The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 8 | Issue 37 | Number 1 | Sep 13, 2010

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Binational Pearl Harbor? Tora! Tora! Tora! and the Fate of(Trans)national Memory 　日米両国の真珠湾？トラ・トラ・トラ！と国（を越えた）記憶の運命

Geoffrey M. White, Marie Thorsten

Binational Pearl Harbor?

Tora! Tora! Tora! and the Fate of(Trans)national Memory

Marie Thorsten and Geoffrey M. White

The fifty-year anniversary of the Treaty ofMutual Cooperation and Security betweenJapan and the United States, signed on January19, 1960, was not exactly a cause forunrestrained celebration. In 2010, contentiousdisagreements over the relocation andexpansion of the American military presence inOkinawa, lawsuits against the Toyota MotorCorporation, ongoing restrictions on the importof American beef, and disclosures of secretpacts that have allowed American nuclear-armed warships to enter Japan for decades,subdued commemorative tributes to the U.S.-Japan security agreement commonly known as“Ampo” in Japan.1

In this atmosphere it is nevertheless worthrecalling another sort of U.S.-Japan pactmarking the tenth anniversary of Ampo, the1970 historical feature film, Tora! Tora! Tora!(dir. Richard Fleisher, Fukasaku Kinji andMasuda Toshio).2 Whereas the formal securitytreaty of 1960 officially prepared the twonations to resist future military attacks, Tora!Tora! Tora! unofficially scripted the twonations’ interpretations of the key event thatput them into a bitter war, the attack on PearlHarbor in 1941. Although conceived by theAmerican film studio Twentieth-Century Fox asa way to mark a new beginning for the two

nations, certain popular opinions at the time,particularly in Japan, regarded Tora! Tora!Tora! as a cultural extension of the unequalsecurity partnership.

On the American side, Pearl Harbor has cometo wield such iconic proprietorship that it mayseem inconceivable that the authorship of suchpivotal memory could ever be shared with theformer enemy. Airing his vehement disapprovalover whether to build a mosque near the site ofthe World Trade Center attacks, a controversypreoccupying Americans in 2010, politicalstalwart Newt Gingrich (former RepublicanSpeaker of the House of Representatives),analogized, “We would never accept theJapanese putting up a site next to PearlHarbor.”3 In the realm of education, a series ofteacher workshops that had brought Americanand Japanese educators together to discussapproaches to teaching about Pearl Harbor wasrecently brought to an abrupt end when anAmerican participant complained to federalsponsors that the program amounted to “anagenda-based attack on the U.S. military,military history, and American veterans.”4 Thefact that this criticism, directed to the federalfunding source (the National Endowment forthe Humanities as well as the U.S. Congress)quickly found receptive audiences throughpolitical blogs and veterans groups’ listservssuggests an insecure, zero-sum mentality inwhich listening to other controversies andpoints of view somehow erases dominantnarratives, which must then be vigilantlyprotected.

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Nevertheless, we consider Tora! Tora! Tora! anoteworthy exception to such assumedproprietorship for its splicing together of two,mostly parallel, national productions fromAmerica and Japan. It is perhaps inevitable thatsuch a f i lm encountered di f f icul t iesnarrativizing the events of Pearl Harbor for twonational audiences—events that have been thesubject of contested and shifting memory forAmericans throughout the postwar period. Thisshift has been made manifest in the last decadethrough highly misguided efforts to summonPearl Harbor memory to serve America’s “waron terror” —in the hopes of recreatingAmerican revenge, triumph, occupation anddemocratization of the vanquished.5

Despite its claims to tell both national sides ofthe attack, Tora! Tora! Tora! evokeddiscussions of genre and accuracy in cinematicrepresentations of war and nation, with muchinterest, especially in America, over the"American view" and the "Japanese view."Japanese critics were less concerned about thefilm’s reference to Pearl Harbor in 1941 thanthe politics of the 1960s framing the film as anexpression of unequal bilateral relations orglorification of state violence. While there isvalidity to such concerns, the film also offered aunique space for integrating narratives notentirely reducible to exigent security matters.Especially in response to the Gingrichstatement above, we express some cautiousappreciation of the film’s gesture not only ofbridging the stories of both nations but alsoacknowledging mistakes made throughout thechains of command in both the United Statesand Japan leading to Pearl Harbor attack.

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Tora! Tora! Tora!’s screenplay was adaptedfrom the extensive writings of historian GordonPrange, including an early work titled, Tora!Tora! Tora!6 and Ladislas Farago's The BrokenSeal (1967). Though Prange died in 1980, hisformer students, Donald M. Goldstein andKatherine V. Dillon, published his meticulouslydocumented oeuvre on Pearl Harbor as theposthumous At Dawn We Slept: The UntoldStory of Pearl Harbor (1981), widelyconsidered an epic, unparalleled bookcompiling Prange’s thirty-seven years ofresearch. After researching both nationalperspectives and claiming “no preconceivedthesis”7 (and originally intending to doprimarily the Japanese side), Prange’s“reflective” rather than “judgmental”conclusion, expressed by Goldstein and Dillon,was that there were “no deliberate villains”:

[Prange] considered those involvedon both s ides to be honest ,hardworking, dedicated, and forthe most part, intelligent. But ashuman beings some were brilliantand some mediocre, some broad-minded and some of narrow vision,some strong and some weak—andevery single one fallible, capable ofm i s t a k e s o f o m i s s i o n a n dcommission. 8

Writing mostly in the post-Occupation years yetbefore the 1980s, Prange’s Pearl Harbor booksincluding At Dawn assumed a “happy endingon both sides” marked by peaceful relationsand the rise of the Japanese economy under theAmerican military umbrella.9 As technicaladviser to the film version of Tora! Tora! Tora!Prange’s signature themes of communicationfailures, mutual mistakes and diffusedresponsibility are prominent.

For many Japanese citizens during this time,however, the inescapable backdrop of themutual security treaty acquired a narrativepower of its own, metaphorically coding thefilm in terms of the unhappy hegemony of oneside’s overwhelming military superiority. Thereare no indications of the filmmakers making anAmpo statement willfully, though certainly theAmerican power equation coupled with thegravitas of a major Hollywood studioconditioned audiences and critics to connectthe dots to American military dominance. Majorevents shape people’s understanding of theworld around them according to the storylinesthey half-consciously absorb and retain.Assoc ia t ing t ime per iods to soc ia lunderstanding of films, we are attentive to thenarrative power of key events that shapesocietal world views, whether Ampo in Japan,or Pearl Harbor more generally as a momentthat, in one Admiral’s view, “never dies, and noliving person has seen the end of it.”10

