Directed by John Ford and produced by the US Navy, this is a stunningly good film on the attack on Pearl Harbor, winning an academy award. Released in 1943, the film asks hard questions about why Pearl Harbor was so unprepared and expresses sympathy for the Japanese-Americans in Hawaii and the suspicions they found themselves under after the attack. Fifty minutes of the film was cut as a result, and for decades only a truncated 32 minute version was available. The beginning sequence with Walter Huston as Uncle Sam has a surreal fantasy feel to it which was a popular film technique in the thirties and forties. The mysterious “Mr. C” he is talking to is Harry Davenport, a well known character actor of the time, portraying the conscience of America.
“Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition.”
“Greet them ever with grateful hearts.”
This one day, we may stop criticizing the admirals/generals; cease “Monday morning quarterbacking” the conduct of the war; and let us gaze upon the simple soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen not as pitiful victims, but as heroes.
We need to rediscover their principles and motivations: the whys and wherefores for which the fought with such courage, perseverance and skill; and for which so many paid the last measure of devotion.
Such a different world then, it seems to me. An attack on a territory of the U.S. elicited Such a response. Allies worked together with a shared focus. to fight when and where and how necessary. Now even after beheadings , attacks on on embassies etc -not to mention 9-11-01. We can not seem to find the necessary self preservation instinct.
The days of a reasonably coherent culture in America are in our past. We are a nation of immigrants who are not happy with where we left, nor with where we are and our interests are everything but common.
Assigning blame for Pearl Harbor will continue for decades but one thing needs always to be factored in the discussion. Billy Mitchell predicted the attack in 1923 when air power was just coming into its own. The military chiefs at the time were still so stuck in the mentality of WW I that they ignored the possibility of such an attack despite advances in military technology during the next 17 years.