Advance ticket sales have ended but plenty of additional tickets remain available at the door.
Profs and Pints DC presents: “Pearl Harbor Beneath the Surface,” an in-depth look at Japan’s decision to launch its attack, with James Perry, co-director of the Institute for the Study of Strategy and Politics.
December 7th is Pearl Harbor Day, marking the anniversary of the deadly Japanese attack on U.S. soil. Virtually all historical accounts of that battle focus on the tensions and conflict between the U.S. and Japan. They fail, however, to examine the broader chain of world events surrounding Japan’s decision, and as a result provide only a shallow understanding of what motivated Japan to unleash destruction upon Hawaii.
Join a scholar of World War II’s history for a talk that will go well beyond what you were taught about Pearl Harbor in school and help you see what happened there as part of a broader Japanese plan to invade nations other than our own. He’ll take you through the events that led to Pearl Harbor and the related battles in the Philippines and at Midway, looking at the decisions made by all sides and what hung in the balance.
Dr. Perry will discuss how Japan had been planning to join Germany in invading the Soviet Union and wanted to ensure that its defensive perimeter was secured beforehand. In bombing Pearl Harbor, Japan hoped to destroy any U.S. capacity to project military power onto the Japanese homeland. The Pearl Harbor assault was timed to two events that seemed imminent in November 1941 and were seen by Japan saw as leaving the Soviet Union ripe for invasion: the fall of Moscow to Germany and the withdrawal of Soviet troops in Siberia for Moscow’s defense.
You’ll learn exactly how Japan nearly succeeded—but ultimately failed—in rendering the U.S. incapable of fighting back, and you’ll end up with a much richer perspective on a date that will live in infamy. (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15, or $13 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: Ships burn and sink on Pearl Harbor's "Battleship Row," which was devastated in the 1941 Japanese attack. (National Archives.)