Tora! Tora! Tora!

In September 1940, following a severe trade embargo imposed on a belligerent Japan by the United States a year prior, influential Japanese army figures and politicians push through an alliance with Germany and Italy, despite opposition from the Japanese navy, and prepare for war. The newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, reluctantly plans a pre-emptive strike, believing Japan's best hope of controlling the Pacific Ocean is to quickly annihilate the American Pacific fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor. Air Staff Officer Minoru Genda is chosen to mastermind the operation, while his old Naval Academy classmate Mitsuo Fuchida is selected to lead the attack. In Washington, U.S. military intelligence has broken the Japanese Purple Code, allowing them to intercept secret Japanese radio transmissions indicating increased Japanese naval activity. U.S. Army Colonel Rufus S. Bratton and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Alwin Kramer monitor the transmissions. At Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel increases defensive naval and air patrols around Hawaii. General Walter Short orders aircraft concentrated on the airfield runways to avoid sabotage by enemy agents, while some planes are dispersed to other airfields on Oahu. Diplomatic tensions escalate as the Japanese ambassador to Washington continues negotiations to stall for time. Bratton and Kramer learn from intercepted radio messages that the Japanese planned to send 14 messages from Tokyo to their embassy in Washington, with orders to destroy their code machines after receiving the final message. Deducing that the Japanese will launch a surprise attack after the messages are delivered, Bratton tries to warn his superiors. However, Chief of Naval Operations Harold R. Stark is indecisive over notifying Hawaii without first alerting President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In contrast, Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall's order to alert Pearl Harbor of an attack is stymied by poor atmospheric conditions that prevent radio transmission and by a warning telegram not marked urgent. The Japanese fleet launches its aircraft at dawn on December 7, 1941. Two radar operators detect their approach to Hawaii, but the duty officer, Lieutenant Kermit Tyler, dismisses their concerns. Similarly, the claim by the destroyer to have sunk a Japanese miniature submarine off the entrance to Pearl Harbor is dismissed as unimportant. The Japanese achieve total surprise, which Commander Fuchida indicates with the code signal "Tora! Tora! Tora!" The damage to the naval base is catastrophic, and casualties are severe. Several battleships are either sunk or heavily damaged; General Short's anti-sabotage precautions allow Japanese aircraft to easily destroy American planes on the ground. In Washington, a stunned Secretary of State Cordell Hull is asked to receive the Japanese ambassador Kichisaburō Nomura. The 14-part message – including a declaration that peace negotiations were at an end – was meant to be forwarded to the Americans thirty minutes before the attack, but the Japanese embassy failed to decode and transcribe it in time. The attack started while the two nations were technically still at peace. The distraught Nomura, helpless to explain the late ultimatum and unaware of the ongoing attack, is rebuffed by Hull. The Japanese fleet commander, Vice-Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, refuses to launch a scheduled third wave of attack aircraft for fear of exposing his fleet to U.S. submarines. General Short and Admiral Kimmel finally receive Marshall's telegram warning of impending danger hours after the attack is over. Aboard his flagship, Admiral Yamamoto informs his staff that their primary target – the American aircraft carriers – were not at Pearl Harbor, having departed days previously. Lamenting that the declaration of war arrived after the attack began, Yamamoto notes that nothing would infuriate the U.S. more and concludes: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." ==Cast==

Note: Characters listed by rank in descending order Americans Japanese Civilians ==Production==

stood in for the Mitsubishi A6M Zero as there were no airworthy types at that time. Only Zeros from the carrier Akagi were depicted, identifiable by the single red band on the rear fuselage. replica at the Geneseo Airshow. In 1968 a Vultee BT-13 Valiant (N56867) was converted to a Val replica for use in the filming of the movie Tora! Tora! Tora!, flown as Val "AI-244" from the carrier Akagi. replica modified from a T-6 for the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! mockups were blown up during filming. This example, which was spared destruction, is currently on display at Wheeler Army Airfield, with markings identical to those of 2nd Lt George Welch. . The model survives today in Los Angeles and often appears at local parades. Veteran 20th