This is taken from a book of the same name, written by an American in the US occupation force who wrote this detailed history based on inside information including, among other important details,, the American partial cracking of the Japanese code, which led them to the conclusion a number of hours in advance that a very long coded message to the Japanese embassy was in fact a declaration of war, meaning all US forces needed to be on an immediate war footing.
Then it took hours to locate and bring together the necessary military and administration officials, and the military officer sent to telegraph Pearl Harbor couldn't deal with the fact his own service's direct telecommunications with Pearl Harbor were down, couldn't bring himself to use the other service's, and instead sent it Western Union, neglected to mark it urgent, and it hopscotched through myriad intermediatry Western Union offices before finally arriving at Pearl Harbor, hours late.
There was also the brass who ignorned a kill of a mini-sub near the harbor and the radar installation - which only operated at night when it wouldn't step on commercial radio broadcasts, reported huge flight incoming, and the supervising officer decided without inquiring further it must be a flight from San Diego and told the crew to sign off and go back to barracks. Then there was the airfield officer who ignored orders from higher up and clustered all his planes under guard, more worried about Japanese saboteurs than being attacked, meaning only two fighters ever got off the ground.
A SNAFU from beginning to end, but as usual, not the nonsensical conspiracy alleged by nitwits who think FDR let them sink the Pacific fleet to get into WWII - as if it wouldn't be enough that they declared war, attacked - and we won the battle. As usual, given a choice between stupid and a vast secret conspiracy - especially when it doesn't make sense even if it were true - it's going to be stupid 100% of the time. Everyone operates with recency bias. We can't believe the yellow man would attack us across thousands of miles of ocean, just as the Brits couldn't imagine the Japanese could run through Malaysia to Singapore, where the Japanese practically walked in unopposed.
Like most wars, it started with myriad errors, mostly on the US side (the Japanese had been fighting in Asia for close to a decade and had a well honed war machine). Save the biggest blunder - declaring war on the US in the first place. The quote attributed to Yamamoto at the end - that the Japanese had awakened a terrible enemy and could only hope to delay the inevitable - was not a recorded quote from the time, though it probably reflected his thinking; he had lived in the US for a time and had a very good idea about the industrial capacity of the US which Japan could not match.
Weirdly, the unabridged book was only published in Japanese, in Japan, though written by an American with the military//diplomatic delegation, and is available in English to this day only, to my knowledge, in abridged form, by, of all people, Reader's Digest 40 years ago!
A Youtube history channel (sorry, don't recall which) counted this as unsurpassed in its historical accuracy, and I've no reason to doubt it. Well done all around. No dominant heroes - and plenty of stupid to go around along with some heroism, but believable characters on both sides, including Japanese playing the Japanese getting equal time, speaking Japanese. (I haven't checked, but I imagine this also saw release in Japan).
If you're looking for a movie you can chant USA! to, maybe not your movie, but if you want an accurate picture of how wars often start - with mind-numbing blunders as well as courage, which can turn around if you can survive long enough - this is a fine example. It's very convenient having thousands of miles of ocean between us and any country with hope of threatening us, though that's less comfort in the nuclear age.
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Reviews with images
5 stars for the movie - but the packaging isn't wonderful.......
The movie is great (of course), and the Blu-Ray quality is outstanding. But I'm not in love with the packaging. There is no hard case - the DVD is tucked inside the back cover of the book (I posted an image). It kind of looks like an afterthought.The book will surely show some wear on the cover as it is slid in and out of the bookcase. I wish I had bought the regular Blu-Ray instead. To me, the book isn't worth the extra cost.Just my 2¢......
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B. Beattie
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