Trump draws parallel between Pearl Harbour and US strikes on Iran in meeting with Japanese PM

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi looks at her watch during a meeting with US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Mar 19, 2026. REUTERS

President Donald Trump on Thursday drew a parallel between US strikes on Iran and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor decades ago, as he defended the war against Tehran at a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Washington.

"We wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbour?" Trump said when a journalist asked why he had not told allies about his war plans.

"You believe in surprise, I think much more so than us."

Takaichi's eyes widened and she shifted in her chair as Trump, seated beside her in the Oval Office, evoked the moment that drew the US into World War Two.

The Japanese attack on the US naval base in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii on Dec 7, 1941, killed 2,390 Americans, and the US declared war on Japan the next day.

US President Franklin D Roosevelt called it "a date which will live in infamy."

The US defeated Japan in August 1945, days after US atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.