Plans for launching Tora! Tora! Tora! were

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announced to the Japanese publ ic inNovember1966 as involving the renownedfilmmaker Kurosawa Akira and KurosawaProductions’ manager, Aoyagi Tetsuro, workingwith Twentieth Century Fox. Kurosawa andtwo other writers who often worked with him,Oguni Hideo and Kikushima Ryuzo, wrote theJapanese portion of the screenplay over thecourse of nearly two years. Larry Forrester, aBritish journalist and novelist, wrote theAmerican portion of the screenplay. Accordingto Japanese sources, the screenplay rights wereowned by Fox. As a result of a conflictexplained below, Kurosawa was replaced bydirectors Fukasaku Kinji and Masuda Toshio.Tora! Tora! Tora! often brings up memories ofthe war’s “backstage” during the productionprocess, which, though usually referring eitherto the firing of Kurosawa and/or the film’sassociations with unequal bilateral relations,also reflect the inevitable politics of translationencountered in transnational coproductions.11

Feature vs. Documentary: Blurred genres

Given the conventional wisdom that Japan andthe U.S. maintain divergent national memoriesof the Pearl Harbor attack- -Americaremembers, Japan forgets--we are faced withthe puzzle of how filmmakers from the twonations merged their creative efforts. To add tothe irony, the film enjoyed relatively greaterbox office success in Japan than in the UnitedStates. Although a feature film, it inevitablyproduced critical debates about historical trutha n d t h e p o l i t i c s o f n a t i o n a l w a rmemory.12 Although the Pearl Harbor attackhas generated a significant body of bothdocumentary and feature film production, aclose examination of both types of filmssuggests that these genre distinctions havelittle, if any, significance for cinematic claims ofhistorical veracity. Though classified as afeature film, Tora! Tora! Tora! can easily beviewed as a comprehensive “documentary” forits relentless attention to detail and causalsequence. In contrast, the first documentary

produced about Pearl Harbor, December 7th, anofficial production of the U.S. Office of WarInformation (and recipient of a 1943 academyaward for best short documentary), uses suchdevices as deceased American sailors speakingfrom the grave to tell its “complete and factual”story.13

The ambiguous area between documentary andfiction has been well noted.14 Elizabeth Cowieexplains that fictional films offer “narrativecausality and psychological motivation,”whereas documentaries provide “the terms[for] believability” through the authority of thenarrator and factual evidence. In viewingdocumentaries, audiences expect bothbelievability and psychological resonance, butfill in the gap between their expectations byreach ing f o r f an tasy and symbo l i cimaginaries.15 Whether documentary, feature,newsreel, or “docudrama,” films of PearlHarbor draw from narrative structures thatplot the bombing as a moral parable thatspeaks to Americans (or Japanese or others)about the lessons of war. The force of thismythicized story of Pearl Harbor accounts formuch of the discursive similarity of PearlHarbor films across diverse genres and, to anextent , through sh i f t ing h is tor ica lcircumstances.

Pearl Harbor Films through Time: 1940sthrough 1970s

Narratives of history mutate as they crossnational as well as temporal borders.16 Just asanalyses of key anniversaries of Pearl Harborhave plotted their shifting significance forAmerican audiences, it is possible to considerthe fate of Pearl Harbor films at differentmoments in national time.17

1940s, 1950s: World War II, as it is known inthe U.S., was the first worldwide conflict inwhich cinema, primarily newsreel andHollywood film, played a dominant role inshaping public understanding of the war.18 A

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singularly dramatic event that drew the UnitedStates into global conflict, the attack on PearlHarbor became known immediately throughphotographs in Life magazine and images runin Hearst newsreels within weeks of theattack.19 The spectacular images of explodingand burning battleships, captured in both stillphotographs in national magazines as well as ina limited amount of film footage, quicklybecame the iconic signature of PearlHarbor—images that continue to focusAmericans’ “flashbulb memory” of America’sonly incident of “foreign attack” since theburning of Washington D.C. in the war of 1812.

In both Japan and the United States, thebombing of Pearl Harbor was quickly taken upby the machinery of state-sponsored imagemaking. Immediately following the attack, aU.S. naval film unit under the direction of JohnFord and Gregg Toland began work on anofficial American documentary that could beused to suppor t the war e f for t . Butphotographic and newsreel images of theattack had circulated so quickly that thefilmmakers had to come up with something newfor audiences who had already seen most of thefootage taken during the bombing.20 The filmthey made, December 7th, mixed documentaryand feature film styles in ways that ultimatelydefeated the project, resulting in suppressionof the 83-minute film never released because ofobjections by U.S. Navy and Department of Warreviewers. This film begins with a fictionalized“Uncle Sam” character and includes anextended dramatized depiction of spying bylocal Japanese Americans (undeterred by thefact that no cases were ever recorded). Fordlater salvaged a shorter version of December7 th for use in official “moral(e)-building”programs and it was this version that receivedthe Academy Award fo r ‘bes t shor tdocumentary’ in 1943.

Despite its troubled origins, this first officialAmerican film of the bombing exerted a stronginfluence on subsequent cinematic depictions

of Pearl Harbor. Because only a small amountof film was shot during the attack itself (untilrecently the only footage that was used in thebulk of Pearl Harbor documentary consisted ofabout 200 feet of film, or six minutes, shot bytwo cameramen and some additional footage ofdamage in urban Honolulu), December 7th

undertook extensive model-building,recreations and staged re-enactments withspecial effects to capture the drama of combat.Those scenes, springing from the imaginationof Gregg Toland and his crew, were reused innumerous documentary and feature filmsduring postwar decades. They were “recycledas reality by countless, naive documentaryfilmmakers, blurring the lines between fictionand documentary in ways Toland and Fordcouldn’t have predicted.”21 Indeed, theinfluence right through to the 2001 Disney epicfeature Pearl Harbor is clear, with specificscenes and camera angles reproducedfaithfully, as if history was at stake.

The Japanese made only a minimal film recordof the attack, favoring still photographs takenfrom the attacking planes that wereincorporated in a variety of f i lms andpublications.22 A newsreel report on the attackwas released in December 1941, using martialmus i c t o accompany the “march o fbattleships.”23 Official Japanese filmmakersdealt with the relative absence of footage justthe way that Toland and Ford were doingacross the Pacif ic—using models andminiatures to construct an elaborate set wherethe attack could be s imulated in thedocumentary The War at Sea from Hawaii toMalaya (1942). Pearl Harbor was also thesubject of the first feature length Japaneseanimated film in 1943, Momotarō’s Sea Eagle(Momotarō – no umiwashi)—a 37 minute blackand white epic film telling the story of theattack using animal characters led by thechildren’s story hero Momotarō. As the linernotes proclaim, “To the tune of Hawaiianmusic, they rush into the enemy harbor atdawn, beginning an exciting bombing and

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torpedo attack.”24

Of course, numerous Hollywood films, such asFrom Here to Eternity (dir. Fred Zinnemann,1953), have utilized elements of the PearlHarbor story in building their own narratives.Fi lms produced during the war itselfincorporated references to Pearl Harbor andsome, like Air Force released in 1943, workedin extended scenes of the attack to dramatizethe outbreak of war and set the scene forlonger stories of American heroes (andJapanese villains) at war. Major feature filmswould take Pearl Harbor as their subject,rather than as backdrop to other forms ofcinematic storytelling. As the war movedfurther into the realm of an imagined nationalpast, Pearl Harbor acquired an even larger,mythic status, as a signpost in national memorythat is repeatedly redeployed to meet changingcircumstances.

