On December 7, 1941, when the Japanese air force launched a surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet moored in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Pacific war began. The Pearl Harbor attack on the United States changed the course of World War II. In this enthralling volume, readers learn that in the days that followed the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese attacked Burma, Malaya, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, and swept aside weak Allied resistance. Then, in February 1942, Great Britain suffered a catastrophe when the Japanese captured the vital port of Singapore. Period photographs and 4-color maps of battles provide readers with an incredible learning experience, along with spellbinding eyewitness reports as sidebars.