Century-Fox executive Darryl F. Zanuck, who had earlier produced The Longest Day (1962), wanted to create an epic that depicted what "really happened on December 7, 1941", with a "revisionist's approach". He believed that the commanders in Hawaii, General Walter Short and Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, though scapegoated for decades, provided adequate 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. Despite a breakthrough in intelligence, they had received limited warning of the increasing risk of aerial attack. The film was created in two separate productions, one based in the United States, directed by Richard Fleischer, and one based in Japan. Toshiro Mifune reportedly had been scheduled to play Isoroku Yamamoto but withdrew when Kurosawa left the project. Richard Fleischer said of Akira Kurosawa's role in the project: Larry Forrester and frequent Kurosawa collaborators Hideo Oguni and Ryūzō Kikushima wrote the screenplay, based on the books The Broken Seal by Ladislas Farago and Tora! Tora! Tora! by Gordon Prange of University of Maryland, who served as a technical consultant. 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. Four cinematographers were involved in the main photography: Charles F. Wheeler, Shinsaku Himeda, Masamichi Satoh, and Osamu Furuya. They were jointly nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. A number of well-known cameramen also worked on the second units without credit, including Thomas Del Ruth and Rexford Metz. The carrier entering Pearl Harbor towards the end of the film was in fact the , returning to port. The "Japanese" aircraft carrier was the anti-submarine carrier , fitted with a false bow to disguise the catapults. The Japanese A6M Zero fighters and the somewhat longer "Kate" torpedo bombers or "Val" dive bombers were heavily modified Royal Canadian Air Force 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. For the parallel filming in Japan, full-scale mock-ups of the Japanese battleship and aircraft carrier were built from the waterline up on shore, with about of their bows extending out over the ocean on stilts. These were used for much of the Japanese scenes on ship's decks. The one error introduced, however, was that the model Akagis bridge was built on the starboard side instead of the port side. Only two Japanese carriers were built in this fashion, with bridges on the port side: Akagi and . This was done because it was known that for the launching scenes filmed in the US, a US carrier would be used, and the islands of US carriers were always on the starboard side. A few of the modified aircraft were also converted in Japan for the flight scenes filmed there. In preparation for filming, Yorktown was berthed at NAS North Island in San Diego to load all the aircraft, maintenance, and film crew prior to sailing to Hawaii. The night before filming the "Japanese" take-off scenes, she sailed to a spot a few miles west of San Diego, and at dawn the film crew filmed the launches of all the aircraft. Since these "Japanese" aircraft were not actual carrier-based aircraft, they did not have arresting gear with which to land back on the carrier and so continued on to land at North Island Naval Air Station. Yorktown sailed back to North Island and re-loaded the aircraft. She then sailed to Hawaii, where the aircraft were off-loaded and used to film the attack scenes in and around Pearl Harbor. Aircraft Specialties of Mesa, Arizona performed maintenance on the aircraft while in Hawaii. The actual crash landing of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress during filming, a result of a jammed landing gear, was used in the final cut. The film crew received word that one of the B-17s could not lower its starboard landing gear, so they quickly set up to film the "single gear" landing. The aircraft stayed aloft to use up as much fuel as possible prior to landing, which gave the film crew some time to prepare. After viewing the "single gear" landing footage, they decided to include it in the movie. In the sequence depicting the crash, only the final crash was actual footage. For the scenes leading up to the crash, they manually retracted the starboard landing gear on a functioning B-17 and filmed the scenes of its final approach. After touching down on one wheel, the pilot simply applied power and took off again. The B-17 that actually landed with one gear up sustained only minor damage to the starboard wing and propellers and was repaired and returned to service. A total of five Boeing B-17s were obtained for filming. Other U.S. aircraft included the Consolidated PBY Catalina and, especially, the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk (two flyable examples were used). Predominantly, P-40 fighter aircraft were 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. 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 B-17 crash along with several other scenes were reused in the 1976 film Midway. With over 30 aircraft in the air, the flying scenes were complex to shoot, comparable to the 1969 film Battle of Britain where large formations of period-specific aircraft were filmed in staged aerial battles. The 2001 film Pearl Harbor would use some of the same modified aircraft. Casting The film was deliberately cast with actors who were not true box-office stars, including many Japanese amateurs, in order to place the emphasis on the story rather than the actors who were in it. Several members of the cast had themselves served in World War II. Some crew members also served in the war. Some cast members served before or after World War II. ==Historical accuracy==

