Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

The story of the 1941 Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor, and the series of preceding American blunders that aggravated its effectiveness.

Directors:

Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku

Writers:

Larry Forrester (screenplay), Hideo Oguni (screenplay)

Stars:

Martin Balsam, Sô Yamamura, Jason Robards

Won 1 Oscar. Another 1 win & 7 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Martin Balsam	...	Admiral Husband E. Kimmel
Sô Yamamura	...	Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
Jason Robards	...	General Walter C. Short
Joseph Cotten	...	Henry L. Stimson
Tatsuya Mihashi	...	Commander Minoru Genda
E.G. Marshall	...	Colonel Rufus S. Bratton
Takahiro Tamura	...	Lt. Commander Fuchida
James Whitmore	...	Admiral William F. Halsey
Eijirô Tôno	...	Admiral Chuici Nagumo (as Eijiro Tono)
Wesley Addy	...	Lt. Commander Alvin D. Kramer
Shôgo Shimada	...	Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura
Frank Aletter	...	Lt. Commander Thomas
Koreya Senda	...	Prince Fumimaro Konoye
Leon Ames	...	Frank Knox
Jun Usami	...	Admiral Zengo Yoshida

Storyline

This dramatic retelling of the Pearl Harbor attack details everything in the days that led up to that tragic moment in American history. As United States and Japanese relations strain over the U.S. embargo of raw materials, Air Staff Officer Minoru Genda (Tatsuya Mihashi) plans the preemptive strike against the United States. Although American intelligence agencies intercept Japanese communications hinting at the attack, they are unwilling to believe such a strike could ever occur on U.S. soil.

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Plot Keywords:

naval aviation | sneak attack | burning ship | japanese military | u.s. military | 

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Taglines:

The incredible attack on Pearl Harbor as told from both the American and Japanese sides.

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Genres:

Action | Drama | History | War

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Certificate:

G

Did You Know?

Trivia

YTM-195 is seen in the firefighting scenes during the battle. This was the U.S.S. Yonaguska (YTM-195). It was a harbor tug assigned to the submarine base at the time the film was made.

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Goofs

When the U.S. Capitol is shown the morning of December 7, 1941, wooded braces are in place for reconstructing the columns of the entrance. That happened in 1969.

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Quotes

General Short: [hearing that an important military spot is off limits due to concern for wildlife] Wildlife Preservation Society!

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Crazy Credits

For the U.S. version, the next to last of the main credits reads "Japanese Sequences Directed by Toshio Masuda Kinji Fukasaku" and the last credit reads, "Directed by Richard Fleischer." For the version released in Japan, the next to last credit reads, "American Sequences Directed by Richard Fleischer" and the final credit reads, "Directed by Toshio Masuda Kinji Fukasaku."

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Alternate Versions

Original video versions removed the intermission, (between the close-up of a desk calendar showing Dec. 7 and the Japanese beginning to launch planes.) The 1998 video release restores the intermission. The widescreen version prints all subtitles (Japanese translation, character titles) below the screen in the bottom black bar.

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Connections

Featured in Lights, Camera, Action!: A Century of the Cinema: The Greatest Show on Earth (1996)

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Soundtracks

The Star-Spangled Banner
Music based on "The Anacreontic Song" by John Stafford Smith
[Played on ship by Navy band as zeroes attack.]

User Reviews

"Why Are The Winds And The Waves So Restless?"

On Sunday 7 December 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on the US Pacific fleet in its moorings at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. At the time, no state of war existed between the two nations. An ingenious pre-emptive strike, as the Japanese 'hawks' saw it, was condemned by the world as one of the greatest acts of treachery in modern history.

"Tora! Tora! Tora!" meticulously traces the build-up to Pearl Harbor by examining the diplomatic, military and intelligence events and developments on both sides. The film is unimpeachably even-handed, telling both sides' stories simultaneously, and interleaving the Japanese and American versions with intelligence and an almost total absence of jingoism.

Japan's warmongers considered their country to be trapped by history and geography. As the industrial nations surged forward in terms of prosperity and military might, Japan was in danger of being outstripped, having few natural resources of her own. If Japan was to compete with the USA and USSR, she would have to 'reach out' for the raw materials available in southern Asia and the Pacific, but this would mean confronting the USA, the great maritime power in the Pacific.

The film explains all this very well. We learn that the Japanese have an age-old tradition of striking against their enemies without warning, and that air superiority is the new doctrine. The brilliant Japanese planners such as Genda (played by Tatsuya Mihashi) have grasped the lessons of the European war and know the vital importance of naval air power. By 1941, battleships have become a liability - slow, lumbering dinosaurs which invite attack and cannot defend themselves against aircraft. The way forward is mobile air power, and that means aircraft carriers. If the Japanese can catch the American carriers at Pearl Harbor and destroy them, then the war will be won before it has properly started.

The Americans take a fateful decision to send out their carriers on reconnaissance missions. This strips Pearl Harbor of protection, but paradoxically ensures that Japan cannot win the war - no matter how spectacular the success of the surprise attack, the mission will fail if the US aircraft carriers survive.

Throughout the build-up, the Japanese navy chiefs such as Yamamoto (So Yamomura) have a snippet of classical Japanese poetry on their minds: "If all men are brothers, why are the winds and the waves so restless?" They take this to mean that it is the rule of nature for man to attack his fellow man. By the end of the film, Yamamoto has abandoned this view and now believes that "We have aroused a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve."

The film catalogues the accidents and mistakes which combined to make Pearl Harbor a worse disaster for the USA than it need have been. American aircraft are bunched together in the middle of the airfield in order to reduce the risk of sabotage near the perimeter fence, but this helps the Japanese bombers to destroy them on the ground. Radar equipment cannot be placed in the best locations to give early warning, and in any event the radar data are misinterpreted when they predict the attack. Because the attack falls on a weekend, it is difficult for middle-ranking officers to contact military and political chiefs, and the contingency plans are inadequate. Radio Honolulu broadcasts through the night to guide a fleet of B-17's to Hawaii, inadvertently acting as a navigation beacon for the Japanese warplanes.

If the painstaking build-up to the attack is a little slow and ponderous, it is certainly epic in scale, and when the action erupts it comes as a mighty climax. The tension is palpable as the Japanese planes take off from their carriers, black against the ominous dawn. What follows is a breath-taking cinematic coup as Pearl Harbor is ravaged.

Verdict - A historical account of almost documentary accuracy culminates in vivid action scenes. A marvellous film.

Details

Country:

Japan USA

Language:

English Japanese

Release Date:

23 September 1970 (USA)

Also Known As:

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Filming Locations:

Ashiya, Japan

Box Office

Budget:

$25,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Twentieth Century Fox, Elmo Williams, Richard Fleischer

Technical Specs

Runtime:

144 min 148 min (Extended Japanese Edition 2009)

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (Westrex Recording System) (70 mm prints) Mono (some 35 mm prints) 4-Track Stereo (some 35 mm prints)

Color:

Color (DeLuxe)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1