From : WW2PacificTheatreVid
Added: Mar 24, 2008
Tora! Tora! Tora! is a 1970 American-Japanese film that dramatizes the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the series of American blunders that unintentionally improved its effectiveness. It won an Academy Award for best special effects. The title is made up of the code-words that were used by the Japanese to indicate that complete surprise was achieved (虎 tora is Japanese for "tiger" but in this case, "to" is the initial syllable of the Japanese word 突撃 totsugeki, meaning "charge" or "attack", and "ra" is the initial syllable of 雷撃 raigeki, meaning "torpedo attack"). At the time of its initial movie release, it proved to be a major box office flop in US theatres although it was a major hit in Japanese movie theaters--but over the years, video releases allowed a profit.[2] The movie was critically acclaimed for its vivid action scenes (in fact several later films relating to World War II in the Pacific would use footage from Tora! Tora! Tora! including The Final Countdown and Midway) as well as its almost perfect documentary accuracy. Its most famous line about "awakening a sleeping giant", however, though widely assumed to be a quotation, may have been fictitious. The film is a dramatization based upon the actual history of events leading up to the attack, 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.
Category : Film

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