TELEVISION : Cloud Across the Pacific : With Pearl Harbor a sensitive issue in U.S.-Japan relations, makers of TV documentaries draw on views from both sides of the ocean

In the early-morning hours on Dec. 7, 1941, waves of Japanese planes, undetected by American radar, dive-bombed the airfields and warships of the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. More than 2,400 American servicemen died, nearly half of them trapped aboard the battleship Arizona. It was the worst disaster in American naval history, piercing Americans’ veil of invulnerability and mobilizing the country into World War II.

Fifty years later, Pearl Harbor is a politically sensitive subject. While it may be difficult for most Americans to imagine that there could be, in effect, two sides to Pearl Harbor, the Japanese--who have been criticized for giving the attack scarcely a line in their history books--have a very different view of the events leading to World War II. At the same time, they and many Japanese-Americans are concerned that retelling the Pearl Harbor story today could fuel anti-Japanese sentiment at a time when there is growing criticism in this country of Japanese dominance of American businesses such as the auto industry.

So the efforts by ABC and CBS to put together major, prime-time documentaries about that fateful day half a century ago have been undertaken carefully, with one eye on history and one eye on the present.

“We’re focusing on individual stories of American soldiers and sailors, retelling this moment in history from the point of view of these people who lived through it at Pearl Harbor,” said David Corvo, a vice president at CBS News. “I think any fears on the part of the Japanese will seem misplaced when they see the show, because we do include some interviews with Japanese soldiers and sailors from their perspective. But, at the same time, this is a historical documentary, and you can’t change history. The Portuguese did not attack Pearl Harbor.”

Although the two documentaries will air within two days of each other during the first week of December--along with a spate of other Pearl Harbor commemorations (see Page 90)--CBS and ABC are taking divergent approaches to their two-hour programs. The CBS program, which will be co-hosted by retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and Charles Kuralt, will tell the story almost completely from the American side, focusing on American heroes at Pearl Harbor. The other is a co-production between ABC News and NHK, Japan’s largest TV network, and will attempt to tell the story from both the American and Japanese perspectives.

Borrowing a technique from the PBS series “The Civil War,” CBS’ “Remember Pearl Harbor” will combine interviews with Americans who were at Pearl Harbor with news footage and the reading of letters from the period by well-known actors. Since it will be broadcast Dec. 7, it will also include coverage of the memorial ceremonies held earlier that day in Hawaii, which President Bush is planning to attend. The program will mark the first major TV appearance by Schwarzkopf, who was based at Pearl Harbor from 1978 to 1980, since retiring from the U.S. Army in August.

Scheduled two nights earlier, on Dec. 5, ABC’s “Pearl Harbor: Two Days That Changed the World” will feature a moment-by-moment account of the attack that takes nearly 40 minutes to tell, a discussion of the events that preceded the strike, and a look at present-day U.S.-Japan relations. The host for the U.S. version will be David Brinkley.

“Our purpose in doing a true co-production is to show how our two countries were thrust together 50 years ago, what led us down this road diplomatically and what we must learn from history,” said Phyllis McGrady, ABC’s executive producer on the project. “Pearl Harbor is still a sensitive issue, and we confront questions like our mutual stereotypes--how we didn’t think they were smart enough to be good aviators, and they thought we were a decadent culture that could be knocked out with one attack.”

NHK producers interviewed Japanese pilots who participated in the attack, some of whom had never talked publicly about their role, while American survivors were interviewed by ABC producers. In one segment, a Japanese pilot recalls bombing a U.S. warship, while an American recalls trying to rescue sailors on that ship. (Trapped several decks below, the men tapped their whereabouts on the walls of the ship to alert rescuers, but the rescuers could not get to them in time.)

According to sources at ABC, the Japanese and American producers on “Pearl Harbor: Two Days That Changed the World” have had strong disagreements about the events leading up to Pearl Harbor, specifically the war in China and what’s called “the rape of Nanking,” an infamous invasion of the Chinese capital in 1937 in which some 340,000 people were killed. (In 1985, the Chinese government officially protested the omission of the invasion from Japanese history books.)

The disagreements over portrayal of some events have been so serious, sources said, that there has been concern that the two sides would have to air diverging programs rather than the joint documentary planned for airing in both the United States and Japan.

“There have been heated discussions,” McGrady acknowledged. “When we remember the war, we tend to remember Pearl Harbor, while they tend to remember Hiroshima. Sometimes we have said that they’re swaying into thinking of themselves as victims; other times, they’ve said, watching a sound-bite, ‘This will be shocking in Japan.’ The process has been cumbersome and difficult for both groups because of the language problems and different styles of doing television. But, ultimately, I think we’ll have a far more interesting program than if a group of Americans had done the program alone.”

