000 of the 490,000 Japanese deaths in the Philippines occurred during the Second Philippines Campaign (after Oct. 1944), although some estimates suggest that up to 80 percent of these deaths were due to starvation and malnutrition, as the Japanese supply lines became overstretched in the war's latter phase and failed to provide sufficient food and medicine to its forces.

The 20th century marked a new trend in the recording of war fatalities, where more attention was given to the impact of conflicts on civilian populations, and not just the military. During the Second World War, the extent of the atrocities committed, the large-scale bombing campaigns, and the various famines resulting from the war meant that the scope of the civilian death toll took place was unprecedented - the likes of which had never been seen before, or since. Almost two thirds of all deaths due to the Second World War were of civilians, yet the ratio of military to civilian deaths varied greatly by country. Many British dominions and the United States suffered little to no civilian deaths as they were not located in an active theater of war - civilian fatalities largely came from naval or aerial attacks (such as at Pearl Harbor). In contrast, there were several European colonies in the Asia-Pacific region where all, or at least 95 percent, of total fatalities were among civilians - some of these regions suffered millions of deaths due to famine and atrocities.

It is estimated that the Second World War was responsible for the deaths of approximately 3.76 percent of the world's population between 1939 and 1945. In 2022, where the world's population reached eight billion, this would be equal to the death of around 300 million people.

The region that experienced the largest loss of life relative to its population was the South Seas Mandate - these were former-German territories given to the Empire of Japan through the Treaty of Versailles following WWI, and they make up much of the present-day countries of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, the Northern Mariana Islands (U.S. territory), and Palau. Due to the location and strategic importance of these islands, they were used by the Japanese as launching pads for their attacks on Pearl Harbor and in the South Pacific, while they were also taken as part of the Allies' island-hopping strategy in their counteroffensive against Japan. This came at a heavy cost for the local populations, a large share of whom were Japanese settlers who had moved there in the 1920s and 1930s. Exact figures for both pre-war populations and wartime losses fluctuate by source, however civilian losses in these islands were extremely high as the Japanese defenses resorted to more extreme measures in the war's final phase.

The first half of the 20th century saw a dramatic shift in naval warfare and the types of ships that were used in conflict at sea. Changing nature of naval warfare In 1906, the HMS Dreadnought battleship revolutionized naval warfare, as it was steam powered, incredibly fast for its size, quickly built, and its primary battery of guns was mounted on the main deck. The HMS Dreadnought then inspired virtually all battleships that came after it, in what would become a naval arms race, but as technology advanced in the interwar period, some proposed that aircraft carriers should become the most important ships in the navy. While the attack on Pearl Harbor would highlight the effectiveness of naval air power, and battleships themselves were among the primary targets in the attack, it was not until 1942 at battles such as Midway or the Battle of the Coral Sea where the aircraft carrier established itself as the heart of the navy. Battleships, as well as cruisers or destroyers, largely played a supporting role for the remainder of the war, and (apart from two events) major naval battles became a thing of the past after WWII. Ascendancy of the U.S. Navy Another significant development of WWII was the emergence of the United States as the world's foremost naval power. During the war, the U.S. built almost 9,000 war vessels (not including landing vessels), which was more than three times the amount of all other powers combined. U.S. production capacity meant that it was able to continually produce and replace major vessels as the war waged on. In contrast, the Japanese did not have the ability to replace lost or damaged ships, which contributed to their eventual defeat in the Pacific. In Europe, the conflict was much more concentrated on land; however, the German Navy prioritized the production of submarines, which it used to great effect when attacking transatlantic shipping that supplied the UK - the Battle of the Atlantic would largely be settled by the end of 1943, with the Royal Navy and Commonwealth forces sinking over half of all German U-boats.

