Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

Isoroku Yamamoto

was a Japanese Naval Marshal General and the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II, a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and a student of Harvard University ....

 is portrayed at the very end of the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!

Tora! Tora! Tora!

is a 1970 American-Japanese war film that dramatizes the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to the extent these facts were known at the time of production. The film was directed by Richard Fleischer and stars an all-star cast, including So Yamamura, E.G...

, and in the 2001 film Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor (film)

Pearl Harbor is a 2001 American action drama war film directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Randall Wallace, who wrote the screenplay...

, as saying after his attack on Pearl Harbor

Attack on Pearl Harbor

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...

, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." The supposed quotation was abbreviated in the film Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor (film)

Pearl Harbor is a 2001 American action drama war film directed by Michael Bay and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Randall Wallace, who wrote the screenplay...

(2001), where it merely read, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant."

Neither At Dawn We Slept, written by Gordon Prange

Gordon Prange

Gordon William Prange was the author of several World War II-historical manuscripts which were published by his co-workers after his death in 1980. Dr...

, nor The Reluctant Admiral, the definitive biography of Yamamoto in English by Hiroyuki Agawa

Hiroyuki Agawa

is a Japanese author born on December 24, 1920, in Hiroshima, Japan. He is known for his fiction centered on World War II, as well as his biographies and essays.- Literary career :...

, contain the line.

Randall Wallace

Randall Wallace

Randall Wallace is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and songwriter who came to prominence by writing the screenplay for the 1995 film Braveheart. His work on the film earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay and a Writers Guild of America award for Best...

, the screenwriter of Pearl Harbor, readily admitted that he copied the line from Tora! Tora! Tora! The director of Tora! Tora! Tora!, Richard Fleischer

Richard Fleischer

-Early life:Fleischer was born in Brooklyn, the son of Essie and animator/producer Max Fleischer. He started in motion pictures as director of animated shorts produced by his father including entries in the Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman series.His live-action film career began in 1942 at the RKO...

, stated that while Yamamoto may never have said those words, the film's producer, Elmo Williams

Elmo Williams

Elmo Williams is an American film and television editor, director, producer, and executive. His work on the film High Noon received the Academy Award for Film Editing...

, had found the line written in Yamamoto's diary. Williams, in turn, has stated that Larry Forrester, the screenwriter, found a 1943 letter from Yamamoto to the Admiralty in Tokyo containing the quotation. However, Forrester cannot produce the letter, nor can anyone else, American or Japanese, recall or find it.

In The Reluctant Admiral, Hiroyuki Agawa, without a citation, does give a quotation from a reply by Admiral Yamamoto to Ogata Taketora on January 9, 1942, which is strikingly similar to the famous version: "A military man can scarcely pride himself on having 'smitten a sleeping enemy'; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack."

Yamamoto believed that Japan could not win a protracted war with the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, and moreover seems to have believed that the Pearl Harbor attack had become a blunder — even though he was the person who came up with the idea of a surprise attack. The Reluctant Admiral relates that "Yamamoto alone" (while all his staff members were celebrating) spent the day after Pearl Harbor "sunk in apparent depression." He is also known to have been upset by the bungling of the Foreign Ministry which led to the attack happening while the countries were technically at peace, thus making the incident an unprovoked sneak attack that would certainly enrage the enemy.

The line serves as a dramatic ending to the attack, and may well have encapsulated some of his real feelings about it, but it has yet to be verified. After the war, a similar rumor disseminated among Occupation

Occupied Japan

At the end of World War II, Japan was occupied by the Allied Powers, led by the United States with contributions also from Australia, India, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. This foreign presence marked the first time in its history that the island nation had been occupied by a foreign power...

 insiders that upon learning the attack had been a success, Admiral Yamamoto had said to those around him, "Gentlemen, we have just kicked a rabid dog." This would have been a tactical metaphor and not intended as an insult, since he was generally fond of America and Americans.

The other common quotation attributed to Yamamoto predicting the future outcome of a naval war against the United States is: "I can run wild for six months … after that, I have no expectation of success". As it happened, the Battle of Midway

Battle of Midway

The Battle of Midway is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, approximately one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea and six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy decisively defeated...

, the critical naval battle considered to be the turning point of the war in the Pacific

Pacific War

The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...

, indeed did occur six months after Pearl Harbor (Midway ended on June 7th, exactly 6 months later).

Similar to the above quotation was another quotation that, while real, was widely misinterpreted in the US press. Yamamoto, when once asked his opinion on the war, pessimistically said that the only way for Japan to win the war was to dictate terms in the White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

, requiring them to eventually invade the United States and march across the country while fighting their way to Washington — i.e., Japan would have to conquer the whole of the United States. Yamamoto's meaning was that military victory, in a protracted war against an opponent with as much of a population and industrial advantage as the United States possessed, was completely impossible — a rebuff to those who thought that winning a major battle against the US Navy would end the war. However, in the US, his words were recast as a jingoistic boast that he would dictate peace terms at the White House.