Talk:Tora! Tora! Tora!

message: The "awaken a sleeping giant" quote both in Tora! Tora! Tora! and in Pearl Harbor appears to derive from a statement attributed to Yamamoto in 1942 (the year, not a movie):
 
"A military man can scarcely pride himself on having 'smitten a sleeping enemy'; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack."
Tora! Tora! Tora! Movie Paraphrase from Yamamoto: 
"I fear all we have done is awakened a sleeping 
giant and filled him with a terrible resolve."
Pearl Harbor Movie Paraphrase from Tora! Tora! Tora!: 
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant...."
That's why they have a cable TV series entitled History v Hollywood.Naaman Brown (talk) 22:04, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Background

message: "It was fortunate timing that the U.S. sent its two operational Pacific aircraft carriers, USS Enterprise (CV-6) and USS Lexington (CV-2) on plane delivery duty to Western Pacific islands not long before the Pearl Harbor Raid. Though this reduced the number of fighter aircraft available at Pearl Harbor, it may have saved the carriers. If they had been lost at Pearl Harbor, it would have been much more catastrophic for the Americans. Japanese commanders should have considered aborting the mission. Their intelligence revealed the carriers had left Pearl Harbor. (But they had made a political decision to go to war that these factors could not disrupt.)"
:Is this really pertinant to the movie plot?
No, it isn't pertinent, and I have deleted that paragraph. It is an editorial comment inserted into the middle of a plot summary. AlbertSM (talk) 01:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Plot Summary

message: Tuesday June 7, 2005
10:00-12:00 - War and Image Making:
Two Films on the Pacific War ... Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” 
and Richard Fleischer and Fukasaku Kinji’s “Tora Tora Tora” - Professor Jonathan Lipman
* Japan Studies Institute 2005 at San Diego State University
** Timeline: Life, Liberty, Loyalty, Honolulu Star-Bulletin - Monday, Septermber 13, 1999
===Pacific Rim Studies: Related resources===
* Association for Asia Pacific Studies (AAPS)
RJBurkhart 10:48, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[East-West Center]]: External links

message: * Association for Asia Pacific Studies (AAPS)
RJBurkhart 10:48, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Asia-Pacific|Pacific Rim Studies]]: Related resources

message: Director's commentary of the DVD says Kurosawa was replaced after two weeks of shooting. Can someone verify if Kurosawa was replaced after two weeks or two years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.225.164.132 (talk • contribs) 05:27, 27 March 2006
:He was replaced after two weeks of shooting but he had been involved in the preproduction of the film for years. Doctor Sunshine 03:39, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Donald Richie, perhaps the foremost authority in the West on the films of Akira Kurosawa, states in his book, "The Films of Akira Kurosawa" that Kurosawa's actual shooting time on Tora! Tora! Tora! amounted to three weeks in December 1968. There is nothing in the book to suggest that Kurosawa's preproduction involvement amounted to "years." Kurosawa's contract with Toho only expired in 1966. Prior to that time he would not have been free to work for another film company. Also, during 1966 and on into early 1968, Kurosawa was fully involved in trying to get his own project, "Runaway Train" off the ground. He did not get together with Fox until he realized he could not get "Runaway Train" made.Oldbubblehead (talk) 18:22, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kurosawa 

message: The introduction includes "the series of American blunders that aggravated its effectiveness". The word "aggravated" implies a point of view. I have replaced it with "unintentionally improved". Bazza 14:10, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unintentional POV? 

