Pearl Harbor Compare And Contrast Essay

The attacks on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 were the first attacks ever to take place on American soil, the repercussions were devastating for the Japanese Empire; sadly, Pearl Harbor would not be the last threat America faced on her own land. On September 9th, 2011 (9/11) a radical Islāmic terrorist group known as Al-Qaeda attacked America. While America dealt with both of these attacks with unyielding resolve, executing that resolve was what is starkly different between the two tragedies. Pearl Harbor did have some quintessential similarities to 9/11; both attacks unprovoked by America, both provoked public support against aggressors by way of presidential speeches, both lacked prior intelligence on the attacks themselves, both sparked

Within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor, hundreds of Japanese-American leaders forced into high-security camps such as Sand Island at the mouth of Honolulu harbor and Kilauea Military Camp on the island of Hawaii where they were held without counsel or knowing what charges levied against them albeit the obvious bombing of the naval base 5. The day after the bombing on Pearl Harbor President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his famous Infamy Speech to a Joint Session of Congress, the speech called for a formal declaration of war on the Empire of Japan, congress granted it within hours of being requested 6. One further result of the attack on Pearl Harbor was that Japanese-American residents and citizens had to move to nearby Japanese-American internment camps, over 110,000 Japanese-Americans, including United States citizens, forced from their homes and transferred to internment camps 7 which essentially were prisoner of war camps. In stark contrast with the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the government handled 9/11 much differently. The response of the U.S. government to the 9/11 terrorist attacks sparked legal investigations into the motivations and execution of the attacks. The Bush administration announced a war on terrorism, with the goal of bringing Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda, and the rest of the radical group to justice and preventing other terrorist networks from emerging. The response also included funds for families affected by the attacks, planning for the War on Terrorism, rebuilding of Lower-East Manhattan, and the diplomatic invasion and investigation of Iraq and Afghanistan 8. Another response from the government was the Patriot Act passed by congress to help fight and defend the U.S. from terrorism and other crimes. In both cases there was a significant restructuring of government. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security