After Action Report: Tora! Tora! Tora!

Greetings WingNuts,

Epic war movies haven't fared great with the Wing Commander movie club so far; a lot of classic air combat movies have come off as either extremely slow (The Dambusters, Battle of Britain) or kind of silly (Midway). Surprisingly, Tora! Tora! Tora! didn't share that fate. It's an incredibly literal telling of Pearl Harbor that abandons any pretense of character drama but it still reads as an impressive spectacle and a story that feels worth telling. The fact that it was so significantly a Japanese and American co-production also makes the film itself an interesting part of the event itself!

The Wing Commander movie references Tora! Tora! Tora! Immediately as it starts, basing the Pegasus attack on the Pearl Harbor bombing. Here's how some of the angles of the attack compare. The movie was actually intended to reference Pearl Harbor even more by opening with a 'fake out' that would've had sailors relaxing on a beach only to reveal that it was buried deep inside an asteroid base.

The name of the movie, Tora! Tora! Tora! refers to the code phrase the Japanese used to begin the attack. Tora translates literally to tiger but it's actually an abbreviation of 'lightning attack'. Action Stations uses "Jak-ta Ga!", derived from the Kilrathi word Jak-tu which also refers to a surprise attack. This is even used as the prose extract from the start of the book!

"Jak-ta Ga! Jak-ta Ga! Jak-ta Ga!"
The triumphal cry, announcing the destruction of the reactors and the lowering of the main base shields, erupted from the speakers on the bridge, greeted an instant later by wild shrieks and roars of unspeakable joy as those around the Crown Prince broke into a mad demonstration. Fists were raised to the heavens, talons extended, some of the warriors turning the talons on themselves, slicing open their own veins so that they might smell blood and then drink it.

Speaking of Action Stations, it would take more space than we have to point out how the book borrows scene after scene from the movie. From the Japanese torpedo tests to the machine that decodes enemy communications to the letter to the Pentagon outlining the state of the war, it's shameless (and wonderful). But since Action Stations is based on the real story of Pearl Harbor there's a little plausible deniability… until we get to the famous scene in which Admiral Yamamoto says the attack has simply 'awakened the sleeping giant'. The line itself first appears in the film, not in any of the actual history. Dr. Forstchen puts it in the mouth of Harga, the young Jukaga's mentor:

Harga closed his eyes and Jukaga realized just how old his father's friend really was. His mane had gone nearly to white, the ripples of muscle on his limbs were melting away into nothingness.
Harga opened his eyes and looked back at Jukaga and his voice suddenly sounded distant and old, as if already whispering from the beyond.
"I fear that all that the Crown Prince shall succeed in doing is awakening the sleeping giant."

Pilgim Truth also references this quote at one point, referring to a mysterious Pilgrim fleet:

“This is but a small representation of the fleet that's headed our way,” Space Marshal Gregarov said, coming forward to gaze threateningly at Bellegarde. “If we begin the bombing, then it's safe to assume that we'll awaken this sleeping giant.”

Another piece of trivia is that the Japanese portions of the film had been scheduled to be directed by famed filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa was famously credited with a star system in the original Wing Commander… and Action Stations, appropriately, has a little tuckerization that surely exists because of the connection to Tora! Tora! Tora!:

"Nothing to sink our teeth into," Joshua replied. "You saw my report on what happened to the Beta team?"
Skip nodded and sighed. Of course their deaths would be listed as a training accident, bodies unrecoverable. They'd been nailed trying to slip into Kilrathi space near the Ingraya system in order to set up a listening post.
"That's the third team in as many months," Joshua said bitterly, looking into his mug of coffee. "One of them is Akiko Kurosawa's daughter, captain of Gibraltar. We've lost thirty good men and women for nothing."

If you want to experience the battle yourself in a Wing Commander engine, Origin's Pacific Strike opens with a mission in which you and your wingman join the desperate flight to defend the base. You can even change history by saving the USS Nevada, prompting it to follow your carrier like the William Tell in Wing Commander II!

And this item is more history than the film itself, but those pre-war Navy flag officer uniforms certainly inspired the one worn by Admiral Terrell in Privateer!