I'm not a big war-movie buff any more (THE SEARCH FOR PRIVATE RYAN cured me) but this is a worthwhile film if you have an interest in WWII. TORA! TORA! TORA! is a documentary-type film. Think of it as a Stephen Ambrose book recorded live. The film is neither a glorified fifties war-film (IN HARMS WAY, BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA), nor is it a Viet Nam noir-war film (PLATOON, THE DEER HUNTER). (Neither of which are particularly authentic.) TORA! TORA! TORA! recreates war from the perspective of news correspondent-participant-observer. The story is presented from both the Japanese and American viewpoints and it is presented like a History Channel film.
It took the film crew several months to film TORA! TORA! TORA! I was living in Navy housing on Pearl Harbor at the time and a number of our friends and acquaintences found part-time jobs acting in the film. "Real" military pilots in-between rounds in Viet Nam flew some of the planes (this was 1969).
Much of the architecture in Honolulu was vintage WWII era or earlier and the rest of the island was relatively unchanged from the 1940s. The terrain looked very much as it had when my father-in-law passed through on his way to Guadalcanel and later Iwo Jima.
I cannot tell you the names of the aircraft (my husband could) but I was told that they used real aircraft from the period including the P40s the U.S. flew and the captured Zeros the Japanese flew. We drove up to Schoffield Barracks to look at the old airplanes lined up row on row. During the filming, one of these old planes crashed in a sugar cane field and burned up before the pilot could be rescued. The daily flights overhead, the real crashes, the reenactment of the destruction in the harbor, the daily flights in and out of Hickam as men and material destined for Viet Nam left and wounded and dead arrived--was all very weird.
Well, this is an excellent film. The new PEARL HARBOR relies on all sorts of technology, but if you want to see how Hawaii really looked in 1941 and how the planes really looked, and how the crews really looked, and obtain some sense of how terrifying it was to be in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 this is the film to see.
This movie was directed by several directors including Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasuka, but the American version (yes, there is a Japanese version) gives the credit to veteran director Richard Fleischer. Based on Gordon W. Prange's "Tora! Tora! Tora!" and Ladislas Farago's "The Broken Seal", the film accurately depicts the events on both sides of the Pacific leading up to the stunning attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet on Sunday, December 7, 1941.
Even though it covers an 18-month period between Admiral Yamamoto's (Soh Yamamura) initial planning for Operation Hawaii and the attack itself, Tora! Tora! Tora! (the title refers to the code used to inform the Japanese that the Americans had been caught by surprise) never drags or seems dull. I learned, for instance, that Japanese Ambassador Nomura was a skilled and honorable diplomat who did not know what his country's military leaders were planning, and that he hoped to avoid war. I was also stunned by how General Walter C. Short (Jason Robards) was so preoccupied by the threat of sabotage from Hawaii's 125,000 Japanese inhabitants that he foolishly parked all the bombers and fighters in Hickam and Wheeler Fields in neat rows, supposedly to make them easier to guard but actually making them sitting ducks.
What amazed me about watching this movie is how clueless Pearl Harbor's defenders were on that Sunday morning. Though many people think the first shot of the Pacific War was fired by the Japanese, it was actually fired by the USS Ward on a Japanese midget submarine trying to sneak into the harbor. This happened roughly an hour before the first bomb fell on Battleship Row. I would have thought that the report of an unknown submarine being fired upon in a restricted area would have alerted the whole fleet. Wrong! American officers in Oahu were so certain that the Japanese would be spotted long before they could launch a strike that Captain James Earle (Richard Anderson) asks for confirmation before he tells his superiors. This does not make Adm. Husband E. Kimmel (Martin Balsam) very happy and I thought he was very angry that the Ward's initial report did not reach him in time.
The movie makes clear to the audience that history often hinges on small but significant details. Who would have thought that the fate of two great nations would be decided by a diplomat's slow typing speed, or that a report of a large radar blip off to the north of Oahu would be received with the phrase, "Well, don't worry about it."? It sounds like bad fiction but everything in this movie is based on historical fact.
Tora! Tora! Tora! has incredible battle scenes. Most of the aerial scenes were shot using either vintage planes or realistic replicas (because there are no flying Zero fighters, T-28 Texans were modified to look like the famous Japanese planes). The Navy actually allowed 20th Century-Fox to film in and around Pearl Harbor and rented a World War II era carrier that was to be decommissioned to serve as a stand in for the Japanese carrier. Clever editing, good miniature effects and carefully built live action sets give the illusion that one is actually reliving the Day of Infamy.
The 60th Anniversary Special Edition DVD was released around the same time as 2001's Pearl Harbor. It features an all new 20-minute documentary, director's commentary, the orginal theatrical trailer, and restores the movie to its original widescreen format. It has four audio tracks (English 4.1, the commentary, English Dolby Surround, French Mono), and subtitles in English and Spanish.
