Quotes, Films & Photos of Pearl Harbor

Some of the most enduring artifacts of December 7, 1941 are not ships or ordnance — they are sentences, frames of newsreel footage, photographs taken from the cockpits of attacking aircraft, and propaganda posters that crystallized the moment for an entire generation. This collection brings them together.

You'll find FDR's "day which will live in infamy" address parsed line by line, with the editorial revisions he made in the eighteen hours between the attack and his speech to Congress; Admiral Yamamoto's famous "sleeping giant" quote and what he actually said (and why the line as quoted in popular films may never have been spoken at all); the contested history of Commander Mitsuo Fuchida's "Tora! Tora! Tora!" radio call signaling complete surprise; assessments of the historical accuracy of films like the 1970 Tora! Tora! Tora! and Michael Bay's 2001 "Pearl Harbor"; analyses of the era's most striking propaganda posters and recruiting art; and reviews of the canonical Pearl Harbor books, from Walter Lord's "Day of Infamy" to Gordon Prange's "At Dawn We Slept."

For visitors who want to see the real planes and aircraft that appear in those photographs, the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum preserves the actual hangars on Ford Island that survived the strafing runs of December 7th, complete with bullet holes left in place. The Battleship Missouri Memorial Tour takes you to the very deck where the formal surrender was photographed on September 2, 1945.

Memory is shaped by the words and images we choose to keep. These pages curate the ones worth keeping.