Tora! Tora! Tora!

Tora! Tora! Tora!
Original movie poster
Directed by	Richard Fleischer Kinji Fukasaku Toshio Masuda
Produced by	Richard Fleischer Elmo Williams Darryl F. Zanuck Keinosuke Kubo Otto Lang Masayuki Takagi
Written by	Books: Ladislas Farago Gordon W. Prange Screenplay: Larry Forrester Ryuzo Kikushima Hideo Oguni Uncredited: Akira Kurosawa
Starring	Martin Balsam Joseph Cotten E. G. Marshall Tatsuya Mihashi James Whitmore Soh Yamamura Jason Robards
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Editing by	Pembroke J. Herring Chikaya Inoue James E. Newcom
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	September 23, 1970 (1970-09-23)
Running time	144 minutes
Country	United States Japan
Language	English Japanese
Budget	$25 million (estimated)
Gross revenue	$14,500,000

Tora! Tora! Tora! is a 1970 American/Japanese war film that dramatizes the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to the extent these facts were known at the time of production.

The commanders in Hawaii, General Short and Admiral Kimmel, though scapegoated for decades, are portrayed as taking defensive measures for the apparent threats, including relocation of the fighter aircraft at Pearl Harbor to the middle of the base, in response to fears of sabotage from local Japanese insurgents. They received limited warning of the increasing risk of aerial attack, which was better understood in Washington than in Honolulu. The film is famous for Isoroku Yamamoto's quote likening the attacks to "awakening a sleeping giant", although it may have been fictitious.

The title is made up of the code-words that were used by the Japanese to indicate that complete surprise was achieved and is translated in the Japanese as "虎" or "tiger", hence making the code for achieved surprise "Tiger, tiger, tiger".

Plot

A change-of-command ceremony aboard the Japanese battleship Nagato, flagship for the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Soh Yamamura) takes place in 1940. He takes command from Zengo Yoshida (Junya Usami). The two discuss America's embargo that starves Japan of raw materials. While both agree that a war with the United States would be a complete disaster, army hotheads and politicians push through the alliance with Germany and start war plans, believing the U.S. to be preoccupied with the war in Europe. Their fear of war increases when Japan signs the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in Berlin, making Japan the third member of the Axis Powers. With the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, regarded as a "knife to the throat of Japan", Yamamoto orders the planning of a preemptive strike, believing Japan's only hope is to annihilate the American Pacific fleet at the outset of hostilities.

When planning the attack, the Japanese commanders debate Pearl Harbor's exposure to a torpedo attack, but realize that torpedoes dropped from an aircraft will fall and submerge at least 75 feet (23 m) below the surface. Since Pearl Harbor is only 40 feet (12 m) deep, the Americans feel they have a natural defense against torpedoes. But the Japanese have a plan to overcome this obstacle.

In a major intelligence victory, American intelligence in Washington manages to break the Japanese Purple Code, allowing the United States to intercept radio transmissions the Japanese think are secret. American intelligence in Washington is seen collecting increasingly threatening radio intercepts and conveying their concern to a White House staff that seems strangely unresponsive. The American response to high quality intelligence in general appears lax, although Pearl Harbor does increase air patrols and goes on full alert well before the raid.

Japanese commanders call on the famous Air Staff Officer Genda Minoru (Tatsuya Mihashi) to mastermind the attack. At Pearl Harbor, although hampered by a late-arriving critical intelligence report about the attack fleet, Admiral Kimmel (Martin Balsam) and General Short (Jason Robards) do their best to enhance defenses. Short orders aircraft to be concentrated in the middle of their airfields to prevent sabotage. Yamamoto tries to avoid an attack and blames the Japanese Army command for pushing hard for war when peace is still an option. Yamamoto stresses that the United States is a mighty foe who would be extremely dangerous to provoke. In order to defeat the United States, he claims, destroying the U.S. fleet or even capturing Hawaii would not suffice - Japan would have to invade the mainland and dictate terms of U.S. surrender on the White House steps, an eventuality Yamamoto clearly sees as impossible to achieve.