1960s, 1970s: How then, to account for thewillingness of American and Japanesefilmmakers to work together just a quarter-century after the attack? To begin with, exceptwhen used as brute propaganda, war films ingeneral often use affective, technological andstrategic components to attract “war buffs” andtechnophiles regardless of nationality. Tora!Tora! Tora! deployed all such devices, alongwith the somewhat anodyne humbling ofnational identities achieved through thePrange-ian assertion that “they all mademistakes.” Yet the film also enabled, somefeared, the forging of a more forgetfulbinational identity serving the mutual securityalliance. The forgetting began less than onemonth after Japan’s surrender to transform thenation from enemy to friend. The Marine Corpspublication Leatherneck Magazine morphed itsinfamously simian cartooning of Japan duringwartime into a “smiling Marine with anappealing but clearly vexed monkey on hisshoulder, dressed in the oversized uniform ofthe Imperial Navy.”25

The period from the late 1950s through theearly 1970s, characterized by intense Cold Wardiplomacy, atmospheric nuclear testing, andwars in Korea and Vietnam, offered a period forstrengthening relations between America andJapan, among officialdom at least. The war waspast and the intense trade friction era was yetto come. Japan was proving its loyalty to U.S.global ambitions in the Korean and VietnamWars. Official discourses in both countriesneeded to forge a strategic code of friendship.Japan would be made into a pivotal Cold Warally, a capitalist partner in the global waragainst communism, a friendly place of restand relaxation for American servicemen inAsia. America's security umbrella in turn waspromoted in Japan, both to compensate forJapan's own (imposed) military allergy and togive the defeated nation a new legitimacy inglobal markets. The 1960 US-Japan MutualSecurity Agreement required Japan to hostAmerican bases in Japan with the promise ofthe return of Okinawa (accomplished in 1972).Japan was allowed to develop its own Self-Defense Forces and continue its role as amilitary procurer for American wars in Asia.Meanwhile, this was also the so-called “goldenage” of Japanese cinema, and filmmakershoped to exploit each other’s lucrative markets.

The masses were less convinced of the bilateralarrangement. Japanese demonstrations againstAmerica's hand in the remilitarization of theircountry had already begun in the 1950s, afterthe first US-Japan Security Treaty in 1951 wassigned as part of the San Francisco PeaceTreaty process bringing an end to the AlliedOccupation. Both leftists and rightists saw thisearlier treaty giving permission to America tokeep bases in Japan as a v io lat ion ofsovereignty. Leftists also knew it betrayed thevery antiwar principles that Americansthemselves scripted into their Constitution.Anti-base movements merged with the anti-nuclear movement, ignited further by theaccidental irradiation of Japan's Lucky Dragonfishing crew during America's Bikini hydrogen

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bomb test in 1954. By 1960, when the Treatyrecognized today was negotiated to returnOkinawa but continue the expansion ofA m e r i c a ’ s b a s e s a n d t r o o p s , t h edemonstrations had peaked as a multi-layered,socially diverse peace movement. Protestersdecried the American presence in Japan asanachronistic extraterritoriality, and ventedoutrage at violations against women victims ofsexual crimes committed by base personnel.They opposed global nuclear weapons testing,with legitimate concern that Japan would betargeted in a possible Cold War conflict.26 Itwas in this atmosphere of intense social unrestagainst the U.S.-Japan military alliance fromthe 1950s through the early 1970s thatJapanese critical reaction to the binationalnarrative of Pearl Harbor is best understood.

I Bombed Pearl Harbor

Another film from the Ampo era was Japan’smore obscure 1960 Japanese film HawaiMiddouei Daikaikūsen: Taiheiyo no Arashi (lit.,The Sea and Air Battles of Hawaii and Midway:Storm on the Pacific), released in the U.S. in1962 under several titles (Attack Squadron,Kamikazi, Storm Over the Pacific), mostcommonly I Bombed Pearl Harbor.27 Even ifsomewhat difficult to find, I Bombed PearlHarbor is one of the only Japanese war filmsknown in the United States among war historybuffs (as distinct from art house audiences towhom the more coherently pacifist films suchas the Burmese Harp and Black Rain are wellknown). Its marketing across both nationswarrants some critical comparison with Tora! IBombed Pearl Harbor was directed byMatsubayashi Shuei, whose fame was eclipsedby the Special Effects Technician, Godzilla'speerless creator Tsubaraya Eiji. Given theirexperience with monster movies, includingGodzilla, as well as other war movies, it isunsurprising that they favored technologicalinscript ions in the c inematography.Matsubayashi was also a Navy veteran. Thisfilm is also notable for its mega-star, Mifune

Toshiro, who acted the part of AdmiralYamamoto.

I Bombed Pearl Harbor (Taiheiyō noarashi), 1960, advertised in the US

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Taiheiyō no arashi, 1960, in Japan

I Bombed’s three-act drama starts with thePearl Harbor attack, cuts back to what ishappening to the characters’ home lives inJapan, and ends with an extended treatment ofthe defeat of the Japanese invasion fleet atMidway, widely regarded as the turning pointin the war. The extended treatment of theMidway battle—a military and national debaclethat sealed Japan’s fate, even if it would takeover three years of catastrophe to finalize it--sets up a tragic narrative that frames the film’smultiple parts. Within this framework morepersonal stories can be told, depictinghumanized individuals caught in themachinations of geopolitics. The film concludeswith a coda that has been a dominant theme inJapanese reflections on the Pacific War,questioning the militarism and patriotism thattook citizens into war- an entirely different

ending from the prototypic American moralimperative for Pearl Harbor (“be prepared,”fight back, and overcome).

Yet as in other films, there are enough layersand ambiguities that I Bombed yields multipleinterpretations. As some critics have noted, thisnarrative of inevitable defeat also creates acontext for accentuating the actions of Japan’sloyal young men as noble self sacrifice, animpulse that has received full expression inrecent cinematic depictions of the sacrifice ofyoung kamikaze pilots such as Firefly (Hotaru),directed by Furuhata Yasuo (2001) or ForThose we Love (Ore wa, kimi no tame ni kososhini ni iku) scripted by Ishihara Shintarō (dir.Shinjo Taku, 2007).28

Despite its blockbuster special effects and all-star cast, I Bombed Pearl Harbor is barelyknown, even in Japan. Kinema Junpō reportedthat the film was popular when it first openedin the year of Ampo, 1960. High-profile filmcritic Yodogawa Nagaharu 's critique for thatpublication may have been responsible for thefilm's evaporation from the war genrepantheon, as we failed to find any other reviewsbeyond his. While praising Tsubaraya's skills,he was profoundly skeptical of the Hollywood-ization of the narrative: the need to makeeverything big, violent and expensive.(Ironically, Yodogawa subsequently becameknown for his infatuation with Hollywood andpromotion of American blockbusters ontelevision.) Yodogawa's main concern lay withthe unintended consequences of the narrative,how young people with no experience in warwould react to it, if they might put on uniformsand go off to war as if it were “the mostinteresting big game” humanly possible. Just totell the story of the battles of Pearl Harbor andMidway would be a reasonable thing in itself,he acknowledges, but in Japan that story mighteasily become a template for a Pacific WarChushingura – the classical story of botchedvengeance told thousands of times in theatre,narrative and film. I Bombed Pearl Harbor

