(literally, ''Hawaii-Midway Battle of the Sea and Sky: Storm in the Pacific Ocean'') is a 1960

Eastmancolor Eastmancolor is a trade name used by Eastman Kodak for a number of related film and processing technologies associated with color motion picture production and referring to George Eastman, founder of Kodak. Eastmancolor, introduced in 1950, was on ...

Japanese

war film War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about naval, air, or land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war fi ...

directed by

Shūe Matsubayashi (born July 7, 1920 - August 15, 2009, Shimane Prefecture, Japan) was a Japanese film director. He is best known for films in the comedy and war genres. He was also an ordained Shin Buddhist priest. His final work as director was in the 1992 fi ...

. The story is an account of a young Japanese bombardier, Lt. Koji Kitami (Yosuke Natsuki) stationed aboard the and his participation in two battles in the Pacific during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the

attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, j ...

and the

Battle of Midway The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. Navy under Adm ...

. ''Storm Over the Pacific'' was the first color widescreen war film from

Toho Studios is a Japanese film production company that is a subsidiary of Toho Co., Ltd. Founded in November 8, 1971 as , the company originally served as a spin-off of Toho's original production department, and produced over 160 films. In December 2020, ...

. The film was made by many of the same individuals behind the

Godzilla is a fictional monster, or '' kaiju'', originating from a series of Japanese films. The character first appeared in the 1954 film ''Godzilla'' and became a worldwide pop culture icon, appearing in various media, including 32 films produc ...

franchise, such as producer

Tomoyuki Tanaka was a Japanese film producer. He is best known for co-creating the ''Godzilla'' franchise and its associated spin-offs. Early life Tanaka was born on April 26, 1910, in Kashiwara, Osaka. As a child, he would often walk miles to the nearest th ...

, special effects director

Eiji Tsuburaya was a Japanese special effects director and cinematographer. Known as the he worked on 250 feature films in a career spanning 50 years. He is regarded as one of the co-creators of the ''Godzilla'' series, as well as the main creator of the ' ...

, and assistant special effects director

Teruyoshi Nakano was a Japanese special effects director. Early life Nakano was born on in Andong Province, Andong, Manchukuo (now Dandong, Liaoning, China). His father worked for an affiliate of South Manchuria Railway called International Transport. His ...

. ''Storm Over the Pacific'' was released in 1961 in the United States in a dubbed and abridged 98 minute version produced by Hugo Grimaldi as ''I Bombed Pearl Harbor''. Some special effects scenes were later incorporated as stock footage in the 1976 film '' Midway'' (which also stars

Toshirō Mifune was a Japanese actor who appeared in over 150 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration (1948–1965) with Akira Kurosawa in such works as ''Rashomon'', ''Seven Samurai'', ''The Hidden Fortress'', ''Throne of Blood'', and '' ...

Plot

In 1941, Lt. Koji Kitami (Yosuke Natsuki) is a young Japanese bombardier, stationed aboard the . On 1 December 1941, a Japanese fleet of 30 warships sails for Hawaii. When diplomatic negotiations in Washington fail, the task force commander, Adm.

Tamon Yamaguchi was a rear admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy who served during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and in the Pacific War during World War II. Yamaguchi′s carrier force was part of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He subsequently participated in th ...

(

Toshiro Mifune was a Japanese actor who appeared in over 150 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration (1948–1965) with Akira Kurosawa in such works as ''Rashomon'', ''Seven Samurai'', ''The Hidden Fortress'', ''Throne of Blood'', and '' ...

) receives orders to attack Pearl Harbor. On December 7, the surprise attack is carried out successfully. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Koji returns to Japan and his childhood sweetheart, Keiko ( Misa Uehara). Although deeply in love with Keiko, Koji fears that marriage will make him less worthy as a naval officer. His faith in his leaders and his country remains strong through the successful campaigns of the early war, but is severely shaken by the disastrous events during the

, learning that reports back to the homeland are lies. In the battle, his carrier ''Hiryu'' is attacked by U.S. dive bombers and badly damaged. High-ranking officers order the ship abandoned, but rather than leave it as a prize of war, a Japanese destroyer is given instructions to sink the carrier. As the ''Hiryu'' goes down, Koji and others give a final salute.

