How many people died in Pearl Harbor? Here are the casualties of the 1941 attack.

National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day is one of several U.S. holidays honoring and remembering those who served in the U.S. military. In 1994, more than 50 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress established the Dec. 7 holiday. Today, Americans gather each year at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial in Hawaii to commemorate the service members and civilians who lost their lives.

Here’s what to know about the casualties from the attack that President Franklin Roosevelt called “a date which will live in infamy.”

How many people died in Pearl Harbor?

There were 2,403 U.S. casualties after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, according to the National WWII Museum and Census Bureau. That number includes Navy, Army and Marines servicemembers and the 68 civilians who died. Additionally, 129 Japanese soldiers were killed.

Another 1,178 people were wounded in the attack.

Dec. 7, 1941: America remembers devastating attack on Pearl Harbor

What was the attack on Pearl Harbor?

In 1941, Japanese forces attacked a U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. They wanted to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet so the Americans would not be able to fight back when Japanese forces moved across the South Pacific. American military leaders were not expecting the time or the location of the attack, so the base was fairly undefended.

Just after 8 a.m., Japanese planes flew over Pearl Harbor and dropped bombs and bullets onto the ships below. The forces hit the USS Arizona with a 1,800-pound bomb, which sank the exploding ship and killed over 1,000 men, the History Channel writes. The USS Oklahoma, USS California, USS West Virginia, USS Utah, USS Maryland, USS Pennsylvania, USS Tennessee and USS Nevada were also significantly damaged in the attacks. More than 300 planes and 20 ships were destroyed.

Pearl Harbor facilities, which included oil storage depots, repair shops, shipyards and docks, were unharmed, which allowed the Navy to recover from the attack.

After the attack, the U.S. declared war on Japan and officially entered WWII. The fighting continued until Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. The bombing caused about 200,000 casualties between the two Japanese cities, according to estimates from the nationally funded Atomic Archive.

How many survivors of Pearl Harbor are still alive?

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs doesn’t know exactly how many Pearl Harbor survivors are still living, the Associated Press reports. There were about 87,000 military servicemen in Oahu, Hawaii during the attack.

The youngest servicemen in the 1941 attacks, who were 17 years old, would be turning 99 this year.

The oldest living survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack is Joseph Eskenazi, who celebrated his 105th birthday on Jan. 30. There is only one living survivor from the USS Arizona – Lou Conter, 101. Of the other two Arizona survivors, Ken Potts died in April 2023 at the age of 102, and 97-year-old Donald Stratton died in February 2020.

Remembering Pearl Harbor: Look back on photos of the attack and solemn commemorations

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How many people died in Pearl Harbor? Here's when the attack happened.