Diplomatic tensions increase between the U.S. and Japan as the Japanese ambassador to the United States is seen asking Tokyo for more information to aid in negotiations to avoid war but getting little or nothing to work with in return. Army General Tojo (Asao Uchida) is depicted as adamantly opposed to any last minute attempts at peace. The Japanese commence a series of 14 radio messages from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in Washington that will conclude with the declaration of war. But the Americans are translating the radio messages faster than the Japanese embassy. Hence, the Americans know of the attack before the Japanese ambassador informs them.

On the morning of December 7, decision makers in Washington and Hawaii are seen enjoying a leisurely routine while American intelligence works feverishly to interpret the coded transmissions and learns the final message will be received precisely at 1:00pm Washington time. American intelligence notes that the final message instructs the Japanese Ambassador to destroy their code machines after they decode the last of the 14 messages, an ominous point. Attempts to convey this message to American commanders fail because they are enjoying a Sunday of playing golf and horseback riding. Finally, Chief of Naval Operations Harold Rainsford Stark (Edward Andrews) is informed of the increased threat, but decides not to inform Hawaii until after calling the President, although it is not clear if he takes any action at all.

Finally, at 11:30 am Washington time, Colonel Bratton (E.G. Marshall) convinces the Army Chief of Staff, General George Marshall (Keith Andes), that a greater threat exists, and Marshall orders that Pearl Harbor (and all other Pacific installations) be notified of an impending attack. An American destroyer, USS Ward, spots a Japanese midget submarine trying to slip through the defensive net and enter Pearl Harbor, sinks it, and notifies the base. Although the receiving officer, Lieutenant Kaminsky (Neville Brand), takes the report of an attempted enemy incursion seriously, Captain John Earle (Richard Anderson) at Pearl Harbor dismisses it, thinking the destroyer's new commander must have been over excited, and demands confirmation before calling an alert. Admiral Kimmel later learns of this negligence and is furious he was not told of this enemy action immediately. Just after 7am, the two privates posted at the remote radar, Joseph Lockard and George Elliot, spot the incoming Japanese aircraft and inform the Hickam Field Information Center, but the Army Air Forces Lieutenant in charge, Kermit Tyler, dismisses the report, thinking it is a group of American B-17 bombers coming from the mainland, and he is frankly too tired to care.

The Japanese intend to break off negotiations (they did not intend to issue a formal declaration of war) at 1 pm Washington time, 30 minutes before the attack. However, the typist for the Japanese ambassador is slow, and cannot decode the 14th part fast enough. A final attempt to warn Pearl Harbor is stymied by poor atmospherics and bungling when the telegram is not marked urgent; it will be received by Pearl Harbor after the attack. The incoming Japanese fighter pilots are pleasantly surprised when there isn't even any anti-aircraft fire as they approach the base. As a result, the squadron leader radios in the code phrase marking that complete surprise for the attack has been achieved: "Tora, Tora, Tora."

Once the attack is launched, America's response is desperate and only partially effective. Upon seeing the Japanese low-level bombers, an American officer instructs his colleague to get the tail numbers so the pilot can be reported for safety violations; he thinks they are American aircraft. The sight of the offending aircraft then deliberately dropping a bomb on the base dispels that misconception.

The aircraft security precautions prove a disastrous mistake that allows the Japanese aerial forces to destroy the U.S. aircraft on the ground with ease, thereby crippling an effective aerial counter-attack: all the aircraft on the runways at the major airfields were destroyed spectacularly either as they took off or while they were still parked. Two American fighter pilots (portrayals of Second Lieutenants Ken Taylor and George Welch) race to remote Haleiwa and manage to take off to engage the enemy, as the Japanese have not hit the smaller airfields.

The catastrophic damage to the base is well detailed, with sailors fighting as long as they can and then abandoning sinking ships and jumping into the water with burning oil on the surface. There are also scenes where the Japanese fleet commander, Admiral Chuichi Nagumo (Eijiro Tono), refuses to launch the third wave of carrier aircraft out of fear of exposing his six carriers to increased risk of detection and destruction from the still-absent US carriers. Through the years, this action has been debated as having given the Americans a major break in their efforts to recover from the attack. A third wave would have likely struck the large oil tanks as well as destroyed the dry docks and repair facilities, potentially serious blows which could have crippled the U.S. Pacific Fleet for months by themselves.