Tora! Tora! Tora! is regarded highly by Pearl Harbor historians and survivors for its accuracy. Parts of the film showing the takeoff of the Japanese aircraft utilize an , Yorktown, which was commissioned in 1943 and modernized after the war to have a very slightly angled flight deck. The ship was leased by the film producers, who needed an aircraft carrier for the film, and as Yorktown was scheduled to be decommissioned in 1970, the Navy made her available. She was used largely in the takeoff sequence of the Japanese attack aircraft. The sequence shows interchanging shots of models of the Japanese aircraft carriers and Yorktown. She does not look like any of the Japanese carriers involved in the attack, due to her large bridge island and her angled landing deck. The Japanese carriers had small bridge islands, and it was not until after the war that angled flight decks were developed. In addition, during the scene in which Admiral Halsey is watching bombing practice, an aircraft carrier with the hull number 14 is shown. Admiral Halsey was on , not the Essex-class carrier , which would not be commissioned until 1944. This is understandable, however, as Enterprise and all six of the Japanese carriers from the attack had been scrapped or sunk. Another error involves the model of the . In the film, Akagis bridge island is positioned on the starboard side of the ship, which is typical on most aircraft carriers. However, Akagi was an exception; her bridge island was on the port side of the ship. Despite this, the bridge section appeared accurately as a mirrored version of Akagis real port-side bridge. Secondly, all of the Japanese aircraft in the footage bear the markings of Akagis aircraft (a single vertical red stripe following the red sun symbol of Japan), even though five other aircraft carriers participated, each having its own markings. In addition, the markings do not display the aircraft's identification numbers as was the case in the actual battle. The white surround on the roundel on the Japanese aircraft was only used from 1942 onwards. Prior to this, the roundel was red only. was an old "4-piper" destroyer commissioned in 1918; the ship used in the movie, , which portrays Ward, looked far different from the original destroyer. In addition, in the movie, she fired two shots from her #1 gun turret. In reality, Ward fired the first shot from the #1 un-turreted gunmount and the second shot from the #3 wing mount. The attack on the midget submarine by USS Ward was previously mentioned in the film ''In Harm's Way''. A full-scale set was built representing the stern section of a U.S. Navy Standard-type battleship showing two aft gun turrets each with three gun barrels. It was used to portray both and and other battleships. It was correct for USS Arizona but incorrect for USS Nevada, which had lower triple and upper twin gun turrets. The scale model of USS Nevada used to portray the whole ship in wide shots displayed the fore and aft turrets accurately in a 3-2-2-3 arrangement. A lattice mast (or cage mast) section representing a or battleship was built on the ground behind the full-scale stern set to give the appearance that the set was on Battleship Row. The USS Arizona/USS Nevada stern section set was used for the explosion that destroyed USS Arizona, although the explosion took place in the forward #2 magazine and Arizonas stern section remained essentially intact. The film has a Japanese Zero fighter being damaged by U.S. Navy CPO John William Finn at Naval Air Station at Kāneʻohe Bay and then deliberately crashing into a hangar. This is actually a composite of three incidents during the Pearl Harbor attack: in the first wave, a Japanese Zero crashed into Fort Kamehameha's ordnance building; in the second wave, a Japanese Zero deliberately crashed into a hillside after Finn shot and damaged the aircraft; also during the second wave, a damaged Japanese aircraft crashed into the seaplane tender . During a number of shots of the attack squadrons traversing across Oahu, a white cross can be seen standing on one of the mountainsides. The cross was actually erected after the attack as a memorial to the victims. The film also featured Mitsuo Fuchida (Takahiro Tamura) and Minoru Genda (Tatsuya Mihashi) asking Admiral Chūichi Nagumo (Eijirō Tōno) for a third strike, but like