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however, is not even worthy of such a dubiousprospect, he lamented, since it is nothing but a"spineless umbrella," a spectacle of specialeffects and fireworks.29

Yodogawa hoped for a stronger humancomponent, arguing that if the film had betterdramatized the war's effects on more ordinarypeople on the home front, such as the scenewhere the protagonist returns to see hismother and get married, then more violent warscenes could have been spared. He wasskeptical about the miniaturized special effectsand found the ending sloppy as well; the wholefilm was just “playing around”.30

Even the low level of response to I BombedPearl Harbor in Japan seems substantial incomparison with the near invisibility of the filmin the United States. When distributed in theUnited States, the film was always billed as astory of the bombing of Pearl Harbor “from theJapanese perspective.” The promotional notesproclaim, “. . . . these are the events of the warseen through the eyes of the Japanese.” At thetime of release in the U.S., one of the film’sposters depicted a large image of the attackpilot’s face and asks, “Where were you onDecember 7, 1941? This man was in a JapaneseZero over Pearl Harbor.” While this strategy ofpromoting the film as a glimpse into theperspective of former enemies might intriguethose interested in war history and technology,it did not engage mainstream Americanaudiences.

A cover blurb for the video of I Bombedconcludes with a note that the film’s realisticrecreations of battle scenes make the film“especially interesting for history buffs.” As isalso the case for Tora! the film clearly has ahigh techno appeal for audiences interested inwar history and the fine details of specialeffects productions. The promotional liner toutsthe film as a “Technicolor epic that holds therecord for most ships destroyed per minute offilm.” There is, then, likely to be little overlap

between the audience for this film and thoseinterested in antiwar dramatic films such asKobayashi Masaki 's trilogy The HumanCondition, Burmese Harp, or Fire on the Plains.

Tora! Tora! Tora!

If I Bombed… received limited distribution inthe United States, Tora! Tora! Tora!, released adecade later, quickly gained a place incinematic history as a classic of its genre.Though poorly reviewed on release, itdeveloped enormous staying power, with salesboosts at each major anniversary. A survey atthe USS Arizona Memorial in 1994 determinedthat for Americans the film was the mostcommon source of popular knowledge aboutthe Pearl Harbor attack.31 Whereas for latergenerations this might be displaced by the2001 feature film Pearl Harbor, the tone andstructure of the film resembles closely that ofthe short documentary film shown at theMemorial itself to provide an overview of theattack and its historical significance.

Tora! required years of negotiation betweenJapanese and American investors, leading toparallel productions under the control ofTwentieth Century-Fox edited somewhatdifferently for each national audience. The filmcost over $25 million, a sum that was notearned back at the box office in the U.S.,although the film did well in Japan.

Advertising for Tora! suggested the film wouldhelp seal the past—following Prange’s thematicthat mistakes were made on both sides--andopen the future:

Tora! Tora! Tora! shows thedeceptions, the blunders, theinnocence, the blindness, the brassminds, the freak twists. The all-too-human events that led to theincredible sea and sky armadasthat clashed at Pearl Harbor.

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Tora! Tora! Tora! recreates themonumental attack from plan toexecution, as seen through botheyes—theirs and ours. Which iswhat any honest motion pictureabout the past must do, if it is tospeak to the people of the present:the people who will make thefuture.32

Tora's brochure distributed after the film'spremiere also implies that the film wasgovernmentally approved, if not an artifact of"closure" in itself:

For several years, there was greatskepticism within both Americanand Japanese film circles about themaking of "Tora! Tora! Tora!" Yet,b y s u m m e r o f 1 9 6 8 , b o t hgovernments looked favorably onthe re-telling of these dramaticevents and moments in history. Bitter enemies no longer, butallies in an uncertain world, theyagreed that the monumental storyof both sides should be told; that itconta ined great h istor ica lmeanings for the future. 3 3

In all probability, the extent of Japanesegovernmental negotiations was probablylimited to obtaining consultation from ex-pilotGenda Minoru, the lead strategist of the PearlHarbor attack, who happened to be a memberof the Japanese Diet (parliament) at the time.(Prange also interviewed Genda and otherJapanese veterans for his books.) U.S.governmental approvals focused on obtaining(and using) vintage war props and gainingpermission to shoot the film on the samemilitary bases in Hawai‘i where the attackoccurred.

Conceived by Darryl Zanuck of Twentieth

Century Fox studios as a Pacific variant of hisepic The Longest Day (1962), which had been amajor box office success, Tora! was a big-screen spectacle depicting historical eventswith fine detail. In this regard, as a portrayal ofhistory, Tora! may have succeeded too well, sowell that in retrospect it became rather one oft h e m o s t d e t a i l e d a n d c o m p l e t e“documentaries” ever made on the subject ofPearl Harbor. The Motion Picture Guideagreed, saying “TORA! TORA! TORA! isprobably as accurate a film ever to be madeabout the events that led the United States intoWWII..."34 The structural symmetries betweenthe American and Japanese parts in the film’snarrative are striking, showing the mishaps onboth national sides that, when spliced together,make for an amazing litany of "what ifs." TheAmerican side details the operation and failureof communications and military technologyinvolving codes, cables, telegrams, and radar.

Here the human details stand out, unlike mostpostwar (and Cold War) American narrations ofthe attack that coalesce into purely strategicnecessities to "Remember Pearl Harbor," i.e.,be prepared. The Japan production portrays theintense emotions of the leaders, generationalconflict, inter-service rivalries between theArmy and Navy, and feelings that the attackwas a mistake – the lat ter embodiedparticularly in the figure of Yamamoto. Japan’shubristic attack culminates in the fictionalAdmiral Yamamoto uttering the famouslyfabricated line, “"I fear all we have done is toawaken a sleeping giant and fill him with aterrible resolve.” (A slightly different versionwas copied into Disney’s Pearl Harbormentioned below.) By depicting the tragicnobility of Yamamoto, a strategist with his ownAmerican experience and sensibility, the filmreproduces one of the primary means throughwhich postwar America came to reconcile itsvisions of Japan as wartime enemy with Japanas postwar ally. As we shall see, this aspectmay have been missed by the first cohort ofAmerican viewers, while despised by Japanese

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critics expecting a stronger censure of leaders.

Twentieth Century Fox revealed much of theresearch for the film in its production notes. Itseemed particularly important to proclaim thisaspect of the film—its historical accuracy andauthenticity—for the Japan side:

According to Japanese film tradepublications, no other film in thehistory of the nation’s industryreceived “such elaborate andmeticulous research.” Poring overgovernment records, examining oldphotos, consulting with the familyof the late Admiral Yamamoto,d igg ing ou t the p lans andspecifications of naval aircraft,tracing the architect’s blueprintsfor the battleship Nagato andcarrier Akagi, researchers delvedinto every possible facet of theperiod to meet official Tokyodemands that the motion picturebe authentic.”35

Kurosawa Debacle: The War-Within-theWar Story

While some Americans voiced reservationsabout incorporating a Japanese view of PearlHarbor into Tora!, their reservations are minorwhen compared with the vituperations of someof Japan's own critics, which began yearsbefore the film was released. The actualnarrative of Tora! may never be as well knownas the political maneuverings that took placebehind the scenes, a war-within-the-war-story,involving legendary director and screenwriter,Kurosawa Akira.

