Pearl Harbor, 80 Years On

The Japanese attack on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor 80 years ago, the date which will live in infamy in the stirring oratory of President Franklin Roosevelt, brought the United States into a world war from which it would emerge four years later as an unrivaled economic and military power. This new global status achieved in 1945 stood in stark contrast to the state of the nation in the prewar years. In 1940 Americans were still in the throes of the Great Depression, having suffered through a decade of economic and social paralysis. In this episode, military historian Ron Milam discusses the events that placed Japan and the U.S. on the road to war. Conflict was not inevitable, and it would have seemed unnecessary in the 1930s that a dispute over China, where the U.S. had no vital strategic or material interest, should culminate in the events of Dec. 7, 1941.