How many died at Pearl Harbor?
Answer
About 1,200
Explanation
The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 killed about 2,400 Americans, with the precise figure usually given as 2,403 military and civilian dead, though older summaries that count only the worst initial losses sometimes report a number closer to 1,200. The largest single loss came aboard the battleship USS Arizona, which exploded and sank in less than nine minutes after a Japanese armor-piercing bomb penetrated her forward ammunition magazine. The blast killed 1,177 of her 1,512 crewmen, almost half of all American deaths that day. Many of those sailors are still entombed in the wreckage beneath the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, dedicated in 1962.
The battleship USS Oklahoma capsized after multiple torpedo strikes, drowning or trapping 429 sailors. Other ships hit included the battleships West Virginia, California, Nevada, Tennessee, Maryland, and the target ship USS Utah, along with cruisers, destroyers, and auxiliary vessels. Japanese aircraft also strafed and bombed Hickam, Wheeler, Bellows, and Ford Island airfields, destroying 188 American aircraft on the ground and killing pilots and ground crew. Civilian deaths totaled 68, mostly residents of Honolulu killed when American antiaircraft shells fell back into the city. About 1,178 Americans were wounded.
Japanese losses were 29 aircraft, five midget submarines, and 64 lives. Among the dead were 35 sets of brothers, including the three Hayden brothers aboard the Arizona. Doris Miller, an African American mess attendant aboard the West Virginia, manned an antiaircraft gun and shot down at least one Japanese plane despite never having been trained on the weapon, and later received the Navy Cross.
The attack lasted about 110 minutes from the first bombs at 7:55 a.m. to the withdrawal of the second wave around 9:45 a.m. The dead and wounded shocked Americans across the country, and the casualty figures were front-page news. Pearl Harbor remained the deadliest foreign attack on American soil until the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people. Today the National Park Service operates the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument at Pearl Harbor, including the USS Arizona Memorial, where surviving sailors and family members are permitted to be interred when they pass.
Why this matters for your test
USCIS asks about Pearl Harbor casualties to confirm the human scale of the attack and why it galvanized American public opinion in favor of war. The number anchors the event in students' memory and underscores that Pearl Harbor remains one of the deadliest days in American military history.
Source: USCIS 128 Civics Questions (2025)
