A Harbour to be Remembered

Over the weekend, the movie "Pearl Harbour" has been shown on television. Did anyone catch it? The show was split into 2 time slots (part 1 on saturday and part 2 on sunday). I love watching war movies. A few which I have watched were Hitler, Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Black Hawk Down, etc... The interest arose when I had to study history during my schooling days. Don't be mistaken that I am supporting the call for war in real life. My strong belief is a confrontation should never be the first solution to a problem. Seeing all the sufferings on screen made my tears rolled.

Why was Pearl Harbour attacked and the significance?

Eighteen months prior to Dec 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had transferred the United States Fleet to Pearl Harbor as a presumed deterrent to Japanese agression. The Japanese military, deeply engaged in the seemingly endless war it had started against China in mid-1937, badly needed oil and other raw materials. Commercial access to these was gradually curtailed as the conquests continued. In July 1941 the Western powers effectively halted trade with Japan. From then on, as the desperate Japanese schemed to seize the oil and mineral-rich East Indies and Southeast Asia, a Pacific war was virtually inevitable.
By late November 1941, with peace negotiations clearly approaching an end, informed U.S. officials (and they were well-informed, they believed, through an ability to read Japan's diplomatic codes) fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. Completely unanticipated was the prospect that Japan would attack east, as well.
The 7 December 1941 Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was one of the great defining moments in history. A single carefully-planned and well-executed stroke removed the United States Navy's battleship force as a possible threat to the Japanese Empire's southward expansion. America, unprepared and now considerably weakened, was abruptly brought into the Second World War as a full combatant.