Buy Tora! Tora! Tora! (Extended Japanese Edition) (2009) Now
I feel that the release by 20th Century Fox of the Japanese cinema version of Tora! Tora! Tora! on Blu-ray and with an additional ten minutes of Japanese produced scenes warrants further attention directed largely at its historical content. The Blu-ray is noticeably darker and the grain heavier in scenes such as the Japanese aircraft launch from the flagship Akagi in the pre-dawn of December 7. Those watching this scene closely will note that producers have erred in placing Akagi's flight deck island on the starboard side rather than the port side. Akagi and Hiryu were the only Japanese aircraft carriers with islands located on the port side of the flight deck.Tora! Tora! Tora! is a gripping and mostly accurate account of Japan's treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and the events that preceded it. Fox intended that the film would be both historically accurate and balanced. To achieve that balance, Fox arranged for American and Japanese producers and directors to film their accounts of the Japanese attack independently and then blended both accounts into one story. For greater realism, Fox wisely chose to exclude top film stars, such as Charlton Heston or John Wayne, and selected a cast of fine character actors for the American and Japanese roles in the film. The American account appears to have been largely drawn from Professor Gordon W. Prange's authoritative history "At Dawn we slept" and does not shy away from depicting the succession of blunders that should have alerted the American armed forces in Hawaii to the approaching danger.
The logistical problems facing the producers were very challenging. When the film was being made in 1970, computer generated images (CGI) had not been invented. No Japanese aircraft dating from 1941 were available except in museums. So Fox converted American Vultee BT-13 and North American AT-6 Texan basic trainers to look like Zeros, Aichi "Val" dive-bombers, and Nakajima Navy Type 97 "Kate" level and torpedo bombers. The effect was so realistic that one WW II Japanese Zero pilot thought the Zeros used in the film were genuine. The Japanese built complete full-scale replicas of Admiral Yamamoto's flagship Nagato and the carrier Akagi on the beach at Ashiya airforce base. Fox built a full scale replica of the battleship USS Arizona mounted on barges. The Fox miniature department built 29 American and Japanese warship models some as long as 40 feet. The pilots who flew the Japanese aircraft replicas over Hawaii in this film were American. Japanese actors only featured in aircraft close ups.
"Tora! Tora! Tora!" is divided by an intermission into events leading up to Pearl Harbor and the actual attack on Hawaii which has been brilliantly filmed, and unfortunately, resulted in the death of one pilot. I agree completely with the views of film reviewer Leonard Maltin who described the film in these words: "Well-documented screenplay shows major and minor blundering on both sides, then recreates attack with frightening realism. Well-made film creates incredible tension. Oscar-winning special effects." (2008)
The historical context of the film is probably well settled. Tensions between the United States and Japan had been rising since the Japanese attacked China in 1937, and were not helped by the sinking and machine gunning of survivors of the American gunboat USS Panay in the Yangtze River by the Japanese in December 1937. The American government had responded to Japan's brutal and unprovoked aggression against China and occupation of French Indochina by a steadily rising program of economic sanctions including embargoes on oil and other military-related trade. The military-dominated Japanese government had already decided by mid-October 1941 to retaliate by attacking the United States unless the United States submitted to all Japanese demands removal of all embargoes and a free hand to seize resource-rich countries across East and South-East Asia. The Japanese government knew that the Americans were highly unlikely to submit to Japan's demands. To distract the American government while it secretly positioned a powerful aircraft carrier strike force for a surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet at its Pearl Harbor base in Hawaii, the Japanese government ordered its envoys in Washington to engage the Americans in intensive diplomatic discussions related to American concerns about Japan's aggression against China and occupation of French Indo China.
When it comes to historical accuracy, I have a serious problem with the Japanese contribution to the film. The Japanese account contains two major falsifications of history that appear to be intended to mislead viewers by minimising Japan's and Hirohito's war guilt in relation to Pearl Harbor. With the apparent intention of disguising the treacherous nature of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in peacetime and at 8.00 am on a Sunday morning (Hawaii Time), the Japanese producers suggest that Japan intended to submit a 14-part document containing a formal declaration of war to the American Secretary of State, Mr Cordell Hull, at 1.00 pm on December 7 (Washington Time). At 1.00 pm in Washington it would be 7.30 am in Hawaii and half an hour before the Japanese planes were scheduled to strike Pearl Harbor. The film suggests that tendering of this formal "declaration of war" at 1.00 pm was frustrated by decoding and clerical delays in the Japanese embassy in Washington. Such delays may have occurred, but the Japanese document eventually submitted to Secretary of State Hull at 2.20 pm on December 7 (eighty minutes after the first Japanese bomb fell on Hawaii) was not a formal declaration of war. It was not even an ultimatum. It was merely a summary of Japanese grievances and demands, coupled with a blunt announcement that Japan was terminating the lengthy diplomatic negotiations between Ambassador Nomura and Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. On two occasions in the film, Admiral Yamamoto and his staff officers refer to the 14-part document as a "declaration of war" which it clearly was not. Japan formally declared war on the United States several hours after the last Japanese aircraft had returned to its carrier from the smoking ruins of the American battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese contribution to Tora! Tora! Tora! also falsely represents Emperor Hirohito as a benign figurehead commander of Japan's military who approved the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor because he was powerless to stop it. In a conversation prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor between Prime Minister Konoye and Admiral Yamamoto, Konoye is heard to say: "His Majesty's signature is a mere formality. The Cabinet is responsible for all matters of national policy." Both statements are untrue. Under the Meiji Constitution of 1889, Hirohito could have overridden his cabinet on any issue and refused to authorise the attack on Pearl Harbor had he wanted to do so. The only significant aspect of the added ten minutes for Japanese audiences is a conversation between Admiral Yamamoto and a senior palace official in the Imperial Palace. The palace official falsely represents Hirohito as having been opposed to war with the United States but powerless to stop it. A study of Japanese history, and especially the Meiji Constitution, will reveal that the Meiji Constitution vested full control of the Japanese armed forces in the emperor, and the chiefs of Japan's military reported directly to the emperor and not to the civilian government. The fact that Hirohito was a "hands on" commander in chief with his military attaches active on every Pacific War front and briefing him daily is confirmed by Japan's official history of the Pacific War "Senshi Sosho" and by historian Professor Herbert P. Bix in his authoritative Pulitzer Prize-winning biography "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" (2000), especially at pages 327, 329-331, 359, and 387-391.