Throughout the Second World War, the Axis powers successfully used tactics that surprised and overwhelmed their enemies in order to annex or occupy territories, sometimes within a matter of hours. The element of surprise was crucial in these attacks, and many countries were invaded simultaneously to maintain this advantage. Blitzkrieg The German military was considered the most effective at this, rapidly pushing into neighboring countries with waves of tanks and armored vehicles before the a defense could be organized. Air and naval power was also used strategically to take important logistical and transport centers, and cause further disruption to supply lines. This became known as Blitzkrieg ("lightning-war"). Through the use of these tactics, Germany was able to defeat France, Europe's largest military power at the time, in just six weeks. Smaller nations such as Denmark and Luxembourg fell within a matter of hours, whereas the defenses of Norway and Estonia were able to hold out for longer by retreating to fortified northern or island positions (although most of their territories were taken quickly). The Italian military was less adept at such tactics - an attempted invasion of Greece was rushed and badly mismanaged, with the Greeks even pushing the invading forces back into Albania for several months, before a joint-Axis force invaded via Yugoslavia and Bulgaria and overran the country in April 1941. Operation Barbarossa, the surprise German invasion of the USSR, was launched just two months later - Blitzkrieg tactics saw the Germans quickly push as far as Moscow before the end of the year, before the Soviets were able to stall out the attack and reorganize. Pacific Theater As Europe's Eastern Front turned into a war of attrition in late 1941, the Empire of Japan began its own aggressive expansion. On the morning of December 7th or 8th (depending on time zone), the Japanese launched a number of attacks on American, British, and Dutch territories across the Pacific and Southeast Asia. The most famous of these was the attack on Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into the war, but this was just one of many targets on the day. Thailand was also invaded and capitulated within five hours of invasion when it then joined the Axis powers. Many smaller American and British garrisons held out for some days or weeks, but were outnumbered and eventually overrun. The loss of the Philippines is considered by some to be the biggest U.S. defeat in the Second World War, while the seizure of the Dutch East Indies marked a significant victory for Japan due to its abundant oil resources. It was not until the Japanese made it to the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, where their expansion was eventually contained by joint Commonwealth and U.S. forces.

The Second World War was fought on such a large scale that it became total war in many countries - this is where the war effort is prioritized above all else, and the entire population and economy are mobilized to support all military endeavors. Germany and Japan were committing over 70 percent of their national income to the war effort in its final years.

There were also notable fluctuations that coincided with major events for corresponding powers. These included the UK's mobilization of its defenses in 1940, after Germany took most of Western Europe; the spike in Soviet military spending after Operation Barbarossa in June, 1941; and the U.S. entry into the war following the Pearl Harbor attacks in December, 1941.

As of 2021, there were over 200,000 living United States veterans who served in the Second World War. The Department of Veteran Affairs projects that the number of living veterans will decline rapidly in the fifteen years until 2036, at which point just a few hundred Americans who served in the war will be still alive. The passing of the "Greatest Generation" is seen as symbolic by some, as for many people they represented the era when the United States' power on the world stage was at its greatest. The Second World war is particularly remembered as a "just" war in the U.S., as the United States was seen as fighting for democracy and self-determination, and against the tyrannies of Fascism, Nazism, and Japanese Imperialism.

The United States' involvement in the Second World War

World War II marked the peak in military enlistments in U.S. history, with over 16 million service members serving worldwide during the conflict. The U.S. joined the war in 1941 due to Imperial Japan's attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, before joining the European theater of the war in 1944 during the Invasion of Normandy. The U.S. military played a vital role in the defeat of Nazi Germany on the Western Front in May 1945, while the Soviet Red Army defeated the Wehrmacht in the East. The U.S. was also vital in the defeat of Fascist Italy, as they had led an allied invasion force onto the Italian peninsula from Northern Africa in September 1943. The final action of the war took place in the Asian theater of war, as Imperial Japan was the last of the Axis powers to concede defeat to the Allies. The United States effectively ended the war with the dropping of two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, leading to as many as a quarter of a million deaths. It remains to this day the sole use of atomic weapons in an active conflict.

