A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | CH | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
| Tora! Tora! Tora! | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | American sequences Richard Fleischer Japanese sequences Toshio Masuda Kinji Fukasaku Akira Kurosawa (uncredited) |
| Screenplay by | American sequences Larry Forrester Japanese sequences Hideo Oguni Ryūzō Kikushima Akira Kurosawa (uncredited) |
| Based on |
|
| Produced by | Elmo Williams |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | American sequences Charles F. Wheeler Japanese sequences Shinsaku Himeda Masamichi Satoh Osamu Furuya |
| Edited by | James E. Newcom Pembroke J. Herring Inoue Chikaya |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
Production companies | Williams-Fleischer Productions Toei Company |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox (U.S.) Toei Company (Japan) |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 144 minutes |
| Countries | United States Japan |
| Languages | English Japanese |
| Budget | $25 million[1][2] |
| Box office | $37 million (rentals)[3] |
Tora! Tora! Tora! (Japanese: トラ・トラ・トラ！) is a 1970 Japan-U.S. coproduction epic war film that depicts the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, from both American and Japanese points of view, with scrupulous attention to historical fact, including the U.S. use of Magic cryptanalysis. The film was produced by Elmo Williams and directed by Richard Fleischer, Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku, and stars an ensemble cast including Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotten, So Yamamura, E.G. Marshall, James Whitmore, Tatsuya Mihashi, Takahiro Tamura, Wesley Addy, and Jason Robards. It was Masuda and Fukasaku's first English-language film, and first international co-production. The tora of the title, although literally meaning "tiger", is actually an abbreviation of a two-syllable codeword (i.e., totsugeki raigeki 突撃雷撃, "lightning attack"), used to indicate that complete surprise had been achieved.[4]
The film was released in the United States by Twentieth Century Fox on September 23, 1970, and in Japan by the Toei Company on September 25. It received mixed reviews from American critics, but was praised for its historical accuracy and attention to detail, its visual effects, and its action sequences.[5][6] Tora! Tora! Tora! was nominated for five Oscars at the 43rd Academy Awards, including Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing, winning Best Visual Effects (L.B. Abbott and A.D. Flowers).[7] The National Board of Review ranked it in its Top Ten Films of 1971.
A 1994 survey at the USS Arizona Memorial determined that for Americans the film was the most common source of popular knowledge about the Pearl Harbor attack.[8]
Plot
In August 1939, the United States imposes a trade embargo on a belligerent Japan, severely limiting raw materials. Influential Japanese army figures and politicians push through an alliance with Germany and Italy in September 1940 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 on the U.S. Pacific Fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, believing that Japan's best hope of controlling the Pacific Ocean is to quickly annihilate the American fleet. 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.
Meanwhile, 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. Monitoring the transmissions are U.S. Army Col. Bratton and U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Kramer. At Pearl Harbor itself, Admiral Kimmel increases defensive naval and air patrols around Hawaii which could provide early warning of enemy presence. General Short recommends concentrating aircraft at the base on the runways to avoid sabotage by enemy agents in Hawaii, so General Howard Davidson of the 14th Pursuit Wing tries dispersing some of the planes to other airfields on Oahu to maintain air readiness.
Several months pass while diplomatic tensions escalate. As the Japanese ambassador to Washington continues negotiations to stall for time, the large Japanese fleet sorties into the Pacific. On the day of the attack, Bratton and Kramer learn from intercepts that the Japanese plan a series of 14 radio messages from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in Washington. They are also directed to destroy their code machines after receiving the final message. Deducing the Japanese intention to launch a surprise attack immediately after the messages are delivered, Bratton tries warning his superiors of his suspicions but encounters several obstacles: Chief of Naval Operations Harold R. Stark is indecisive over notifying Hawaii without first alerting the President while Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall's order that Pearl Harbor be alerted of an impending attack is stymied by poor atmospherics that prevent radio transmission and by bungling when a warning sent by telegram is not marked urgent. At dawn on December 7, the Japanese fleet launches its aircraft. Their approach to Hawaii is detected by two radar operators but their concerns are dismissed by the duty officer. Similarly the claim by the destroyer USS Ward to have sunk a Japanese miniature submarine off the entrance to Pearl Harbor is dismissed as unimportant. The Japanese thus achieve complete and total surprise, which Commander Fuchida indicates with the 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 prove a disastrous mistake that allows the Japanese aerial forces to destroy aircraft on the ground easily. In Washington, Secretary of State Cordell Hull is stunned to learn of the attack and urgently requests confirmation before receiving the Japanese ambassador. The message that was transmitted to the Japanese embassy in 14 parts – including a declaration that peace negotiations were at an end – was meant to be delivered to the Americans at 1:00 pm in Washington, 30 minutes before the attack. However, it was not decoded and transcribed in time, meaning the attack started while the two nations were technically still at peace. The distraught Japanese ambassador Kichisaburō Nomura, helpless to explain the late ultimatum and unaware of the ongoing attack, is bluntly rebuffed by Hull.
