On December 7, 1941 Elizabeth McIntosh was a reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. A week after the bombing of Pearl Harbor she wrote a first-person account of the attack and its aftermath. Her editors thought the graphic content would be too upsetting, especially as it was directed at the women of Hawaii, and never published it. Now, 71 years later, her article appears for the first time.
posted by 2bucksplus on Dec 7, 2012 - 20 comments

"What a strange position I find myself in," [Yamamoto] wrote a friend, "having been assigned the mission diametrically opposed to my own personal opinion, with no choice but to push full speed in pursuance of that mission. Alas, is that fate?"

A brief account of how one of the biggest critics of Japan's war policy became the mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attacks. (SLNYT)
posted by swift on Dec 7, 2011 - 44 comments

This is the Japanese spy who was stationed in Hawaii early in 1941. Here's how scouted the islands in preparation for the attack. These are his memories (Flash interface).
posted by nomadicink on Dec 7, 2010 - 23 comments

You know the trouble with Historically-Based Movies? Unless you're an uneducated, ignorant moran, you know how they're gonna end. At least that's the argument of this Premiere article on 10 Movie Endings Spoiled By History. Of course there are ways to avoid that problem, as Cracked.com's (yeah, them) 11 Movies Saved by Historical Inaccuracy declares. Books have been written about Historical Movies' accuracy or inaccuracy, and everybody has an opinion on what the Best Historical Movies are, but if you want your History purely entertaining, there's only one mandog you can count on: here are Mr. Peabody, Sherman and the original Wayback Machine dropping in on Cristopher Columbus, Pancho Villa and Francisco Pizarro and the Incas (sorry, no USA History episodes on YouTube). [more inside]
posted by wendell on Jan 6, 2009 - 36 comments

Pearl Harbor ship salvage began immediately after the attack and continued until 1944. It was dirty, dangerous, detailed, (and discouraging) work for U.S. Navy salvors and divers, but their impressive repairs eventually returned eighteen sunken and damaged ships to wartime service. Only one was left where she fell. [More in the book Resurrection: Salvaging the Battle Fleet at Pearl Harbor.]
posted by cenoxo on Dec 7, 2006 - 18 comments

December seventh, nineteen forty one. 64 Years ago today, 2,471 people were killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In response, one of our greatest leaders made one of his greatest speeches. And you can listen to it here.
posted by Mayor Curley on Dec 7, 2005 - 85 comments

Jerry Bruckheimer Presents: Sept. 11, the movie He's done Pearl Harbor, which I guess makes this a natural next step. But will he wait until the earth cools at Ground Zero? And who'll play Osama? (Link via Dark Horizons)
posted by krewson on Jan 17, 2002 - 4 comments

Ebert's movie answer man features this pretty sharp and dead-on letter from Derek Muller from Royal Oak, Michigan: "Here's an idea for a movie to be made in the year 2060: An epic about the attacks against the Twin Towers. Only let the three-hour film focus mainly on a love triangle stemming from a pair of friends as stock traders in New York and a young receptionist. When one of them is on a plane from Boston to L.A. and another is busy with a client in the Twin Towers, the men are suddenly thrust in the middle of a terrible plot where there is chaos and tragedy, but we completely disregard the 5,000 citizens dead and instead concern ourselves with the love lives of three whining yuppies. Or, we could just look at ''Pearl Harbor'' and think about how horrible it is to trivialize such a tragedy on the screen."
posted by adrober on Sep 23, 2001 - 15 comments

Admiral Yamamoto never said "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve" (or something like that) after Pearl Harbor. That line came from Tora! Tora! Tora! Worth noting because an innumerable number of newspaper columnists have been "quoting" Yamamoto in light of the WTC attack.
posted by mcwetboy on Sep 17, 2001 - 12 comments

Oh me oh my: Video bootleggers have flooded the underground market with thousands of copies of a film labeled Pearl Harbor that contains only five minutes of the actual movie. The rest of the video contains hard porn material featuring Caucasian and Asian actors. All together now: At Least It's More Interesting Than The Actual Movie. (link only good until the morning of July 2nd)
posted by logovisual on Jun 30, 2001 - 10 comments

Whoops! Sam Donaldson Reinvents History More on the blurring of fantasy and reality in Pearl Harbor's promotion efforts. "This is no excuse, but we were all working against a deadline," says Donaldson.
posted by josholalia on Jun 1, 2001 - 10 comments