message: I have revised the sentence, "Two American fighter pilots race to Haleiwa and manage to take off knowing full well they cannot survive the mission" to "Two American fighter pilots (portrayals of second lieutenants George Welch and Ken Taylor) race to Haleiwa and manage to take off, despite the overwhelming odds." The original statement called for revision simply due to the fact that both pilots did, in fact, survive the battle, and since George Welch has his own WP page, I think mentioning them both by name is warranted as well. --Warrior-Poet 17:41, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good editin', WP. Maikel (talk) 10:01, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The two pilots 

message: Due to some rather expansive sections, there is a need to revise sections in the article, especially providing citations for the many statements. FWIW, I invite comments and response as the editing process is starting.  Bzuk (talk) 19:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Extensive rewrite coming

message: In the booklet included with the Criterion Collection release of Seven Samurai, Peter Cowie writes, "In a poignant footnote to film history, the war epic Tora! Tora! Tora!, from 1970, might have been jointly directed by [John] Ford and Kurosawa but slipped from their grasp and was eventually made by Richard Fleischer, Toshio Masuda, and Kinji Fukasaku." I can find no more information about this. The pages John Ford and Akira Kurosawa say nothing but that Ford influenced Kurosawa. What hand did Ford have in the development of this film? - Calmypal (T) 19:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That would have been a hell of a conclusion to the credits: Directed by John Ford and Akira Kurosawa. You don't see that every day. Racing Forward (talk) 12:30, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Involvement of John Ford 

message: User:Bzuk does not seem inclined to use discussion as petitioned, but he seems intent on keeping his personal style of references in this article, and opposes any departure from it, even when consensus favours a different style. Once a reference style is established, it is not necessarily the reference style for that article forever -- and furthermore, different editors have tried to use superior reference styles only to get reverted by Bzuk. This is clear WP:OWNership of the article. elle vécut heureuse à jamais (be free) 21:35, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: What superior reference styles? what consensus? Using the citation templates that have bugs in them is not a better system. I have used a consistent style format perfectly in line with the established styles in the article. Introducing ISO dating and references from websites instead of bonafide reference sources are at the heart of this concocted dilemma. If you want to stay on topic, any major issues should be brought to talk pages of an article first. FWiW 21:43, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  I was not aware you owned the article, and your preferred reference style is not necessarily "an established style" -- especially when new contributors introduce references that have other styles. Please read Wikipedia:Reliable sources; it's also a bad faith accusation to say that the citation templates are buggy when there are so many people watching them. elle vécut heureuse à jamais (be free) 21:50, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: You can stop the accusations and personal comments now. See the MOS guide for any issues about citing and references. The cite templates are filled with errors, and often involve the "garbage in, garbage out" syndrome. When a templated cite was recently put in, I recognized that this is part of a blitzing by an editor who wants to introduce that particular source, and it is a website, not the authoritative book reference that was substituted; at the same time, the editor also used an ISO dating that is not consistent with the M/D/Y format already used in the article. All my changes are to create consistency for a reader. Other editors may not choose to do that but it is simple matter of resolving differences in style at hand. If a reader sees two or sometimes three different dates in use in the article, it becomes confusing for everyone. Now to allay your concerns that I am a Luddite, my background is as a reference librarian and I have introduced electronic cataloguing to many collections; but those electonic databases relied on templates that were "bullet-proof". Even then, accommodations had to be made for special or unique library systems. After two years of trying to change the templates by appealing to the designers, I have found ways to adapt the Wiki templates, but it does take time and considerable effort to change all the "tracings" to match a particular bibliographic reference format. It is ultimately easier to write out the citation and bibliographic record in what was formerly called "scratch cataloguing." I invite more discussion on this topic, your place or mine? FWiW Bzuk (talk) 22:22, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  reference formats 

message: This article is very difficult to read. I don't know what happened, but much of the writing doesn't make sense. For example some sentences are totally disconnected from the other ones around them, even the first sentence of the article. The second paragraph of the article is completely disjointed from the context of discussing the film. Is there some kind of ongoing spat or other reason for this poor quality? Someone needs to do something about this very poorly written article very badly, but I don't feel confident in editing this kind of absurd-looking thing since it must be the product of infighting. JoshuSasori (talk) 04:43, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Be bold and rewrite it. If someone objects to your edits it can be discussed here so just try your best.--Cattus talk 20:51, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks Cattus. I have already done a fair amount of rewriting, mostly removing things which don't seem to belong in the article. JoshuSasori (talk) 00:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Badly written article 

