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This documentary about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is not so much about the events on the morning of December 7, 1941, as it is about the long series of events that brought America and Japan to open conflict. The rise of Japan as both industrial and naval power is contrasted with what the documentary openly declares to have been racist attitudes toward Asian nations exhibited by many Americans of the day. The outbreak of hostilities in Europe, the "America First" movement of isolationists, and the Roosevelt administration's support of Britain's struggle against Nazi aggression is discussed. Japan's naval genius, Admiral Yamamoto, is profiled, and Japanese plans to attack an unprepared base at Pearl Harbor are described. The attack itself is portrayed through use of archival footage. This film does an adequate job of presenting Pearl Harbor in a historical context, but it is somewhat upstaged by a separate documentary included in this package. The great director John Ford produced documentaries for the U.S. government during World War II, and his classic film
December 7, 1941, which won the Oscar® for Best Documentary in 1943, appears on a second disc. Ford mixed footage of the actual attack with shots of model ships to portray the attack, and what it may lack in special-effects wizardry it more than makes up for in its immediacy and passion. Two other Ford documentaries,
The Battle of Midway and an hour-long film about the aircraft carrier USS
Yorktown, are also provided, and while the quality of the picture suffers at times (the transfer appears to have been made from a worn print), the documentaries themselves are well worth seeing.
--Robert J. McNamara
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