Promotional painting for the 1970 movie Tora! Tora!
Tora!
by artist Robert McCall via Airport Journals
On the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor,
Mark Glancy looks at three films covering the Japanese raid on the US naval
base on 7 December 1941...
“December
7th, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy,” declared President Roosevelt on the day after the Japanese
attack on the main US naval base in the Pacific. Hundreds of Japanese planes
took the base by surprise early that Sunday morning, sinking or disabling 21
warships, destroying nearly 200 planes, and killing over 2,000 people. It was a
rude awakening for a country that had seemed determined to find its own path in
the global conflict. Hollywood immediately seized on the topic in a number of
low budget films about how America came to be ‘stabbed in the back’ by Japan.
Since the war, the events of that fateful day have been dramatised on a much
larger scale, but in strikingly different films.
1)
From Here to Eternity (1953)
This is by far the
most acclaimed and admired of all Pearl Harbor films. Its appeal lay, in part,
in its timeliness: eight years after the end of the war, audiences were ready
to look back without the flag-waving or moral certainties that characterise wartime
films. Thus, in From Here to Eternity the attack on Pearl Harbor does not
serve as the springboard for revenge scenarios or for exposés of Japanese
treachery. Rather, it represents an awakening from the malaise and drift of the
prewar period…
But is
it accurate?
The film
was based on a bestselling novel by James Jones, who served in the army and was
stationed at Schofield Barracks, where the film is set, at the time of Pearl
Harbor. Jones’s portrait of service life had to be toned down considerably for
the film. The army would not agree to co-operate with the filmmakers unless it
was portrayed more favourably. Hence, while Captain Holmes is actually promoted
in the novel, in the film he is made to resign for his misdeeds. The Hollywood
censors required prostitutes to be hostesses, brothels to be social clubs, and
other elements of the Honolulu nightlife to be eliminated altogether.
Accuracy: 5/10
2) Tora! Tora!
Tora! (1970)
In the midst of the
Vietnam War, Twentieth Century Fox produced this ambitious, two-and-a-half hour
semi-documentary account of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The film was intended
as a warning against complacency in the Cold War and also as a means of affirming
the current state of good relations between the USA and Japan…
But is
it accurate?
Admiral
Yamamoto (Soh Yamamura), who planned the attack, reflects in the ending on its
potential consequences. Despite its immediate success, he gravely observes: “I
fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a
terrible resolve.” This is the best line and the most memorable moment in the
film, but there is no record that Yamamoto actually said it. A larger complaint
would be that the film fails to set the conflict in a wider political context.
Japan’s invasion of China and its alliance with Nazi Germany are mentioned, but
in its eagerness to offer a balanced account, the film skates over these
contentious points.
Accuracy: 7/10
3) Pearl Harbor
(2001)
…The attack on Pearl
Harbor is vividly recreated – in detail and at length – with computer generated
effects that are entirely convincing. Hence, we see the mass of planes swoop in
over the island, and a myriad of explosions, fires, and casualties as the
action reaches a frenzied climax. The film’s signature shot – a bomb falls from
a plane high above the harbour, descends through the air, and pierces the decks
of the USS Arizona – is nothing short of spectacular…
But is
it accurate?
The
characters of Rafe and Danny are loosely – very loosely – based on two real
army air force fliers, George Welch and Kenneth Taylor, who were stationed in
Oahu and on their way home from an all-night poker game when the attack on
Pearl Harbor began. They were quickly airborne and shot down seven of the
attacking planes…
Accuracy: 3/10
To see full review
of the films:
From
<https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/pearl-harbor-three-films/
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