Today is the 75th anniversary of Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which killed more than 2,400 Americans at a naval base in Hawaii and drew the United States into World War II.
Our city felt the shock waves from nearly 5,000 miles away.
“For New York, Pearl Harbor was the beginning of galvanizing to become a very mobilized, war-oriented city,” said Mike Thornton, an associate curator at the New-York Historical Society.
New York “became the Army and Navy’s Costco for the European theater,” he said, referring to the region of fighting across the Atlantic. “All of the supplies and planes were shipped out of here, and we were also a great training destination for troops.”
More than three million people and 63 million tons of supplies were dispatched from New York Harbor during the war.
