 It all began at Battleship Row, Pearl Harbor, territory of Hawaii. The Pacific Dawn of 7 December 1941 was shattered by the surprise attack by the Empire of Japan upon the U.S. Naval Forces stationed there. Two waves of carrier-launched fighters and bombers attacked U.S. Navy, Marine and Army installations from the air as submarines attacked from the sea. Shortly after 0800, USS Arizona suffered a mortal wound when an armor-piercing bomb penetrated her decks and ignited the ship's forward ammunition magazine. The resulting explosion in fire killed 1,177 sailors and Marines, the greatest loss of life on any ship that day. In just under two hours, 21 ships of the United States Pacific Fleet were either sunk or damaged. 188 aircraft were destroyed and another 159 damaged. While the material costs were grave, the human cost was even worse. 2,403 dead, 1,178 wounded, both military and civilian. It was, as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared, a date which will live in infamy. USS Arizona rests to this day as a memorial, grave site and enduring reminder of the price of freedom. And while the attack on Pearl Harbor was a terrible military defeat, the performance of our people revealed the seeds of our eventual victory. Some stories of individual valor at Pearl Harbor are well known, and that single day 15 sailors earned the Medal of Honor, nine posthumously and two of them aboard USS Arizona. Countless others performed actions above and beyond the call of duty. Nurses and medics rushed into danger to tend to the wounded. Marines fired their weapons back at the attacking aircraft and responded wherever there was need. Soldiers, Coast Guardsmen and Airmen rushed to the aid of fellow warriors throughout the island. With solemn reverence and respect, we must always remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice on that December day in 1941. And we must never forget the heroism of all who wore the uniform throughout the long war that followed. On 7 December 1941, Japanese planes struck the U.S. Marine Corps installation at Eva Airfield. At the same time, they struck Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor. The airfield hosted the Marine Aviation Squadrons responsible for combat patrols near the island, and the Marine Defense Battalions responsible for protecting Pearl Harbor. This was the first of many engagements for a corps that would battle its way across the Pacific, island by island, fight by fight over the next four years. Many of the fiercest fights in the history of the Marine Corps, Tara, Roy Namur, Saipan and Iwo Jima, among others, began with training in Hawaii at the Maui Amphibious Training Center or at Camp Tarawa on the Big Island. It was in Hawaii that many prepared for every climb in place, with the drive and professionalism of every Marine in the long and proud history of our Corps. From the hellish jungles of Guadalcanal to the deadly beaches of Saipan to the windswept rocks atop Mount Suribachi, they left their mark across the Pacific and across the pages of history. Semper Fidelis. At submarine-based Pearl Harbor, our Navy received a stroke of good fortune on that fateful Sunday morning in December of 1941. Just four of our submarines, USS Narwhal, Dolphin, Kachalot and Tautog, were in port, suffering only light damage and minor injuries, while the rest of the force were elsewhere. The survival of the submarine base and the boats it supported would prove crucial to our victory in the Pacific. More than half of all World War II submarine patrols, over 930 in all, sailed from the piers of submarine base Pearl Harbor. They participated in every large naval battle of the war, most notably at Midway and Leyte Gulf. These submarines and their valiant crews wrought grievous destruction on Japan's merchant shipping and their battle fleet. In the words of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, we who survived World War II and were privileged to rejoin our loved ones at home shall never forget that it was our submarines that held the line against the enemy while our fleets replaced losses and repaired wounds. We can never forget the great risks and heroic efforts of our silent service warriors launching from the sub-base Pearl Harbor piers. They made a critical strategic difference in the Pacific war, hastening our eventual victory and ensuring a durable peace. Station Hypo, also known as Fleet Radio Unit Pacific, was the Navy's signals monitoring and cryptographic intelligence unit in Hawaii. It was there that critical intelligence and naval ingenuity helped provide the edge that would lead to victory at Midway. U.S. cryptanalysts had partially broken the Japanese Navy's JN-25 Bravo code as early as March 5th of 1942. As a result, they had decoded messages stating there would soon be an operation at objective Alpha Foxtrot. While the meaning of that location was not initially known, the Hypo team set out to confirm the identity of the target. They devised to ruse faking a failure of Midway's water supply, directing the Garrison Commander there to send an unencrypted emergency request for water after an explosion in the island's desalination system. Within 24 hours, U.S. code breakers picked up a Japanese signal that Alpha Foxtrot was short on water. Along with the intended target, Hypo also provided the probable timetable for the attack and the Japanese order of battle. With this intelligence, Admiral