By the mid-1960s, when Kurosawa entered acontract with Fox as screenwriter and directorfor the Japan side of Tora!, he was already aninternationally acclaimed filmmaker. He haddirected 23 films and won first prize at the

Venice Film Festival in 1951 for Rashomon.Kurosawa’s correspondence reveals acommitment to the ideals of the binationalcoproduction, saying that although Americansthought Japanese were an “inferior race” andthat Japanese accused Americans of being“hostile,” there was really only the “smallestdifference” in their ways of thinking. Thoughsuch sentiments are consistent with thedirector’s renowned humanism, Abé MarkNornes quipped that they might have been his“famous last words.”36

In the 1960s Kurosawa began to think aboutexpanding his international résumé, mainly forfinancial reasons. Japanese studios werebecoming overly commercialized, appealing tolow and middle brow taste and not willing tofinance an auteur with such a known expenseaccount as Kurosawa. He attempted to makeRunaway Train (from his own screenplay) inNew York, but while the film was suspended forinclement weather, Fox hired him for Tora! andRunaway Train was aborted. (It was laterproduced by a Soviet studio). Either film wouldhave offered him his first chance to work withcolor, but he was unable to complete eitherfilm. Later, Kurosawa would explain that hefilmed 27 scenes of the film and made 200drawings for it. According to Joan Mellen,Kurosawa only worked on the filming inDecember 1968 and by 1969 was effectivelyfired by Fox.37

From the extensive treatment of this conflictoffered by Abé Mark Nornes (2007), it isdifficult to pin down the Kurosawa terminationto friction between national factions in abotched attempt to create a seamless Ampo.One problem was Kurosawa himself, displayingsuch authoritarian intransigence that his crewwalked off the set in protest. The largerproblem with joining the two nation’s stories,however, came with the role of the translatorbetween the very different linguistic, workplaceand cultural communities. Producer Aoyagiassumed the complex job of negotiating

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between both nations and both studios, workinvolving many idealistic, yet opportunistic,per fect ion is t , and cross -cu l tura l lyinexperienced, individuals. Certainly theAmerican studio “deferred the typicalarrogance of the hegemonizer” in notappreciating the painstaking role of translatingled by Aoyagi.38

Yet Nornes also situates the incident in thelarger pattern of films moving across bordersthrough various modes of global traffic, notexclusively pinioned by geopolitical strategies.Attention often turns to various translationstrategies, since “translation is built into thevery substance of the moving image.”39 WhileAoyagi discoursed about his role as mediatorusing liberal translations to prevent “PearlHarbor all over again” (Nornes’ words), he wasclearly “working both sides for selfish ends,”w i t h h o l d i n g m e a n i n g s o f w o r d s i ncommunicating with either Japanese orAmericans.40 One film critic who wrote severalpieces on the scandal claimed the whole thingreminded him of Kurosawa’s Rashomon, sinceno matter how much he studied it, he stillwound up with contradictory stories.41 Yet, forbetter or worse, we are left to speculate thatthe vagueness and withheld meaningscontributed to Tora’s “Ampo” mentality ofjoining the two nations in a project thatentailed mutual forgetting as well asremembrance.

As director, Kurosawa was replaced by twoother esteemed filmmakers, Masuda andFukasaku. His name is not listed in the creditsof the 30-page publicity brochure, either asscreenwriter, artistic advisor or director. All ofthe scenes he filmed were cut. Americanreviews of the film often did not mention hisinvolvement.

Critical commentary on Tora! Tora! Tora!

The Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan's leading dailynewspapers, introduced Tora! Tora! Tora! as

the "the film for which Kurosawa was fired foran unknown reason." It remarked that theJapanese imperial navy had never been "sopolitely" filmed, and strangely so, since thiswas an American film, and Americans weresupposedly the victims. While praising thefilm's cinematography and special effects, theAsahi review nevertheless felt there wassomething peculiar about the fact that Tora!seemed to be cheerleading the Japanese side:“under Ampo, one might even say that thecivilian American filmmakers gently extendedtheir hands.”42

Perhaps the most scathing denunciation ofTora! Tora! Tora! was delivered by criticSatake Shigeru in Eiga Geijutsu in 1970.43

Cynically denouncing Tora! Tora! Tora! as an“enlargement of truth” (shinjitsu no bōdai), hefound it suspicious that the mega-length filmflaunted spectacular battle scenes and views ofthe imperial palace while “a certain presidentand the so-and so emperor are nowhere to befound.” He assailed the film’s implications ofconflicted innocence on the part of the emperorand Admiral Yamamoto.44 In the film, diplomatsspeculate on the emperor's anti-war stance byhis reading of the poem (actually written by hisgrandfather, Emperor Meiji and delivered onSeptember 6, 1941): “Methinks all the peopleof the world are brethren. Then why are thewaves and the winds so unsettled today?”45 Bydenying the emperor's culpability, and byagreeing to a security alliance that merelyremolded the emperor as a living being ratherthan a deity, the mentality of Tora! Tora! Tora!,Satake felt, acquitted the imperialism of bothAmerica and Japan. Scoffing at the script’sreferences to Yamamoto’s alleged scientificreasoning or the awakening of America as a“sleeping giant,” he claimed that Tora! Tora!Tora! missed the basic point of why Japan lostthe war: it wasn’t a matter of might, but ratherthat the war was basically inhuman: “Tora!Tora! Tora! rehashes the ‘enormously falsemyths’ over and over again; ergo, Japan-USrelations are peaceful.”46

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Whereas Japanese commentators focused onthe film’s relationship to the politicalenvironment of the sixties, American criticszeroed in on the film’s failure as narrative, asc inemat ic s toryte l l ing , in short , asentertainment. The producers no doubt hopedthat the dramatic historical events, even told ina “balanced” binational format, would,combined with the special effects of a big-screen spectacle, carry the film. It did not, assevere words from critics and poor box officeshowing made clear. Critic after critic lamentedthe absence of dramatic story in a film intenton representing historical detail. VincentCanby, titled his review in the New York Times“Tora-ble, Tora-ble, Tora-ble” writing, “a movieof recreated history like “Tora! Tora! Tora!”which, with the best of motives . . . , purports totell nothing but the truth, winds up as castratedfiction. . . “Tora! Tora! Tora!” aspires todramatize history in terms of event rather thanpeople and it just may be that there is more ofwhat Pearl Harbor was all about in fiction films.. . than in all of the extravagant posturing inthis sort of mock-up.47 The metaphor of“castration” here is indicative of thesignificance of Pearl Harbor narrative as anaffirmation of American military masculinityembodied in the human stories associated withvictory in the Pacific.

