Pearl Harbor is a lagoon harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Its close proximity to the capital of Honolulu and protected position made it a popular stop for the US Navy before Hawaii became part of the United States, and it remains one of the chief bases for the United States’ Pacific Fleet. Before WWII, Pearl Harbor was an important base for US expansion into the Pacific. In the lead-up to the war, much of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet was concentrated there, making it an ideal target for the Japanese military when it sought to neutralize a nation it saw as a growing threat to Japan’s own Pacific interests. It was also attractive to Japan as a target because its great distance from the mainland US meant that it would take a long time both for reinforcements to arrive and for news of the carnage to travel back to American officials. After the attacks, the base remained crucial to wartime deployments because of its position partway between the mainland US and the Asian Front.

While the term “American Exceptionalism” was first used by members of the Communist Party USA to criticize capitalism during the Great Depression, the phrase was quickly adopted as a form of praise by more mainstream US politicians.