Chester Nimitz knew the Japanese had negated their numerical advantage by dividing their ships into four separate task groups and that U.S. forces could achieve rough parity by combining their own. The resulting battle saw the U.S. task forces' dauntless dive bombers gain tactical advantage that resulted in the sending of four Japanese aircraft carriers to the ocean's bottom. The application of intelligence had served as a force multiplier that helped secure a pivotal U.S. victory which turned the tide of the war in the Pacific. A dry dock may not seem as exciting as a ship or a battlefield, but the dry docks at Pearl Harbor hold a place of honor for their pivotal role in world history. On 28 May 1942, the badly damaged aircraft carrier USS Yorktown entered dry dock after being hit by two bombs during the battle of the Coral Sea. Shipyard engineers at first estimated the ship needed two weeks of repairs, but Admiral Chester Nimitz, whose portrait is on display in my office, ordered the work accelerated. Board staff labored around the clock, allowing the ship to sail just two days later to join Navy forces off Midway Island. The Pearl Harbor dry dock therefore ensured a crucial third aircraft carrier joined the outnumbered American forces at that June 1942 battle, providing the essential margin for one of the U.S. Navy's most significant victories at sea. Then as now, every link in the chain was essential to ensuring the readiness of the fleet, and every member of the team decisively helped forge the victory. The Pacific Ocean is immense, larger than all of the land on the surface of planet Earth, and four times the surface of the moon. American maritime success in this vast domain has always and will always require the finest maintenance, repair, and resupply facilities poised as far forward as possible. Since 1908, the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard has answered that call, serving as the crucial Pacific logistics hub for the United States Navy and Marine Corps through every generation. Without this facility, American victory in the Pacific during World War II would have been much more difficult to achieve. The same is true of every one of our naval efforts since 1945. From Korea to Vietnam, the Cold War to the War on Terror, Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard has served as a keystone of our national defense. As we once again respond to the challenge of great power competition across the Pacific, investing in shipyard facilities is and always will be a prudent, indeed a crucial part of our maritime strategy. Thanks and aircraft cannot operate without large amounts of fuel, and in wartime, secure storage is imperative. After 1942, the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility literally supplied the United States Navy and Marine Corps with the fuel needed for victory in World War II. In bulk fuel storage below ground, protected this resource from attack, adding a higher degree of certainty to military planning. Today, these concrete and steel tanks still crucially support our national strategy, with 20 fuel tanks in two rows beneath Red Hill, 250 feet tall, 100 feet across, and each holding up to 12 million gallons of fuel. With double the capacity of Navy storage on the U.S. West Coast, Red Hill's fuel is also 2,500 miles closer to where America's services must operate. Without this critical resource, the mission of the Navy and Marine Corps, as well as the Army and Air Force, would be much harder to accomplish. One day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt predicted, with confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us, God. Aboard USS Missouri, that triumph was finally secured on 2 September of 1945. Between overcome the shock and despair of the attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. forces stemmed the tide of initial Japanese success, and then relentlessly advanced across the Pacific. From victories at Midway and Guadalcanal, on the edge of the greatest expanse of the Japanese perimeter in 1942, through hard-won and costly victories in various island chains in 1943 and 1944, U.S. forces established themselves at the very doorstep of Japan's home islands with victories on Iwo Jima and Okinawa by 1945. Something also suffered unprecedented bombing from the air and the sweeping of its navy and merchant marine from the seas, Emperor Hirohito chose to avoid further bloodshed and announced his accession to the terms of unconditional surrender. The costliest war in the history of the world had finally come to an end. The remaining act would play out in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945, as the military and civilian representatives of the Emperor signed the instruments of surrender aboard battleship Missouri. While those proceedings clearly marked an end, they also marked a beginning. It was the start of Japan's reconstruction, a nation that would also rise from the despair of defeat. In so doing, Japan became not only a democratic country, but one of the world's foremost economic powers and one of our nation's strongest allies in the post-war world. On this 75th anniversary of VJ Day, let us say a prayer of thanksgiving for all who stepped forward with uncommon valor and unflagging will in the face of attack. They did not choose this war, but they ended it and secured a new and durable era of peace throughout the Pacific and around the world.