message: Bzuk seems to have just reverted out a series of edits, one of which was a correction of a spelling mistake of someone's name, one of which was an automated correction of citation requests, and one of which contained a sentence which contradicted itself. Could Bzuk please explain? If the link to the flying squad belongs in the article, then perhaps it should have some explanatory text. Thanks. JoshuSasori (talk) 02:26, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I know I'm a bazillion years late (1 bazillion = 4, apparently), but if I had to guess, the mindset was that Bzuk saw an error in the history, though "I should undo that", and hit the revert button, accidentally wiping the other two. --XndrK (talk | contribs) 19:36, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverting out corrections of errors 

message: Hi there Bzuk.  I agree Akira Kurosawa was most likely fired, but it was not made official either way. He left the film is meant to be somewhat ambiguous, but I'd like to put it another way without flat-out saying he was fired. He was reportedly unhappy, and he was a stubborn guy. He may have walked away after getting too much grief.  You wrote Not according to Fleischer, nothing at all was useable and the screenplay that was used by the Japanese production was unrelated to Kurosawa's work. Fleischer said he was fired (he didn't just leave for health reasons as was stated in the media).  I think Fleischer was talking about his footage.  As to the script, it's credited to Larry Forrester and frequent Kurosawa collaborators Ryuzo Kikushima and Hideo Oguni, who worked on a dozen other of his films.  So it seems most likely it was the script Kurosawa developed, though it was substantially cut down, if it really was four hours long. So perhaps we could say Portions of the screenplay he developed were still used, but none of his footage. I'll leave it up to you. - Gothicfilm (talk) 22:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The interview of Richard Fleischer is not ambiguous, the entire Kurosawa contribution, screenplay and all was dumped. The two meetings face-to-face between the two directors were amicable and Kurosawa seemed to accept all the direction given from the American production team, but when he went back to Japan a series of unusual incidents not only led to production delays and disruption, but were extremely problematic. Kurosawa was always known for his unusual methods and eye for detail, but one entire day was devoted to his crew repainting a shrine a particular shade of white, while another scene was held up while period books were brought in to serve as a backdrop even though they were barely in the background. While the hiring of a bevy of amateurs was questionable, finding out that the group was made up of wealthy industrialists with no acting background, was puzzling, and contributed greatly to the final decision to end the relationship with Kurosawa. With due deference to his stature, a publicity story was made up that indicated his health concerns were involved, Fleischer indicated that this was done so that Kurosawa could "save face." FWiW Bzuk (talk) 05:14, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Okay, but what happened with the script? Presumably Fox approved it (at four hours?) - It still seems most likely they just cut it down. Again, it's Kurosawa's usual collaborators who are credited on it - it seems they wouldn't have even had time to re-write it. How long was it before the two new directors started work? I'm asking as a point of interest, though this info could go in the article if your sources cover it. If not, the article works - I thought of simply using replaced, but wanted to break it into two sentences so it didn't sound like they just replaced him at the drop of a hat. - Gothicfilm (talk) 06:19, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

text: Having seen it more than once, I find the unique long, slow build in this film to be very effective. I would even say the half hour leading to the actual attack is masterful, along with most of the attack itself. Don't know who was most responsible for that, but it was probably Richard Fleischer. Perhaps Elmo Williams had a hand as well, as he edited the much shorter build-up in High Noon, though Fred Zinnemann has said he designed all of that famous montage on paper beforehand. But, personal opinion aside, I've heard some of what you're saying before (an on-camera interview with Fleischer years ago), and would like to know more detail about the making of this very unusual film. - Gothicfilm (talk) 23:04, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