At the end of the attacks, with the U.S. base in flames, its frustrated commanders finally get the Pentagon's telegram warning them of impending danger. The US Secretary Of State, Cordell Hull (George Macready), is stunned at learning of this brazen attack and urgently requests confirmation of it before receiving the Japanese ambassador who is waiting just outside his office. In Washington, the distraught Japanese ambassador (Shōgo Shimada), helpless to explain the late ultimatum and the unprovoked sneak attack, is bluntly rebuffed by Hull, who coldly replies to the final Japanese communique: "In all my fifty years of public service, I have never seen a document crowded with falsehoods and deliberate distortions on a scale so huge that, until this day, I would have thought no nation on earth capable of uttering them!"

Finally, Admiral Yamamoto is seen lamenting the fact that the Americans did not receive the declaration of war until 55 minutes after the attack started and noting that nothing would infuriate the Americans more. He is quoted as saying: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."^{[N 1]}

Cast

The film was deliberately cast with actors who were not true box-office stars, in order to place the emphasis on the story rather than the actors who were in it, as so often happens in all-star cast productions. As appearing in screen credits (main roles identified):^[2]

Production

The T-6 Texan stood in for the A6M Zero as there were no airworthy types at that time

Production on Tora! Tora! Tora! took three years to plan and prepare for the eight months of principal photography.^[3] The film was created in two separate productions, one based in the United States, directed by Richard Fleischer, and one based in Japan. The Japanese side of the production was initially directed by Akira Kurosawa, but after two years of work with no useful results, 20th Century Fox turned the project over to Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda, who completed it.^[4]

From the 2001 DVD, writer and historian Stuart Galbraith IV interviews Richard Fleischer about renowned director Akira Kurosawa's role in the project.

"Well, I always thought that even though Kurosawa was a genius at film making and indeed he was, I sincerely believe that he was miscast for this film, this was not his type of film to make, he never made anything like it and it just wasn't his style. I felt he was not only uncomfortable directing this kind of movie but also he wasn't used to having somebody tell him how he should make his film. He always had complete autonomy, and nobody would dare make a suggestion to Kurosawa about the budget, or shooting schedule, or anything like that. And then here he was, with Darryl Zanuck on his deck and Richard Zanuck on him and Elmo Williams and the production managers, and it was all stuff that he never had run into before, because he was always untouchable. I think he was getting more and more nervous and more insecure of how he was going to work on this film. And of course, the press got a hold of a lot of this unrest on the set and they made a lot out of that in Japan, and it was more pressure on him, and he wasn't used to that kind of pressure."

Ladislas Farago, Larry Forrester, Ryuzo Kikushima, and Hideo Oguni wrote the screenplay, based on books written by Gordon Prange. Charles Wheeler, the cinematographer, was nominated for an Oscar. The film contains second unit and miniature photography, shot by Ray Kellogg. Jerry Goldsmith composed the film score.

Numerous technical advisors on both sides, some of whom had participated in the battle and/or planning, were crucial in maintaining the accuracy of the film. Minoru Genda, the man who largely planned and led the attack on Pearl Harbor was an uncredited technical advisor for the film.

The "Japanese" aircraft carrier was the Anti-Submarine carrier USS Yorktown (CVS-10). The Japanese A6M Zero fighters, and somewhat longer "Kate" torpedo bombers or "Val" dive bombers were heavily modified RCAF Harvard (T-6 Texan) and BT-13 Valiant pilot training aircraft. The large fleet of Japanese aircraft was created by Lynn Garrison, a well-known aerial action coordinator, who produced a number of conversions. Garrison and Jack Canary coordinated the actual engineering work at facilities in the Los Angeles area. These aircraft still make appearances at air shows.