Cast

Production

Film historian Stephen Pendo in ''Aviation in the Cinema'' (1985) noted ''Storm Over the Pacific'' heavily utilized models to create realistic battle scenes.Pendo 1985, p. 222. The special effects were supervised by

who was renown for his work in numerous 1950s and 1960s Japanese horror and science fiction films. During his 50-year career as a special effects director, Tsuburaya worked on approximately 250 films in total. In World War II, Tsuburaya had created the realistic attack scenes in ''

Hawai Mare oki kaisen is a 1942 black-and-white Japanese war film directed by Kajiro Yamamoto, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. Plot Production ''Hawai Mare oki kaisen'' was the most costly film made in Japan up to that time, costing over , when a typica ...

'' (''The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya'') (1942) that depicted the Pearl Harbor attacks. The same model scene was reprised for ''Storm Over the Pacific''. Tsuburaya and his special effects team created 136 ship models for ''Storm Over the Pacific'', including

Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi ''Akagi'' (Japanese: 赤城, "red castle") was an aircraft carrier built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), named after Mount Akagi in present-day Gunma Prefecture. Though she was laid down as an , ''Akagi'' was converted to an aircraft carrie ...

and ''USS Yorktown'' aircraft carriers, 11 and 13 metres respectively. The 1/16th scale models of ships were shot in a large water tank. The miniature photography in ''Storm Over the Pacific'' was subsequently re-used in a number of later films, including '' Midway'' (1976) and the Japanese films ''

Admiral Yamamoto was a Marshal Admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II until he was killed. Yamamoto held several important posts in the IJN, and undertook many of its changes and reor ...

'' (1968) and ''The Imperial Navy'' (1981).

Reception

When ''Storm Over the Pacific'' was released, it met with critical approvals and was widely recognized as "telling the other side" or giving the Japanese perspective of World War II in the Pacific. Film historians Jack Hardwick and Ed Schnepf, however, dismissed the English version, ''I Bombed Pearl Harbor'' (1961) as poorly dubbed and with the predominance of "miniatures", as a pallid rival to ''

Tora! Tora! Tora! ''Tora! Tora! Tora!'' ( ja, トラ・トラ・トラ！) is a 1970 epic film, epic war film that dramatizes the Empire of Japan, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The film was produced by Elmo Williams and directed by Richard Fleischer, T ...

'' (1970).Hardwick and Schnepf 1989, p. 55.

References

Notes

Bibliography

* Anderson, Joseph L. ''The Japanese Film: Art and Industry''. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982. . * Hardwick, Jack and Ed Schnepf. "A Viewer's Guide to Aviation Movies". ''The Making of the Great Aviation Films'', General Aviation Series, Volume 2, 1989. * Pendo, Stephen. ''Aviation in the Cinema''. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1985. . * Ragone, August
''Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters''.
San Francisco, California: Chronicle Books, 2014, first edition 2007. . * Tam, King-fai, Timothy Y. Tsu and Sandra Wilson, eds. ''Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War''. London: routledge, 2014. .

External links

* * {{IMDb title, id=0055502, title=Hawai Middouei daikaikusen: Taiheiyo no arashi 1960 films Japanese aviation films Japanese war films 1960s Japanese-language films Seafaring films based on actual events Toho films War epic films Pacific War films World War II films based on actual events Films about the United States Navy in World War II Films directed by Shūe Matsubayashi Japanese World War II films Films set on aircraft carriers Films about the Battle of Midway 1960s Japanese films World War II aviation films World War II naval films Films about naval aviation Films set in 1941 Films set in 1942