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American Morning
Military Historian Finds 'Pearl Harbor' Historically Inaccurate
Aired May 25, 2001 - 09:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: "Pearl harbor" -- this is the weekend, after all. Will it become the new movie sensation blockbuster? And just how accurate historically is the movie, and does that really matter?
Joining us from Washington to attempt to answer all that is Larry Suid, a Navy military historian.
Thanks for being with us, sir.
LARRY SUID, MILITARY HISTORIAN: Hello.
O'BRIEN: First of all, you've had a chance to see the movie, is that correct?
SUID: Three times.
O'BRIEN: Three times now. I assume you had your notepad with you.
SUID: Yes, right.
O'BRIEN: Can you tell me how close it is to the real thing?
SUID: Not very close at all in most respects. Yes, there was a Pearl Harbor on December 7, and yes, Jimmy Dolittle bombed Tokyo three or four months later, but beyond that, it's mostly fictionalized.
O'BRIEN: Dr. Suid, give me some of the examples of what is fiction and what is straight from the reality.
SUID: The thing that has always bothered me and hasn't bothered some military people is that you put four fictional characters in Dolittle's raid, and that means you erase four live heroes from history, and that sort of bothers me.
Nothing on to Dolittle raid itself was accurate. Dolittle's planes flew over Japan individually, not in formation, and none of them were really damaged during the raid, and there were no crashes, as portrayed in the movie. Those sort of things bothered me.
O'BRIEN: Let me ask -- I haven't seen the movie and haven't had the benefit -- "Pearl Harbor" and the famous Dolittle raid which came at least a month after that, maybe two months after that, wasn't it?
SUID: April.
O'BRIEN: It was in April.
SUID: April, yes.
O'BRIEN: So did they compress these events to make it look like it was more of a tit for tat in real time, if you will?
SUID: That's one of the issues. It shows Roosevelt deciding to go with the Dolittle raid, and then you have the burial of all the victims who died at Pearl Harbor. That had to be at least five weeks after Pearl Harbor. And you know, it's warm in Hawaii in December and January. They really didn't worry about the time line very much.
O'BRIEN: Let me ask you this: Does the movie get into the issue -- I remember the famous movie "Tora! Tora! Tora!" which got into the issue which implied that Roosevelt somehow knew about the attack, and historians have debated this for years, and in some sense either implicitly or tacitly allowed it to happen, in order to get the United States into the war. Does it address this, and if so, is that issue dealt with properly?
SUID: Well, it really doesn't. It shows Roosevelt hearing about December 7, dropping his papers, and expressing surprise, and the feeling would be that he did not know about it. They really don't deal with the controversy at all.
O'BRIEN: A moment ago you told me it would take two hours to answer this question -- I'm going to give about 20 seconds: Does it really matter if Hollywood takes a few historical and factual liberties? This certainly wouldn't be the first movie where that happened.
SUID: It depends on what the liberties are. People going to the movie will come out thinking they know what happened at Pearl Harbor and what happened with Jimmy Dolittle, and they really won't. That's what bothers me as a historian.
Filmmakers have said we're only making films, and we're here to entertain, so it doesn't matter. I think they sold the public on that and then brought their own line. It's just as easy to use drama and accurate history as to falsify it. So that's what I think bothers me: They could have made it more accurate and still had a reasonable amount of drama.
O'BRIEN: As long as people expect to be entertained and not educated, I guess no harm is done, then.
SUID: That would be the true way to look at it, yes.
O'BRIEN: Professor Suid, a military historian, thanks for being with us on CNN LIVE THIS MORNING. We appreciate it.
SUID: Thank you. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
