Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

★ 7.2 2h 24m 590 votes IMDb

In the summer of 1941, the United States and Japan seem on the brink of war after constant embargos and failed diplomacy come to no end. "Tora! Tora! Tora!", named after the code words used by the lead Japanese pilot to indicate they had surprised the Americans, covers the days leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which plunged America into the Second World War.

Tora! Tora! Tora!

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Cast

Martin Balsam
Martin Balsam as Admiral Husband E. Kimmel Died 1996 · The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA Martin Henry Balsam (November 4, 1919 – February 13, 1996) was an American character actor. He is best known for a number of film roles, including detective Milton Arbogast in Alfred Hitchcock's Psych...
So Yamamura
So Yamamura as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto Died 2000 · Tenri, Nara, Japan So Yamamura (山村聰, Yamamura So, 24 February 1910 – 26 May 2000) was a Japanese actor and film director. He appeared in more than 110 films between 1947 and 1991, and directed four films. He was also kn...
Jason Robards
Jason Robards as General Walter C. Short Died 2000 · Chicago, Illinois, USA Jason Nelson Robards Jr. (July 26, 1922 – December 26, 2000) was an American actor. Known as an interpreter of the works of playwright Eugene O'Neill, Robards received two Academy Awards, a Tony Award...
Joseph Cotten
Joseph Cotten as Henry L. Stimson Died 1994 · Petersburg, Virginia, USA Joseph Cheshire Cotten (May 15, 1905 – February 6, 1994) was an American actor of stage and film. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original productions of The Philadelphia Story...
Tatsuya Mihashi
Tatsuya Mihashi as Commander Minoru Genda Died 2004 · Tokyo, Japan Tatsuya Mihashi (三橋 達也 Mihashi Tatsuya, November 2, 1923 - May 15, 2004) was an actor, known for Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), Dolls (2002) and High and Low (1963). He was married to Kyôko Anzai. He die...
E.G. Marshall
E.G. Marshall as Colonel Rufus S. Bratton Died 1998 · Owatonna, Minnesota, USA Everett Eugene Grunz (June 18, 1914 – August 24, 1998), known professionally as E. G. Marshall, was an American actor, best known for his television roles as the lawyer Lawrence Preston on The Defende...

Audience Reviews

lwpcolonel Jan 14, 2018
First off, this is a very good historical fictionalization of an epic event. Many parts are very accurate whereas others are more or less. This is after all a Hollywood movie, NOT a documentary such as "The World At War", so we can't be too critical about perfect accuracy.

Originally it was supposed to be directed by two directors, 1 for the American story line, and Akira Kurosawa, for the Japanese story. There were rumored difficulties between Mr. Kurosawa and the American studio bosses so Mr. Kurosawa left the production despite having an uncredited role in scripting the Japanese part of the screenplay.

I have read recently that the version that was being shown, of the historical account in the movie, was different than the conventional history's perspective. However, I would say that is only in demonstrating, theatrically, how Admiral Kimmel and General Short, who were scapegoats and put through rigorous Congressional Hearings after the actual event, may have taken ample precautions. That their shortcomings were due to communications being delayed or intelligence reports being withheld. I saw it in the movie theater in 1970, and many times since and have found it to be a very fair and well done "Hollywood" representation of the essential history of an important historic event.

The movie is essentially well acted, and believably presented with a few surprising disappointments. The Battleship Nevada was depicted with an inaccurate arrangement of its main batteries. In reality it had 10-14 inch guns, a 3-gun mount with a twin "Superfiring" turret over it, on the Bow and the Stern. Not 4, 3 gun mounts, (triple would mean all 3 guns were connected and couldn't be aimed independently which was retrofitted in the 1930s). When you see a ship that says Nevada on it and it isn't correctly laid out it is hard to believe the rest of the movie, particularly where details about ships, planes, equipment, facilities and ordnance were important characters in their depicted historic roles.

