The round-the-world escape from Pearl Harbor

December 7th, 1941: a date that will live in infamy, though not exclusively for the reason you think. Imperial Japan didn’t just attack Pearl Harbor on the first day of the Pacific War. It was part of a coordinated assault across the Pacific. The Japanese bombed American territories in the Philippines, Midway, Wake Island, and Guam, and launched ground invasions of British Hong Kong and Malaya. They even briefly invaded Thailand, before the Thai government decided to join the Japanese side. Caught in the middle of it all was a single civilian Boeing 314, the California Clipper, making its regularly scheduled flight between San Francisco and Auckland for Pan American World Airways. The California Clipper At the time, flying across the Pacific meant hopping from island to island on a seaplane, refueling while landed. After leaving San Francisco on December 2nd, Captain Robert Ford took the California Clipper to Hawaii, Canton Island (then under joint US-British control, now part of…