60 Years Ago In TIME

By Melissa August, Elizabeth L. Bland, Sean Gregory, Janice M. Horowitz, Benjamin Nugent and Rebecca Winters

Like last week's 9/11 commemoration, the first anniversary of PEARL HARBOR was a sober event for the nation. But there was a war to win, and that was the focus of TIME's issue of Dec. 7, 1942, featuring Admiral Ernest J. King on the cover:

It should be observed as a day of silence in remembrance of a day of great infamy. Thus Franklin Roosevelt, President and Commander in Chief, approached the first anniversary of a Dec. 7 that will live long in American history. Restrained official voices warned the American people not to underestimate the difficulties of the job still ahead. The war was not won. But victory for the [Allies] never looked more certain. Clearly revealed at last were the inadequacies of Axis power. Not so clearly revealed, but beginning to emerge, was the possibility that the major [Allied] leaders had had a global strategy from the beginning. Columnist Major George Fielding Eliot last week concluded that nothing happened by accident, that all had been planned and carried out with "magnificent precision."

--TIME, Dec. 7,1942