Time magazine echoed these sentiments, “Nosingle man can be blamed, and no villains orheroes emerge from this foundering, slipshod--and hypnotic--drama. . . . Without Kurosawa,the film is a series of episodes, a day in thedeath. As for real men and causes, they arevictims missing in action.”48 And Newsweek,referring to the film’s “cold neutrality,” took upthe same line, “. . .the events themselves,however astonishing, authentic, ironic andinherently dramatic, carry a cold neutrality thatbelongs to history, perhaps, but not to art.Director Richard Fleischer and his squad ofAmerican and Japanese screenwriters make nointerpretation of the history they recount. Theydo not probe the personalities at play or the

cultures in collision. Instead they settle for themelodrama of a straight action film . . .”49 LifeMagazine called the film an exercise in“pusillanimous objectivity in which so manyquestions were left unanswered that “no onewas responsible for Pearl Harbor—not even theJapanese, really.”50 Note that film critic RichardSchickel here makes the very point argued bySatake and the Japanese critics, that thetechnographic style and the narrative impulseto create a human enemy erases any sense ofresponsibility or culpability among those whodrove the Japanese nation to war.

Reviews and commentaries of these filmsinevitably became opportunit ies forcharacterizing the other’s subjectivity (and, byimplication, historical sensibility). Americansespecially wondered, “Just how does Japanremember the war?” But this attitudeconsistently overlooked internal Japaneseprotest against that country’s America-led(re)militarization, and the painful irony ofAmerica’s own collusion with Japanese waramnesia in the project to build an anti-Communist stronghold in Asia. The mostuninformed critics often assumed that Tora!Tora! Tora! presaged Japan’s resurgentnational pride. One US politician stated thatthe Japanese would probably cut Tora! in halfand rename it “The good old days.”

Pearl Harbor Films through Time:1980s-2011

1980s, 1990s, 2000s

To put Tora ! Tora ! Tora ! i n to morecontemporary perspective, films on PearlHarbor lead ing up to the f i f t y -yearcommemoration of the attack (and the first IraqWar, “Desert Storm”), 1991, likely reflected theatmosphere of U.S.-Japan trade conflict in theeighties. In The Final Countdown (dir. DonTaylor, 1980), a nuclear-powered United StatesNavy aircraft carrier (“Nimitz”) cruises into atime warp, arriving at Pearl Harbor onDecember 6, 1941. Flaunting American Cold

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War-acquired superiority, the time travel setsup a revenge fantasy for supersonic F-14’s to“splash” down the primitive Japanese Zeros.

Then, following the ennui with US-Japanrelations in the latter nineties, which came tobe known as Japan’s “lost decade,” the DisneyCorporation released Pearl Harbor, a major,highly anticipated “blockbuster” in May 2001.Studio publicity described the f i lm’smelodramatic juxtaposition of children at playwith attacking warplanes as “the end ofinnocence...” followed by, “and the dawn of anation’s greatest glory.”

On the Japan side, in 2000, "Beat" KitanoTakeshi, a globally popular director and actor,made a far more low-profile yakuza film,Brother (Aniki), with rough allusions to PearlHarbor. Set in contemporary Los Angeles,Kitano’s character, “Yamamoto” (after AdmiralYamamoto), invades the American drug trade.Critics were unkind to both films, although theArizona Memorial (Pearl Harbor) may haveexperienced a spike in Japanese visitors owingto their attraction to Pearl Harbor’s starpower.51

In 2006, with Japan once again confirmed as a“war on terror” ally, veteran actor and directorClint Eastwood developed his own binationalapproach to Pacific War film by making twofilms about the battle of Iwo Jima: first thepatriotic yet reflectively nuanced Flags of OurFathers, based on a book of the same title bythe son of one of those who famously raised theAmerican flag on Mt. Suribachi, followed by asecond, Letters from Iwo Jima, using Japaneseactors, Japanese language and a screenplaywritten by a Japanese-American, Ir isYamashita. In his review of these films IanBuruma was taken with the effectiveness ofEastwood’s strategy of humanizing the battlehistories through personal stories from bothsides. He even argues that Eastwood is the firstforeign director to successfully make a war filmthat makes cultural others [the enemy] “whollyconvincing and thoroughly alive.”52

The year 2011 will witness both the tenthanniversary of the 9/11 attacks and theseventieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, again

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raising questions of how narrations of thatpivotal attack, and the Pacific War moregenerally, adapt to changing national andgenerational audiences.

Visual Ampo Culture in 2010: ANPO: Art XWar (2010) film by Linda Hoaglund; USFJ

"Our Alliance" manga

With the US-Japan alliance looking morevariable, how was the fiftieth anniversary of thesecurity treaty put into visual culture? 2010brought two contrasting examples.

First, the fact that American critics, andlaypeople as well, were apparently unaware ofthe extent of Japan’s anti-war, anti-Amposentiment in the postwar period was a topicrecently addressed in a documentary film byLinda Hoaglund titled, ANPO: Art X War

(2010). Hoaglund, American born and raised inJapan, surveys the responses of Japanesecitizens during the peak moments of massiveanti-Anpo (alternative spelling) protest in the1960s, including harsh and sometimes violentgovernment crackdowns, with special attentionto the works of diverse visual artists whosepacifist or anti-treaty expressions have beennearly forgotten by society. The security treatycontinues to permit “the continued presence of90 U.S. military bases throughout Japan, anonerous presence that has poisoned U.S.-Japanese relations and disrupted Japanese lifefor decades,” states the film’s publicitynarrative.53 The release of Anpo coincided withgrowing mass sentiment in 2010, especiallyarising from the anti-base movement inOkinawa that brought down the administrationof former Prime Minister Hatoyama, to possibly“revisit the formula on which the post-warJapanese state has rested and to beginrenegotiating its ‘Client State’ dependency onthe United States.”54

Hoaglund stated that in making Anpo, shehoped to emulate Under the Flag of the RisingSun, a film directed by Fukasaku Kinji, releasedin 1971. Calling it “one of the best films aboutwar ever made,” Hoaglund stated that itaddressed “the fundamental relationshipbetween the individual and the state,” a subjectFukasaku often spoke about,55 and made filmsabout, including many bloody gangster storiesand the junior high school dystopia, BattleRoyale. Fukasaku, of course, was the co-director for the Japanese portion of Tora! Tora!Tora! who replaced Kurosawa, and he used hisco-director fee to finance Under the Flag.Though it is safe to say that he lackedKurosawa’s unflinching humanism and balkedat the nebulous idea of pacifism,56 Fukasakuwas also unlikely to have seen Tora! as avehicle to promote Ampo given his criticisms ofthe state.

