The Harbor of Hell: The extraordinary minute-by-minute stories of horror, courage and incompetence behind the Pearl Harbour attack 75 years ago
Almost exactly 75 years ago, fearing America would intervene in its military actions in the Far East, the Japanese targeted the home of the vast and powerful U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. The events of the attack in 1941 represented a turning point that would see Adolf Hitler eventually defeated, as this dramatic minute-by-minute reconstruction reveals. At 2pm on Saturday, December 6, 1941, Dorothy Edgers, a member of the U.S. Navy's Cryptographic Department, intercepted a secret Japanese diplomatic message requesting details about ship movements at Pearl Harbour, Oahu Island, Hawaii. Alarmed, she took the message to her boss, but was told: 'We'll get back to this on Monday.' By then it was too late a vast Japanese attack fleet was already stealthily on its way. The attack was made into a 2001 film directed by Michael Bay which starred Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale.