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.
Alben W. Barkley
Truman ascended to the presidency when Roosevelt died in April 1945, just before the end of World War II. In the war's aftermath, Americans wanted to know why the U.S. seemed ill-prepared for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Barkley sponsored a resolution to create the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack and was chosen as chairman of the ten-person committee. The committee's report, delivered on July 20, 1946, exonerated Roosevelt of any blame for the attack and highlighted weaknesses in communications between branches of the U.S. armed forces, leading to the creation of the United States Department of Defense. Barkley also helped ensure U.S. participation in the United Nations and advocated approval of billions of dollars in loans to rebuild Europe. "Look" magazine named him the second most fascinating person in the country behind Dwight D. Eisenhower.