In sharp contrast to the tone of Anpo, thescripting of a binational visual narrative

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came—officially—from The United StatesForces-Japan (USFJ), deploying the ubiquitousJapanese “cute” (kawai). In the USFJ manga(comic) titled, “Our Alliance: A LastingPartnership” (Watashitachi no do mei:eizokuteki na paatonaashipu), an androgynousdoe-eyed boy named “Usa-kun” (as in USA, alsousagi, Japanese for bunny) goes to “protect”the home of a Japanese girl named “Arai Anzu”(“Alliance”). Usa-kun’s heroic feat is toterminate the cockroaches in Miss Arai’skitchen, after which the two friends discusswhat they have in common: freedom, happinessand dislike of carrots. Sidebars with officialpolicy explanations outline the two nation’scombined military and economic power.57 “OurAlliance” was apparently vetted by “all seniorleadership within USFJ, representatives in theInternational Public Affairs Office of theJapanese Ministry of Defense, the NorthAmerica desk of the Pacific Command inHawai’i, as well as the Pentagon.” Its firstinstallment was available for download twodays before the 65th anniversary of the atomicbombing of Hiroshima.58

Conclusion

Far more complex in comparison to cute,metaphoric cockroaches, Tora! Tora! Tora!offers a snapshot of the cultural politics ofPearl Harbor and, by implication, Pacific Warmemory, as they evolve and migrate acrosshistorical epochs and national borders. Itprompted vigilant wariness among pacifist-leaning critics in Japan, and evocations ofnostalgia for big-screen, patriotic andtechnographic entertainment in the UnitedStates. At the same time, as a project thatentailed binational collaboration and globalcirculation, it also opened up a uniquediscursive space for international cooperationbetween former enemies, unusual in the genreof big-screen war films.

We are left with conflicting images of Tora!Tora! Tora! as war or peace in its own time.

The film is noteworthy for its pledge tomutuality—whether that was interpreted in theform of geopolitical aims of Ampo, Kurosawa-style humanism, or simply the marketingrequirements of globalization. Meanwhile theprotests of Japanese critics -- that the filmserved as a vessel for the U.S.-Japan securityalliance -- speak directly to the flawedpretensions of mutual amnesia that Japan isstill living with.

As a transnational production, however, Tora!Tora! Tora! at least presumed a public willingto accept different, even self-critical,remembrances of a single story. This was amarked contrast from Disney’s Pearl Harborthat drew its dramatic tension from an us-themmoral imperative more unforgiving of Japan,and less willing to dwell on America’s ownerrors. And after 9/11, with “otherness” recastas “Islamofascism,” those with zero-sumgeopolitical sentiments are more interested ininsulating the solidity of national narratives.Other indicat ions that current U.S.representations of Pearl Harbor return Japan tothe role of former enemy, seen from afar, maybe found in the intensely patriotic film at thenational World War II Museum in New Orleansand the recent attacks on the NEH teacherprogram that had sought to develop aninternational dialogue on teaching PearlHarbor and the Pacific War. At the same timethat these developments suggest a return to asingle American-centered narrative of the war,the US-Japan alliance has been mystified in aveil of cuteness.

Marie Thorsten is Associate Professor of GlobalCommunications at Doshisha University, whereshe researches and teaches courses on U.S.-Japan Relations, Visual Cultural Studies andGlobal Education. She is the author ofSuperhuman Japan: Knowledge, Nation andCulture in US-Japan Relations (forthcoming,Routledge, 2011).

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Geoffrey White is Professor and Chair of theDepartment of Anthropology at the Universityof Hawai‘i Manoa. He is co-editor of PerilousMemories: The Asia Pacific War(s). His co-edited volume, The Pacific Theater: IslandMemories of World War II, received theMasayoshi Ohira Memorial book prize in 1992.

Recommended citation: Marie Thorsten andGeoffrey M. White, Binational Pearl Harbor?T o r a ! T o r a ! T o r a ! a n d t h e F a t e o f(Trans)national Memory, The Asia-PacificJournal Vol 8, Issue 52 No 2, December 27,2010.

Acknowledgments: We thank numerousindividuals who have provided information onthese films and discussed their significance forJapanese and American audiences. Weparticularly would like to mention DanielMartinez, historian at the USS ArizonaMemorial in Honolulu and John DeVirgilio, oralhistorian, among others whom we have notforgotten. We are also grateful to Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Abé Mark Nornes, Mark Selden andanonymous Asia-Pacific Journal reviewers fortheir incisive comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

1 Also spelled Anpo, an abbreviation of AnzenHoshō Jōyaku, meaning, Mutual SecurityTreaty.

2 Tora! Tora! Tora! refers to the code wordsconfirming that Pearl Harbor attack wasunderway. While one meaning of tora is "tiger,"this code is also believed to combine “to” fromtotsugeki, meaning "charge" and "ra" fromraigeki, meaning "torpedo attack."

3 Lisa Miller, “The Misinformants,” Newsweek,August 28, 2010.

4 See the updated workshop website for details:National Endowment for Humanities, “Historyand Commemoration: Legacies of the PacificW a r , ” l i n k

(http://www.pacifichistoricparks.org/teachers_workshop/2010/home.html).

5 John W. Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/ Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq (New York: Norton,2010); Emily S. Rosenberg, A Date Which WillLive: Pearl Harbor in American Memory(Durham: Duke University Press, 2003);Geoffrey White, “National Subjects: PearlHarbor and September 11,” AmericanEthnologist 31(3), 2004, pp. 1-18.

6 Gordon W. Prange, “Tora! Tora! Tora!”excerpted in Reader’s Digest 83 (499) (Nov.1963), pp. 274-324; also Gordon W. Prange,Toratoratora: Shinjuwan shūgeki hiwa [Tora!Tora! Tora!: The untold story of the attack]trans. Chihaya Masataka (Tokyo: Reader’sDigest Japan, 1966).

7 Cited in Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V.Dillon, “Introduction” to Gordon W. Prange, AtDawn We Slept: The Untold Story of PearlHarbor (New York: Viking Penguin, 1991), p. ix.

8 Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon,“Introduction” to Gordon W. Prange, At DawnWe Slept, pp. ix-x. Also see John W. Dower,Cultures of War, p. 35 for a similar cross-citation regarding Prange.

9 Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept, pp.752-3.

10 Remarks attributed to Admiral Husband E.Kimmel, Commander-in-chief of the PacificFleet in Pearl Harbor who was removed fromoffice after the attack. Citied in Donald M.Go lds te in and Kather ine V . D i l l on ,“Introduction” to Gordon W. Prange, At DawnWe Slept, p. xiii.

11 See Abé Mark Nornes, Cinema Babel:Translating Global Cinema (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 2007).

12 Iriye Akira, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” in Mark C.Carnes, ed., Past Imperfect: History According

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to the Movies (New York: Henry Holt, 1996).pp. 228-231.

13 Geoffrey White and Jane Yi, “December 7th:Race and Nation in Wartime Documentary,” inD. Bernardi, ed., Classic Whiteness: Race andthe Hollywood Studio System (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 2001).

14 Michael Renov, The Subject of Documentary(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,2004).

1 5 Elizabeth Cowie, “The Spectacle ofActuality,” in Jane M. Gaines and MichaelRenov, eds., Collecting Visible Evidence(Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress.1999) pp. 30-34.

16 Lisa Yoneyama, “Critical Warps: Facticity,Transformative Knowledge, and PostnationalistCriticism in the Smithsonian Controversy,”Positions: East Asia cultures critique 5(3),1997, p. 779.