With little fossil fuel resources of its own, Japan has largely depended on foreign petroleum imports for more than a century. Throughout the 1930s, imports from the United States fulfilled over 80 percent of Japan's oil needs, however, growing tensions between the two powers in the wake of Japan's invasion of China in 1937 saw the U.S. gradually cut trade ties with Japan. The U.S. was reluctant to cease this oil supply as it believed this would be taken as an act of war, but after Japan seized control of airfields in French Indochina (therefore blocking U.S. supply routes into China), the U.S. placed an oil embargo on Japan in August 1941. Japan's next invasion Japan's oil demand was already very high due to its military actions in China, and the U.S. believed that this move would bring the invasion to a halt. However, it had the opposite effect. On December 8, 1941 (Dec. 7 for Pearl Harbor due to time differences) Japan launched a full-scale invasion of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with the intent of capturing the oil-rich regions of the Dutch East Indies and Burma. Europe's colonial powers were too preoccupied by war at home to respond effectively, and the attack on Pearl Harbor had temporarily neutralized the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet - within six months, Japan controlled virtually all of Southeast Asia. A new dilemma By mid-1942 Japan was in possession of the East Indies, the region's largest oil producer, but it now had to transport this oil roughly 6,000 kilometers to the metropole or China - a role that had previously been fulfilled by Western powers. A tanker manufacturing program was started immediately, with most Japanese oiler classes having a displacement between 10,000 and 20,000 tons each. In 1942, the U.S. Pacific Fleet became operational once more, but it was not until 1943 that U.S. submarines began aggressively targeting these new Japanese oilers. This campaign proved to be an enormous success, with Japanese losses exceeding production each year between 1943 and 1945. Without these actions, the Japanese may have been able to strengthen their position in the Pacific or push further into China and Burma, as the disruption of Japan's oil supply greatly weakened its ability to transport manpower and resources, or to run its tanks, aircraft, and navy.

Of the 11 present-day countries in Southeast Asia, only Thailand was independent at the outbreak of the Second World War, while the other 10 were in the hands of Western powers. This was one of several sources of Japan's resentment for the West prior to the Second World War, as Western industrial growth had been fueled by resources taken from Asia for centuries. The German invasion of France and the Netherlands in May 1940 greatly weakened the Western position in Southeast Asia, and Japan sought to capitalize on the turmoil in Europe and annex the region into its own empire. Japanese expansion Japan's expansion into Southeast Asia began with its invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, which was used to create a blockade China, with whom Japan was also at war. However, the United States' Pacific fleet remained a major threat in the area, and the U.S. was growing wary of Japan's ambitions (but had not yet become hostile). Because of this, Japan launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, to try and hinder the American response to its planned aggression in the Pacific. The attack was a success, and Japanese forces then began attacking and moving into other areas of Southeast Asia later that day (December 8th, local time), and had taken virtually all of the 11 countries within six months. The Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) was one of the most important assets taken by the Japanese, due to its abundant resources, especially fossil fuels. Most Indonesians welcomed the Japanese as liberators, but animosity quickly grew as millions were then put to work as forced laborers across Japan's territories, and up to four million Indonesian civilians would die of famine, abuse, or forced labor by the war's end. End of WWI and independence The Japanese advance stalled in New Guinea in mid-1942, where the joint forces of Australia and New Zealand were able to gain a foothold on the island. The United States victory in the Battle of Midway also dealt a heavy blow to the Japanese Navy in the Pacific, proving to be a turning point of the Pacific War. In the years that followed, the Allies gradually pushed the Japanese northwards through Southeast Asia, before Japan's eventual defeat in 1945. The post-WWII years in Southeast Asia were defined by the push for independence and decolonization - between 1945 and 1957, nine of the ten colonized countries would gain their independence (Timor-Leste remained Portuguese until 1975, when it was then invaded and annexed by Indonesia from 1976-2002).

In the early 1900s, the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) was the largest producer of crude petroleum in the Pacific. Following the U.S. cessation of oil exports to Japan in 1941, and the lack of oil access at home, Japan's invasion of China was at threat of coming to a halt. In order to keep its armies supplied, Japan launched an invasion of Southeast Asia on December 8. 1941, with the annexation of Indonesia as one of its top priorities. This invasion also included the attack on Pearl Harbor, where Japan sought to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Fleet to prevent American interference. This brought the U.S. military into the Second World War, but it was not until mid-1942 when the Allies then halted the Japanese advance in Southeast Asia and started pushing them back through Southeast Asia in a grueling three-year long campaign. One of the keys to the Allies' success was the disruption of Japan's oil supply from Indonesia to Japan's armies in China and at home.