Back in the Pacific, the Japanese fleet commander, Vice-Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, refuses to launch a scheduled third wave of aircraft for fear of exposing his force to U.S. submarines. In the aftermath of the attack, General Short and Admiral Kimmel receive Marshall's telegram warning of impending danger. Aboard his flagship, Admiral Yamamoto solemnly informs his staff that their primary target – the American aircraft carriers – were not at Pearl Harbor, having departed days previously to search for Japanese vessels. Lamenting that the declaration of war arrived after the attack began, Yamamoto notes that nothing would infuriate the U.S. more and ominously 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
| Actor | Role | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Koreya Senda | Prince Fumimaro Konoye | Prime Minister of Japan | |
| Hiroshi Akutagawa | Marquis Koichi Kido | Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal | |
| Kazuo Kitamura | Shigenori Togo | Foreign Minister | |
| Sō Yamamura | Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto | Commander-in-Chief, Combined Fleet | |
| Bontaro Miyake | Admiral Koshiro Oikawa | Minister of the Navy | |
| Asao Uchida | General Hideki Tojo | Minister of War | |
| Eijirō Tōno | Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo | Commander-in-Chief, 1st Air Fleet | |
| Junya Usami | Vice Admiral Zengo Yoshida | Minister of the Navy | |
| Susumu Fujita | Rear Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi | Commander, Second Carrier Division | |
| Ichiro Reuzaki | Rear Admiral Ryūnosuke Kusaka | Chief of Staff, 1st Air Fleet | |
| Kan Nihonyanagi | Rear Admiral Chuichi Hara | Commander, 5th Carrier Division | |
| Tôru Abe | Rear Admiral Takijirō Ōnishi | Chief of Staff, 11th Air Fleet | |
| Shunichi Nakamura | Captain Kameto "Gandhi" Kuroshima | Senior Staff Officer, Combined Fleet | |
| Tatsuya Mihashi | Commander Minoru Genda | Air Staff, 1st Air Fleet | |
| Takahiro Tamura | Lieutenant Commander Mitsuo Fuchida | Commander, Air Group, Akagi | |
| Toshio Hosokawa | Lieutenant Commander Shigeharu Murata | Commander, 1st Torpedo Attack Unit, Akagi | |
| Hisashi Igawa | Lieutenant Mitsuo Matsuzaki | Fuchida's pilot | |
| Hideo Murota | Lieutenant Zenji Abe | Pilot, Air Group, Akagi | |
| Hiroshi Tom Tanaka | Ensign Akira Hiroo (credited as "Japanese Midget Submarine Crewman") | Commander, Midget Submarine I-20tō | |
| uncredited | Petty Officer 2nd Class Yoshio Katayama | Pilot, Midget Submarine I-20tō | |
| Hisao Toake | Saburō Kurusu | Japanese Ambassador | |
| Shōgo Shimada | Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura | Japanese Ambassador to the United States | (voiced by uncredited actor Paul Frees) |
| Paul Frees | Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura (voice) | Japanese Ambassador to the United States |
Civilians
| Actor | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Leora Dana | Ileana Kramer | Lt. Cdr. Kramer's wife |
| June Dayton | Ray Cave | Secretary |
| Akira Kume | Katsuzo Okumura | Japanese embassy secretary |
| Jeff Donnell | Cornelia Fort | Civilian flying instructor |
| Hank Jones | Davey | Civilian student pilot |
| Andrew Hughes | Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop | German Minister for Foreign Affairs |
| Kiyoshi Atsumi | Japanese messman |
Production
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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 Short and Admiral 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.[1] Recognizing that a balanced and objective recounting was necessary, Zanuck developed an American-Japanese co-production, allowing for "a point of view from both nations".[11] He was helped out by his son, Richard D. Zanuck, who was chief executive at Fox during this time.
Production on Tora! Tora! Tora! took three years to plan and prepare for the eight months of principal photography.[11] The film was created in two separate productions, one based in the United States, directed by Richard Fleischer, and one based in Japan.[12] The Japanese side was initially to be directed by Akira Kurosawa, who worked on script development and pre-production for two years. However, after two weeks of shooting, he was replaced by Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku, who directed the Japanese sections.[12][13] Toshiro Mifune reportedly had been scheduled to play Yamamoto but withdrew when Kurosawa left the project.
Richard Fleischer said of 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 back 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 about 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.[14]
Larry Forrester and frequent Kurosawa collaborators Hideo Oguni and Ryūzō Kikushima wrote the screenplay, based on books written by Ladislas Farago and Gordon Prange of the 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.[1]
Four cinematographers were involved in the main photography: Charles F. Wheeler, Shinsaku Himeda, Masamichi Satoh, and Osamu Furuya.[15] 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.[15] The second unit doing miniature photography was directed by Ray Kellogg, while the second unit doing aerial sequences was directed by Robert Enrietto.
Noted composer Jerry Goldsmith composed the film score and Robert McCall painted several scenes for various posters of the film.[16]
The carrier entering Pearl Harbor towards the end of the film was in fact the Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Kearsarge, returning to port. The "Japanese" aircraft carrier was the anti-submarine carrier USS Yorktown, 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.[17]
For the parallel filming in Japan, full-scale mock-ups of the Japanese battleship Nagato and aircraft carrier Akagi were built from the waterline up on shore, with about 90 feet (27 m) 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 Akagi's 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 Hiryū. 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.[citation needed]
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.[18] 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.[19] 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.[20] 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.[21] The 2001 film Pearl Harbor would use some of the same modified aircraft.[22]
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.[23]
Several members of the cast had themselves served in World War II.
| Actor | Service | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Martin Balsam | Army Air Forces | B-24 radio operator |
| James Whitmore | Marine Corps | Lieutenant |
| Jason Robards | Navy | USS Northampton and USS Nashville |
| Wesley Addy | Army | |
| Norman Alden | Army | |
| Frank Aletter | Army | |
| Richard Anderson | Army | |
| Keith Andes | Army Air Forces | |
| Edward Andrews | Army | Captain, awarded Bronze Star Medal |
| Neville Brand | Army | Earned a Purple Heart and Silver Star |
| Walter Brooke | Army | |
| Paul Frees | Army | Wounded in combat on D-Day |
| G.D. Spradlin | Army Air Forces | |
| Arthur Tovey | Army |