A B-17 Flying Fortress’s actual crash landing during filming, a result of a jammed landing gear, was filmed and used in the final cut. A total of five Boeing B-17s were obtained for filming. Other U.S. aircraft used are the PBY Catalina and, especially, the P-40 Warhawk (two flyable examples were used). Predominately, P-40 fighters are used to depict the U.S. defenders with a full-scale P-40 used as a template for fiberglass replicas (some with working engines and props) that were strafed and blown up during filming.^[5] Fleischer also said a scene involving a P-40 model crashing into the middle of a line of P-40s was unintended, as it was supposed to crash at the end of the line. The stuntmen involved in the scene were actually running for their lives.

The flying scenes were complex to shoot, and can be compared to the 1969 film Battle of Britain. The 2001 film Pearl Harbor would contain cut scenes from both films. The carrier entering Pearl Harbor towards the end of the film was in fact the Iwo Jima-class amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli (LPH-10), returning to port. A sailor onboard the Tripoli recounted that he saw the smoke and fire in the harbor, and the crew did not realize what was going on at first.

Robert McCall painted several scenes for various posters of the film.^[6]

Historical errors

The Commemorative Air Force's Gulf Coast Wing's Tora! Tora! Tora! team still fly the movie's aircraft simulating the attack at airshows.

A few film errors are made in Tora! Tora! Tora!. One mistake involves the model of the Japanese carrier Akagi. In the film, Akagi's bridge island is positioned on the starboard side of the ship, which is typical on most aircraft carriers. However, the aircraft carrier Akagi was an exception, its bridge island was on the port side of the ship. Despite this, the bridge section appeared accurately as a mirrored version of Akagi's real port-side bridge. Secondly, all the Japanese aircraft in the footage bear the markings of Akagi's aircraft (a single vertical red stripe following the red sun symbol of Japan), even though five other aircraft carriers participated, each having their own markings. In addition, the markings do not display the aircraft's identification numbers as was the case in the actual battle.

Parts of the film showing the takeoff of the Japanese aircraft, are displaying an Essex-class aircraft carrier, USS Yorktown (CVS-10), which was commissioned in 1943 and modernized after the war to have an angled flightdeck. The ship was leased by the film producers, who needed an aircraft carrier for the film; Yorktown was scheduled to be decommissioned shortly afterward. It was used largely in the takeoff sequence of the Japanese attack aircraft. The sequence shows interchanging shots of the more accurate models of the Japanese aircraft carriers and the Yorktown. It does not look like any of the Japanese carriers involved in the attack, due to its large bridge island and its angled landing deck. The Japanese carriers had small bridge islands, and angled flight decks were not invented until after the war. In addition, during the scene in which Admiral Halsey is watching bombing practice an aircraft carrier with the bow number 14 is shown. Admiral Halsey was on the USS Enterprise, CV-6, not the Essex-class USS Ticonderoga, CV-14, which would not be commissioned until 1944.

The USS Ward (DD-139) was an old destroyer commissioned in 1918; the ship used in the movie which portrays the Ward looked far different from the original destroyer. In addition, in the movie she fired two shots from her #1 turret. In reality the Ward fired the first shot from the #1 turret and the second shot from the #3 turret.

The large scale model of the stern of USS Nevada (BB-36) shows the two aft gun turrets with three gun barrels in each; in reality, Nevada's two heightened fore and aft turrets had two barrels each while the lower two turrets fore and aft had three barrels each. Another model of Nevada, used in the film to portray the whole ship, displays the turrets accurately. It should be noted that the reason for this anomaly is because the aft section model was used in the film to portray both USS Nevada and USS Arizona (BB-39). The ships looked remarkably similar except that Arizona had four triple turrets and a slightly different stern section.

The film has a Japanese Zero fighter being damaged over a Naval base and then deliberately crashing into a Naval Base hangar. This is actually a composite of three incidents at Pearl Harbor attack: in the first wave a Japanese Zero crashed into Fort Kamehameha's ordnance building; in the second wave, a Japanese Zero did deliberately crash into a hillside after U.S. Navy CPO John William Finn at Naval Air Station at Kāne'ohe Bay had shot and damaged the aircraft. Also during the second wave, a Japanese aircraft that was damaged crashed into the seaplane tender USS Curtiss.

