Pearl Harbor

noun

1. a harbor near Honolulu, on S Oahu, in Hawaii: surprise attack by Japan on the U.S. naval base and other military installations December 7, 1941.

2. any significant or crippling defeat, betrayal, loss, etc., that comes unexpectedly.

Pearl Harbor

noun

1. an almost landlocked inlet of the Pacific on the S coast of the island of Oahu, Hawaii: site of a US naval base attacked by the Japanese in 1941, resulting in the US entry into World War II

Pearl Harbor

1. A major United States naval base in Hawaii that was attacked without warning by the Japanese air force on December 7, 1941, with great loss of American lives and ships. In asking Congress to declare war on Japan the next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt described the day of the attack as “a date which will live in infamy.”

Example Sentences

On December 7, 1941, Japanese kamikaze fighter planes, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

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If you remember Pearl Harbor, call it a dress rehearsal.

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Only weeks after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the emperor’s soldiers swept south through Malaya, often riding on cheap pushbikes in an assault dubbed “the bicycle blitzkrieg.”

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The Japanese had begun the war against the U.S. by bombing the American ships at Pearl Harbor.

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Japan had attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor.

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