Tora Tora Tora

As a students of U.S. history I have recently watch Tora Tora Tora, a movie about war world II and the bombing of Pearl Harbor that the Japanese exceeded on waking up the “sleeping Giants”. The title of this film is made up of the code-words that were used by the Japanese to indicate that complete surprise, meaning “charge” or “attack”. I learned from this film that although a week before the American forces were warned and talked about an attack, when the time came on December 7th, the forces at Pear harbor were in denial and not prepared at all. They received limited warning of the increasing risk of aerial attack, which was better understood in Washington than in Honolulu. I learned all about the messages that they were waiting for and decoding from Japan at that time. Although this was the first attack on America with out declaring war, I found at that it Japan had meant to declare war thirty minutes before the attack. But because the Japanese ambassador is slow, and cannot decode the 14th part fast enough leaving the U.S. base in flames, its frustrated commanders finally get the telegram warning them of the danger. In Washington, the distraught Japanese ambassador, helpless to explain the late ultimatum and the unprovoked sneak attack, is bluntly rebuffed by the Secretary Of State, Cordell Hull, who coldly replies to the final Japanese communiquÐ"©, "In all my long years in public service, I have never seen a document so fraught with lies and deliberate distortions that, until this day, I would have thought no nation on earth capable of uttering them!"