During a number of shots of the attack squadrons traversing across Oahu, a small cross can be seen on one of the mountainsides. The cross was actually erected after the attack as a memorial to the victims of the attack.

The film all but ignores one of the most important factors in the success of the Japanese, that being the modification of torpedoes so that they would not plunge so deeply that they would strike the shallow harbor bottom. The lack of water depth was mentioned, but not the solution which the Japanese used.

When Japanese Commander Genda arrives, deck hands begin to flip up the wingtip of his Mitsubishi Zero fighter, while Genda states that they can now carry more fighters. The film doesn't explain that the flight deck elevators on Japanese aircraft carriers were too narrow for the Zero's wingspan. Without the ability to carry the Zeros below decks, it would have been necessary to launch them before the slower bombers which they were to protect, or carry only as many as could be parked on the flight deck while still leaving sufficient room for the bombers (which could be carried on the hangar deck) to take off.

Reception

At the time of its initial movie release, Tora! Tora! Tora! proved to be a major box office flop in U.S. theatres although it was a major hit in Japan; however, over the years, video releases provided an overall profit.^[7]

Roger Ebert felt that Tora! Tora! Tora! was "one of the deadest, dullest blockbusters ever made" and suffered from not having "some characters to identify with." In addition, he criticized the film for poor acting and special effects in his 1970 review.^[8] Variety also found the film to be boring; however, the magazine praised the film's action sequences and production values.^[9]

The movie was critically acclaimed for its vivid action scenes (several later films relating to World War II in the Pacific used footage from Tora! Tora! Tora! including The Final Countdown and Midway; in the commentary, Fleischer is angry that Universal used the footage) as well as its "almost perfect documentary accuracy."^[10] Today, Tora! Tora! Tora! is held in high regard by modern critics and has a 71% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[11]

Honors

Tora! Tora! Tora! won an Academy Award for best special effects.^[12] The film was also nominated in a further four categories; Best Art Direction (Jack Martin Smith, Yoshirō Muraki, Richard Day, Taizô Kawashima, Walter M. Scott, Norman Rockett, Carl Biddiscombe), Best Cinematography, Best Editing and Best Sound.^[13]

Popular culture

The name of the film has been borrowed - and parodied - for various television productions, including as "Torah Torah Torah" for episodes of NYPD Blue and Magnum, P.I., and as Tory! Tory! Tory! for a documentary on Thatcherism. Some television series, again including Magnum, P.I., have also used shots of the raid on Pearl Harbor taken from the film to illustrate episodes.

See also

• Attack on Pearl Harbor
• Isoroku Yamamoto's sleeping giant quote
• Pearl Harbor (film)

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

External links

• Tora! Tora! Tora! at the Internet Movie Database
• Tora! Tora! Tora! at Allmovie
• Tora! Tora! Tora! at Rotten Tomatoes
• Commemorative Air Force Tora! Tora! Tora! Group site

Cinema of Japan Actors · Awards · Directors · Cinematographers · Composers · Editors · Festivals · Producers · Screenwriters Films Silent films · Short films · Television films · Films by director Films by genre Anime · Comedy · Documentary · Drama · Horror · Jidaigeki · Mystery · Pink · Romance · Science fiction · Tokusatsu · Yakuza Films by year 1898–1919 · 1920s · 1930s · 1940s · 1950 · 1951 · 1952 · 1953 · 1954 · 1955 · 1956 · 1957 · 1958 · 1959 · 1960 · 1961 · 1962 · 1963 · 1964 · 1965 · 1966 · 1967 · 1968 · 1969 · 1970 · 1971 · 1972 · 1973 · 1974 · 1975 · 1976 · 1977 · 1978 · 1979 · 1980 · 1981 · 1982 · 1983 · 1984 · 1985 · 1986 · 1987 · 1988 · 1989 · 1990 · 1991 · 1992 · 1993 · 1994 · 1995 · 1996 · 1997 · 1998 · 1999 · 2000 · 2001 · 2002 · 2003 · 2004 · 2005 · 2006 · 2007 · 2008 · 2009 · 2010 · 2011