Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
Directed by Richard Fleischer (U.S sequences)
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku (Japanese sequences)
Directed by Toshio Masuda (Japanese sequences)

Plot Summary: A dramatization of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and the series of American blunders that allowed it to happen.

Finally a historical film from Hollywood that sticks to the facts & doesn’t get bogged down with a soppy romantic sub-plot.

On Sunday 7th December 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on the US Pacific fleet in its moorings at Pearl Harbour, 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 Harbour 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 Harbour 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 Harbour 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 Harbour 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 Harbour is ravaged.

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

The films title is taken from the code issued by the Japanese Air Task Force Commander to indicate complete success of the attack on Pearl Harbour against the Americans. Tora is the Japanese word for tiger.

Every year the Confederate Air Force hold re-enactments of the December 7th 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour. Information on dates & places of the venues can be found at http://www.toratoratora.com/.

Trivia for Tora! Tora! Tora:

• The P-40 crashing in the flight line was an unplanned accident - it was a life-sized mock-up powered by a petrol (gasoline engine) turning the propeller and steered by using the wheel brakes, just like real aeroplanes, but was specifically designed not to fly. The aircraft shown was loaded with explosives, which were to be detonated by radio control at a specific point down the runway. Stunt actors were strategically located and rehearsed in which way to run. However shortly after the plane began taxiing down the runway it did begin to lift off the ground and turn to the left. The left turn would have taken it into a group of other mock-ups, which had also been wired with explosives, but weren't scheduled, to be destroyed until later. The explosives in the first P-40 were detonated on the spot in order to keep it from destroying the other planes, so the explosion occurred in a location the stunt men weren't prepared for. When it looks like they were running for their lives, they really were. This special effect was filmed with multiple cameras so that it could be reused in other shots in the film, as were all the major special effects.

• The 30+ "Japanese" aeroplanes flying in the movie are all converted American trainers. The fighters, "Zeros," were AT-6's, the dive bombers, "Vals," were BT-13's, and the torpedo- and level bombers, "Kates," consisted of AT-6 fronts and wings and BT-13 tails. No genuine Japanese warbirds were to be found in flying condition at the time. Instead, several American planes had to be rebuilt at a cost of about $30,000 each. They were later sold at auction for $1,500 or so apiece, and most of them are still flying in private hands.

• The USS Yorktown (CVS-10) was disguised as the Japanese carrier Kaga to film scenes of aircraft taking off and landing.

• The U.S. Navy's Office of Information was inundated with complaints from U.S. citizens when the military agreed to allow active U.S. servicemen to participate in the recreation of the attack on Pearl Harbour, which some viewed as glorifying Japanese aggression and showing Americans as unprepared.

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