text: Fox has said that Kurosawa quit for health reasons. Kurosawa said he was fired. The truth is somewhere in between. Fox lied to Kurosawa to get him to come on board the project. Zanuck promised Kurosawa that he would be able to make the Japanese portions of the film his way using the methods he had used in Japan. Zanuck also told Kurosawa that the U.S. portion of the film would be directed by David Lean. Kurosawa was dismayed to find out that the director was actually Fleischer (a director of considerably lesser stature than Lean) and not Lean and that Fox and Fleischer would be calling the shots as to what Kurosawa did or did not do and how he went about it. That quickly ended Kurosawa's interest in the project. Thereafter, Kurosawa acted in a manner to ensure that Fox had to let him go. Whatever face saving was involved was mostly on Fox's end. It certainly would not have looked good for Fox to admit that they had fired one of the world's greatest film directors. It also would not have gone down well with Fox's shareholders who would have started asking nasty questions about why Fox had not done more due diligence before inviting Kurosawa to direct. Kurosawa was well known in the industry for has particular way of making films. His autocratic style had earned him in Japan the nickname "The Emperor."Oldbubblehead (talk) 04:05, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Akira Kurosawa]] screenplay 

message: The cast list shows "Admiral James O. Richardson, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet." Richardson had never been Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet. Prior to his relief by Kimmel his title was Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet. Kimmel was the first CincPac. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, Richardson had reverted to his permanent rank of Rear Admiral and was assigned to the Navy General Board. The list also shows "Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet." Kimmel was Commander-in-Chief, Pacific (not Commander-in-Chief, U.S Pacific Fleet). See the Wikipedia bios on both men for more details.Oldbubblehead (talk) 04:28, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Cast

message: Though an extremely small part of the movie, the 'incident' involving the yellow trainer biplane being overflown by all the Japanese planes right before their attack on Pearl Harbor -- was it real or a minor "funny" scene inserted into the movie.
There's all this discussion about ship's superstructures and other details in the entry/article, but absolutely no mention of this scene.
Can anyone find out if this was a historically accurate event or a fictitious movie scene or was it meant to be (symbolically) representative of something? 2600:8800:786:A300:C23F:D5FF:FEC4:D51D (talk) 23:46, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: This actually happened. The pilot was Cornelia Fort, a civilian who was giving a flying lesson.Oldbubblehead (talk) 05:13, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Training flight 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Presently, the content of the historical accuracy section seems to have little to do with substantive historical events. Rather, it mostly concerns comparatively small production compromises of a techincal nature. Historical accuracy covers, for example, whether or not the attack on Pearl Harbour commenced fifty-five minutes before the delivery of Japan's ultimatum to Washington—not whether the carrier from which Janapese aircraft took off had a large rather than a small bridge. 
The film's opening caption states: "All of the events and characters depicted are true to historical fact". If that is indeed the case then the bulk of the material in this section ought to be deleted (or moved to the production section) and a simple statement to that effect put in its place. Pololei (talk) 23:35, 16 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''Not'' historical accuracy 

message: please explain your rationale for your revert of my recent edits. You did so without an edit summary and marked your edit as a minor edit, see WP:REVEXP and WP:MINOR. My edits were to add 'US' before the names of military units in the table of cast members with military service, for example changing 'Army' to 'US Army'. This is needed because the text above the article does not specify that these are US units. Moreover, some of the actors who played Americans could have served in the armed services of other nations and the Japanese-heritage actors might have served in the Japanese armed services. Also, your restoration of the pipe  is undesirable because linking should be explicit and not hide information. Verbcatcher (talk) 21:16, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: In the absence of a response I have reverted again. Verbcatcher (talk) 23:46, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Actors who served in armed services 

message: Very odd WW2 high-budget film in that regard. Racing Forward (talk) 12:27, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  No major stars whatsoever 

message: ok, i don't want to introduce a trivia section, but i have to ask: what's up with yamamoto's messenger driving and parking on the RIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD during the opening scene?  was japan on that standard pre-war?
AFAIK, the only time that happened was during the okinawa occupation.  never in tokyo, and never pre-war.  how could they make SUCH an obvious goof?
or am i missing something?  2601:19C:527F:A680:2169:D9D:D6C:B4B4 (talk) 01:01, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  goof?