December 7, 1941

The day a surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese that precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) stated that date will be a "a date which will live in infamy". Every year since the Pearl Harbor attacks, the President of the United States of America orders the American flag to be flown at half staff on December 7.