many of Fuchida's post war claims this has been called into question. Genda denied making such a request and he and Admiral Ryūnosuke Kusaka both denied that Fuchida did. In the final scene, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Sō Yamamura) says: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant". An abridged version of this quotation is featured in the 2001 film Pearl Harbor. The 2019 film Midway also features Yamamoto (Etsushi Toyokawa) speaking aloud the "sleeping giant" quote. Although the quotation may well have encapsulated many of his real feelings about the attack, there is no printed evidence to prove Yamamoto made this statement or wrote it down. Director Richard Fleischer stated that while Yamamoto may never have said those words, the film's producer, Elmo Williams, had found the line written in Yamamoto's diary. Williams, in turn, has stated that Larry Forrester, the screenwriter, found a 1943 letter from Yamamoto to the Admiralty in Tokyo containing the quotation. However, Forrester cannot produce the letter, nor can anyone else, American or Japanese, recall it or find it. ==Release==

The film had its world premiere on September 23, 1970, in New York, Tokyo, Honolulu and Los Angeles. ==Reception==

Box office At the time of its initial release, Tora! Tora! Tora! was thought to be a box office disappointment in North America, despite its domestic box office of $29,548,291 making it the ninth-highest-grossing film of 1970. It was a major hit in Japan, and over the years, home media releases provided a larger overall profit. The film had earned in Japanese distributor rentals by 1971, becoming the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1971 in Japan. According to Fox records, the film required in rentals to break even, and had done so by December 11, 1970. Critical response 's Gulf Coast Wing's Tora! Tora! Tora! team still fly the movie's aircraft simulating the attack at airshows. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 57% rating based on 30 reviews. The site's consensus states: "Tora! Tora! Tora! is scrupulously accurate and lays out of the tragedy of Pearl Harbor with intricate detail, but the film's clinical approach to the sound and fury signifies little feeling." On Metacritic it has a score of 46% based on reviews from 8 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Roger Ebert gave the film one star and 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. Vincent Canby, reviewer for The New York Times, was similarly unimpressed, noting the film was "nothing less than a $25-million irrelevancy." Variety also found the film to be boring; however, the magazine praised the film's action sequences and production values. Charles Champlin in his review for the Los Angeles Times on September 23, 1970, considered the movie's chief virtues as a "spectacular", and the careful recreation of a historical event. Despite the initial negative reviews, the film was critically acclaimed for its vivid action scenes and found favor with aviation aficionados. Several later films and TV series relating to World War II in the Pacific have used footage from Tora! Tora! Tora!. These productions include the films Midway (1976; in the Tora! Tora! Tora! DVD commentary, Fleischer expressed anger that Universal used the footage), All This and World War II (film 1976), Pearl (TV mini-series 1978), From Here to Eternity (TV mini-series 1979), The Final Countdown (1980), and Australia (2008) as well as the Magnum, P. I. television series episode titled "Lest We Forget" (first airdate February 12, 1981). In 1994, a survey at the USS Arizona Memorial in Honolulu determined that for Americans the film was the most common source of popular knowledge about the Pearl Harbor attack. Clark Collis of Empire gave the film three out of five stars, writing that the film "is high on historical veracity but low on drama". In 2016, Cinema Retro released a special issue dedicated to Tora! Tora! Tora! which detailed the Blu-ray release of the film. Stating that the film "has only grown in stature over the decades", it praises the attack sequences, calling them "quite spectacular", and commends the portrayal of the Japanese as "anything but ethnic stereotypes, which adds immensely to the impact of their side of the story". It also praises the "innovative, pulse-pounding" soundtrack. Reviewers called the film as being "meticulous" in its approach to dissecting the situation leading up to the attack. A reviewer called Tora! Tora! Tora! a fine documentary-style film about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The usage of both American and Japanese filmmakers provides an unbiased film and unique viewing experience, and is uncommon in the genre. A 2018 article described the film as doing "a most memorable job in portraying the whole Pearl Harbor experience". In 2025, The Hollywood Reporter listed Tora! Tora! Tora! as having the best stunts of 1970. Awards and nominations ==See also==