History of Hawaii
Pearl Harbor was surprisingly attacked on December 7, 1941 by the Imperial Japanese Navy, killing 2,403 people and sinking the main American battleship fleet. Fortuitously, the four Pacific aircraft carriers were not in port and escaped damage. Hawaii was put under martial law until 1945. Unlike the West Coast of the United States in which 100,000 ethnic Japanese citizens were interned, the Japanese American population in Hawaii completely avoided such similar fate, though hundreds of pro-Japan leaders were arrested. Pearl Harbor was the U.S.' main forward base for the Pacific War. The Japanese tried to invade in summer 1942 but were defeated at the Battle of Midway. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen passed through on their way to the fighting.
Hell ship
was torpedoed on 12 September 1944 by which later realized the ship carried 1,317 Australian and British prisoners of war (POWs) from Singapore to Formosa (Taiwan). A total of 1,159 POWs died. The 350 who were in lifeboats were bombarded and all killed by a Japanese navy vessel the next day when they were rowing towards land. On 15 September, the three submarines returned to the area and rescued 63 surviving POWs who were on rafts. Four of them died before they could be landed at Tanapag Harbor, Saipan, in the Mariana Islands. 
In the same convoy and on the same day, with another 950 British POWs on board, was also sunk by . 431 of them were killed.