I hope these historical falsifications contrived by the Japanese producers will not spoil anyone's enjoyment of a film that I still regard as a masterful account of an appalling act of treachery. I deny TTT five stars only because of the falsification of history in the Japanese contribution. I recommend avoiding the 148 minute Japanese release and watching the 138 minute version released originally for American audiences.
Read Best Reviews of Tora! Tora! Tora! (Extended Japanese Edition) (2009) Here
Many films attempt to tell true stories. One of the few that does justice to its subject is Tora! Tora! Tora!, a full-scale recreation of Pearl Harbor and the events leading up to the Day Of Infamy.Verisimilitude permeates throughout the film, from the full-sized mockups of Japanese aircraft carriers and the battleship Nagano to the Japanese Zero, Kate, and Val aircraft and American P-40 Warhawk fighters to the miniature and full-sized models of American battleships. Much of the combat footage was shot at Pearl itself and surrounding Air Force bases, while miniature work blends splendidly into the action.
The enormous cast captures the exchanges of ideas and arguments among the various players involved in the attack. The most sympathetic player is Admiral Yamamoto. The film very nicely captures his lack of desire to go to war with an America that could not possibly lose a war with Japan based on the comparative industrial power of both nations. Also captured is the greater bloodthirstiness of fellow Imperial Japanese Navy officers, leading to a chilling scene during final pre-sortie debriefing when Yamamoto orders that the First Air Fleet abort the mission should negotiations with America succeed; fellow officers universally reject such an order, until Yamamoto hisses that any officer unwilling to follow should resign at once.
Also captured are the motions of General Walter Short (Jason Robards) and Admiral Husband Kimmel (Martin Balsam), working to second-guess Japanese intentions minus intelligence data available to US Navy intelligence in Washington. Navy intelligence accurately guesses that intercepted Japanese diplomatic messages indicate Tokyo to be preapring for war, but there is never any indication that Pearl Harbor itself will be attacked.
But it is, and the attack is brilliantly recreated. Battleships are hit by torpedos and bombs, planes parked together to prevent sabotage are slaughtered trying to take off, and the result is the greatest naval disaster suffered by American arms.
But Admiral Yamamoto knows that what will result will be catastrophic for Japan, and the film ends with him staring into the sky into the future.
For sheer perfection, Tora! Tora! Tora! succeeds.
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I first saw this film many years ago when it was a movie of the week on network TV. Like any kid, I was interested in the battle scenes, and by the time I'd graduated with a Communications degree, I dismissed this movie out of hand as a faithful, but unexceptional telling of the Battle of Pearl Harbor.Mea Culpa!! I finally saw this film in widescreen format, and this movie's artistic value magnified ten-fold. The idea for this film was inspired: an American director would shoot the American scenes telling the USA side of the battle, and a Japanese director would tell the Japanese side of the story. Originally the legendary Akira Kurasowa was hired to direct the Japanese side of the story, but after a falling out, Toshio Masuda ended up directing the Japanese side of the film. Richard Fleischer directed the American sequences.
Fleischer does a fine job, but Masuda is absolutely brilliant. The Japanese side of the story is the more compelling side of the story, but Masuda truly does a masterful job of setting forth scenes of eloquence and power in telling the story of highly motivated people whose actions will doom their country.
Despite truth being stranger than fiction, Hollywood all too often needlessly flushes historical truth down the toilet ("JFK" anyone?). Fortunately, this powerful story is meticulous in its historical accuracy. With a compelling muscial score and great special effects, especially considering the age of this film, this is a film which should appeal to movie lovers and history buffs both.
IMPORTANT!! This is a film which can ONLY be appreciated in widescreen/DVD format. The dogfight sequences, the impressive sets and much of the drama is lost in the version formatted for TV, resulting in the butchering of a masterpiece.
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