Japan's Pre-Pearl Harbor Attack: Sinking a US Warship in China.

The first Japanese sinking of an American warship was not on December 7, 1941, or even that year, but four years earlier, on December 12, 1937, when the US Navy river gunboat USS Panay and three Standard Oil Company tankers were evacuating American citizens trapped by Japan’s invasion of Nanjing when they were targeted from above in an attack that, like Pearl Harbor, stood out both for its mercilessness and the fact that the US and Japan were not at that time at war.