Some actual footage of the carnage at Pearl Harbor was used, including the Battleship Arizona conflagrating (exploding). As Docu-dramas go, Tora-Tora-Tora is among the best and superior to "Midway", which used some of the same footage and sound effects having been Produced by many of same people. I mentioned the aforementioned criticisms because at the film's beginning it has a Notation, "True To Historic Fact" and expands on that statement. In reality few films or testimonies can live up to 100% accuracy and weighted relevance, but Tora-Tora-Tora does have me returning to re-experience it, and not generally to look for more errors but rather because it is an overall worthwhile film.
Per Gunnar Jonsson 7/10 Apr 21, 2018
I remember viewing this film as a kid shortly after it came out in Sweden. At that time I was not impressed. I was expecting an action filled war movie and what I got was a boring movie where the good guys got beaten up at the end. I do not think I even new anything about the real events in Pearl Harbor at the time.

Naturally I view this movie in a somewhat different light and now and when re-watching it yesterday evening I enjoyed it quite a lot. I cannot help but wondering at the historical accuracy though. If someone would have told me that this was nothing but a Hollywood script, and a predictable at that, I would probably not have doubted it.

Did all these blunders really take place? That the Japanese where not playing with all their cards on the table is clear but there where so many screw-ups all over the place. Sightings not being reported, communications a mess everywhere, people asking for confirmations in absurdum, lining up the planes like ducks on a shooting range etc. etc. If this is really what happened then some of those movie scripts that seems so ridiculous maybe are not as ridiculous as one might think?

Naturally the film has the drawback of being predictable. What else can you expect when it is supposed to depict actual, well known, events? I think I would have felt that it was predictable even if I did not know what was supposed to happen though. Even so it is an enjoyable, well done, movie as far as I am concerned.
CinemaSerf 7/10 Dec 28, 2025
This is told a little in the style of “The Longest Day” (1962) as it shows us both sides of the preparations for the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. With the US having moved it’s Pacific fleet from the safety of San Diego to an altogether more vulnerable location on Hawai’i, Admiral Kimmel (Martin Balsam) arrives to take command amidst considerable concern from his advisors - across the services, that the Japanese could attack with relative ease. Meantime, across the ocean the last vestiges of resistance to Japan’s alliance with the Nazis are being eroded and with Admiral Yamamoto (Sô Yamamura) now in charge of the imperial Navy, the momentum to attack becomes unstoppable. What might be a game-changer for the attackers is the ability to drop torpedoes from aircraft. The harbour was hitherto deemed to be too shallow for those to be effective, but the skilful airman Genda (Tatsuya Mihashi) thinks that with practice and a certain amount of audacity he can make this method of precision bombing work. In Washington D.C. the motions of diplomacy are still being gone through, with Secretary of State Cornell Hull (George Macready) and the Ambassador (Shôgo Shimada) trading political niceties. The Americans can intercept communications to and from Japan, but of course nothing is clear enough to convince President Roosevelt to commit the enormous resources required to guarantee the safety of their bottle-necked base. With the principal characters now established, the film illustrates just how things panned out on that fateful day, and with quite startling visual effect. What I did like about this dramatisation is that it largely focussed on the events leading up to December 7th without turning it into a personality contest. There are no glamour boys, on either side, for us to worry about. It isn’t at all sentimental, but instead quite a matter of fact reportage of just how the ruthlessness on one side was met by the paralysis on the other. The photography offers us quite a detailed analysis of just how the formations worked, of how the waves of aircraft used what was clearly copious amounts of meticulously gatheted intelligence to target not just the warships, but the adjacent air force bases that soon proved easy pickings. It isn’t trying to be a documentary, and of course there are dramatisations here, but by having both sides on this conflict present their own version of the proceedings leading up to and during the assault, it delivers us an authentic looking version of an history. The chronology also works well, darting from Tokyo to Pearl to Washington and developing each emerging strategy compellingly. The acting and writing are all adequate enough and provide all we need to tell a story that all-too-easily speaks for itself.

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