Pearl Harbor is the story of the worst battle defeat ever suffered by the United States of America, and of how courage and ingenuity rose from the smouldering wreckage to build the world's most powerful war machine and, in victory's aftermath, to wage peace with even greater scope and success. In stirring text and dramatic photography, much of it rarely seen, LIFE brings Pearl Harbor alive in all its terror and heroism. LIFE tells the survivor's stories; the radar operator who mistook those blips on his screen for American planes, the Japanese bomber pilot who honed in on the Arizona, and the Gal Friday who covered the carnage for the Honolulu Star. The poignancy of what happened on that awful day is heightened by the immediacy of their memories.