President Donald Trump on Thursday invoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor when defending U.S. strikes on Iran during a meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in the Oval Office in Washington.
In response to a journalist’s question about why he had not informed allies of his war plans, Trump said: "We wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?" He added: "You believe in surprise, I think much more so than us."
Seated beside him, Prime Minister Takaichi displayed a startled reaction: her eyes widened and she shifted in her chair as the president evoked the episode that drew the United States into World War Two.
The attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, resulted in the deaths of 2,390 Americans, and the United States declared war on Japan the following day. President Franklin D. Roosevelt described the attack as "a date which will live in infamy."
The United States ultimately defeated Japan in August 1945. The end of the war came days after U.S. atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which the article notes killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Context of the exchange
The Oval Office remarks came as Trump was defending U.S. military actions against Iran. The president used the historic example of Pearl Harbor to underscore his point about the value of surprise in military operations, and he directly addressed Japan in making that comparison. The prime minister's visible reaction underscored the sensitivity of invoking a wartime attack that pulled the United States into global conflict.
Notable details
- Trump framed surprise as a strategic value and referenced Pearl Harbor when questioned about not notifying allies of military plans.
- Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi reacted visibly during the Oval Office exchange.
- The article reiterates the human toll of the Pearl Harbor attack - 2,390 Americans killed - and references subsequent events in 1945, including atomic bombings that resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.