17 Roger Dingman, “Reflections on Pearl HarborAnniversaries Past,” The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 3: 3(1994): 279-293;Geoffrey White, “Mythic History and NationalMemory: The Pearl Harbor Anniversary,”Culture and Psychology 3:1 (1997): 63-88;Emily S. Rosenberg, A Date Which Will Live.

18 G. H. Roeder, Jr., The Censored War:American Visual Experience During World WarII (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993).

1 9 Susan D . Moe l ler , Shoot ing War :Photography and the American Experience ofCombat (New York: Basic Books, 1989).

20 Abé Mark Nornes, “December 7th,” in AbéMark Nornes Nornes and Fukushima Yukio,eds., The Japan/America Film Wars: World WarII Propaganda and its Cultural Contexts (Chur,Switzerland: Harwood Academic, 1994), p. 191;White and Yi 2001.

21 Abé Mark Nornes, “December 7th,” in AbéMark Nornes Nornes and Fukushima Yukio,eds. The Japan/America Film Wars, pp.189-191.

22 Shimizu Akira, “War and Cinema in Japan,” inAbé Mark Nornes Nornes and FukushimaYukio, eds. The Japan/America Film Wars, p.46.

23 Yamane Sadao, “Greater East Asia News #1:Air Attacks Over Hawaii,” in Abé Mark Nornesand Fukushima Yukio, eds. The Japan/AmericaFilm Wars, p. 189).

24 Komatsuzawa Hajime, “Momotaro's SeaEagle,” in Abé Mark Nornes and FukushimaYukio, eds. The Japan/America Film Wars, pp.191-192.

25 John Dower, War Without Mercy (New York:Pantheon Books, 1993), p. 302.

26 Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan:From Tokugawa Times to the Present (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2009), sec. ed. ,pp. 271-273.

27 Other “exceptions” add up to the possibilitythat shared memories at the Pearl Harbor siteare not so exceptional. In the first place, theJapanese Buddhist Aiea Hongwanji Mission isless than half a mile away from the PearlHarbor site, and dozens of others are not so faraway in Honolulu (see Lisa Miller, “TheMisinformants.”). Yaguchi Yujin studied thereactions of Japanese tourists at the ArizonaMemorial in Honolulu, noting that despite theirfeelings of difference, as descendant of theattackers, they consider themselves “integralpart of the site” (see Yaguchi Yujin, “WarMemories Across the Pacific: Japanese Visitorsat the Arizona Memorial ,” in Marc S.Gallicchio, ed., The Unpredictability of thePast: Memories of the Asia-Pacific War in U.S.-East Asian Relations (Durham: Duke UniversityPress, 2007), p. 243). Marie Thorsten studiedreunions between both Japanese and American

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veterans of Pearl Harbor that took placebetween 1991-2001. (see Marie Thorsten,“Treading the Tiger's Tail: Pearl HarborVeteran Reunions in Hawai`i and Japan,”Journal of Cultural Research [aka CulturalValues] 6(3), 2002, pp. 317-340.

28 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “The War in PopularMedia: redrawing the Frontiers of Memory,”presenta t ion g iven a t "His tory andCommemoration: Legacies of the Pacific War"workshop, East-West Center. Honolulu, August6, 2010.

29 Yodogawa Nagaharu, “Taiheiyō no arashi” [IBombed Pearl Harbor] Kinema Jumpo1074(259) (May 15, 1960), p. 82.

30 Yodogawa Nagaharu, “Taiheiyō no arashi,” p.82.

31 Geoffrey White, “Mythic History.” 1997.

32 Life Magazine, September 18, 1970, p. 16.

33 Twentieth Century Fox, “Tora! Tora! Tora!”(brochure) Los Angeles: Twentieth Century-FoxFilm Corporation, p. 10.

34 The Motion Picture Guide, Vol. VIII, 1972-83,p. 3502.

35 Twentieth Century Fox, “Tora! Tora! Tora!,”p. 25.

36 Abé Mark Nornes, Cinema Babel, p. 38.

37 Joan Mellen, “Dodeskaden,” in Donald Richie,ed. The Films of Akira Kurosawa (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1996), p. 18).

38 Abé Mark Nornes, Cinema Babel, p. 41.

39 Abé Mark Nornes, Cinema Babel, p. 240.

40 Abé Mark Nornes, Cinema Babel, p. 51.

41 Abé Mark Nornes, Cinema Babel, p. 48.

42 “Hakarikaneru seisaku ito: ２０seiki fokkusuTora•Tora•Tora” [The unfathomableproduction plan: Twentieth Century Fox’s Tora!Tora! Tora!], Asahi Shimbun, October 1, 1970,p. 9

43 Satake Shigeru, “Kakute nichibei doumei waantei da: Tora tora tora, Moeru senjou” (Alas,the US-Japan alliance is secure: Tora! Tora!Tora! and Burning Battlefield), Eiga Geijutsu,November 1970, pp. 94-96.

44 Satake Shigeru, “Kakute nichibei doumei, p.95.

45 Cited in Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn WeSlept, p. 211.

46 Satake Shigeru, “Kakute nichibei doumei, p.95.

47 Vincent Canby, “Tora-ble, Tora-ble, Tora-ble,”The New York Times, October 4, 1970, pp. 1,7.

48 Stefan Kanfer, “Compound Tragedy,” Time,October 5, 1970, p. 65.

49 Paul Zimmerman, “Remembering PearlHarbor,” Newsweek, September 28, 1970, pp.92-3.

50 Richard Schickel, “TTT-A TKO at PearlHarbor,” Life Magazine, October 23, 1970, p.20.

51 Yaguchi Yujin, “War Memories Across thePacific: Japanese Visitors at the ArizonaMemorial,” in Marc S. Gallicchio, ed., TheUnpredictability of the Past: Memories of theAsia-Pacific War in U.S.-East Asian Relations(Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 234-255.

52 Ian Buruma, “Eastwood’s War,” The NewYork Review of Books, February 15, 2007, pp.21-23.

53 “Press Notes,” ANPO: Art X War (dir. Linda

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H o a g l u n d , 2 0 1 0 ) , o n l i n e h e r e(http://www.anpomovie.com/ANPO_EPK_red.pdf).

54 Gavan McCormack, "The US-Japan ‘Alliance’,Okinawa, and Three Looming Elections," TheAsia-Pacific Journal, 37-1-10, September 13,2010.

55 Linda Hoaglund, “Fukasaku film review,”Anpo Blog , July 25, 2010, online here(http://anpomovie.com/en/?paged=2).

56 Linda Hoaglund, e-mail to author (Thorsten),November 15, 2010.Hoaglund did the subtitlingfor Under the Flag of the Rising Sun as well asother films by both Fukasaku and Kurosawa.

57 United States Forces-Japan [USFJ], “OurAlliance; A Lasting Partnership”[Watashitachino domei: eizokuteki na paatonaashipu]’, onlinehere (http://www.usfj.mil/Manga/Index.html),2010.

58 Sabine Frühstück, "AMPO in Crisis? USMilitary's Manga Offers Upbeat Take on US-Japan Relations," The Asia-Pacific Journal,45-3-10, November 8, 2010.

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