Part of the problem in arriving at a joint American-Japanese view on Pearl Harbor is that the event is viewed so differently in the two countries. Japanese schoolchildren have been taught very little about Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and China in the 1930s or about Japanese atrocities in the Pacific war. Instead, the Japanese have focused on themselves as victims--of a military regime that led them into Pearl Harbor, and of a United States that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the war.

“The Japanese talk about World War II in the passive voice--’Pearl Harbor was bombed’--and they see themselves as victims of a militaristic leadership, ignoring the fact that you can’t wage a major war without broad popular support,” said Carol Gluck, a Columbia University professor who studies Japan. “Their whole war in China is unremembered. And while they acknowledge that Pearl Harbor was an unjust, aggressive act, they view it as being repaid by Hiroshima.”

ABC retained final script approval. The issue of the “rape of Nanking” was dealt with, McGrady said, “by noting their view of themselves as ‘liberating’ Nanking and our cynicism about that view.”

Yoshihisa Hayashi, the Japanese executive producer on the ABC-NHK documentary, said in an interview from Washington, D.C., where the program is being produced, that despite disagreements over interpretation, the content of the broadcasts in Japan and America will be “almost the same.” The only major difference, he maintained, was that the Japanese version will not have narration by Brinkley.

Still, Hayashi acknowledged that the program “might be controversial” when it airs in Japan Dec. 4. “The Japanese have been trying to forget Pearl Harbor, while Americans have been trying to stir up memories of it,” he said.

CBS’ production also was originally announced as a co-production with a Japanese network, Tokyo Broadcasting System. But the two companies now are preparing different Pearl Harbor documentaries while sharing some historical footage and exchanging segments on perspectives in their countries. Tokyo Broadcasting, for example, conducted interviews with Japanese pilots that CBS plans to use.

“We did not intend to do one show, although that impression did get out,” CBS executive Corvo said. “TBS wanted to do its own program and, although they might air ours, we don’t have any interest in airing theirs.” Based on a story outline he read, Corvo said, the Japanese program was designed as a historical look at how the country got into World War II.

In that regard, Tokyo Broadcasting’s documentary is likely to reflect a very different attitude than the CBS account.

“We will take responsibility for Pearl Harbor, but the U.S. side had some responsibility through its economic sanctions against Japan before Pearl Harbor,” Norio Tokumitsu, executive producer of the Tokyo Broadcasting documentary, said in an interview in Tokyo.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Tokumitsu said, “was a desperate decision.” After Japan’s forces moved into Indochina in 1940, the United States froze Japan’s assets and stopped all sale of oil to Japan. Once that happened, Tokumitsu and most Japanese scholars believe, Japan had little choice but to go to war with America. “We didn’t understand what the other side was thinking . . . but America didn’t realize that Japan was cornered,” Tokumitsu said.

Tokumitsu also contends that racial stereotypes contributed to Americans’ view of Japanese expansionism. “We don’t feel we did anything different than the other imperialist powers. Others saw Japan as small yellow people. Only Japan wasn’t allowed to have colonies.”

The Japanese producer said that he was concerned that American leaders might try to use the Pearl Harbor commemorations--and bad economic times in the United States--to build anti-Japanese sentiment. And he also reflected the impatience of some Japanese over being asked to apologize for Pearl Harbor in 1991.

“To have everybody say we are bad, we are bad,” Tokumitsu said. “There are individuals and the nation. As individuals, they (the Japanese) fought with pure feeling. They did their duty to their nation. What the nation did was wrong. We shouldn’t feel responsibility individually. We don’t like being told to apologize, even after 50 years. Again and again. Eventually you react to that psychologically. . . . Why should just Japan be attacked? It’s too persistent. Even for murder, there is a 15-year statute of limitation.”

Although few historians today give any credence to the “conspiracy theory” that President Roosevelt knew in advance about the Pearl Harbor attack and ignored warnings in order to draw the then-isolationist United States into war, the Tokyo Broadcasting documentary will include a discussion of the theory. But while the program will reflect sympathetically on Japan’s predicament in the prewar period, it also will be critical of militarism and politicians in prewar Japan. The three-hour program, which will air Dec. 8 on Japanese TV, also will include a look at “the perception gap” between the two countries.

What will be the impact upon Americans when the various Pearl Harbor programs are seen in this country?

“If I were a Japanese concerned with the Japanese image, I’d be concerned about the possible negative impact of these programs upon some viewers,” said Doris Graber, a professor at the University of Illinois who has written a book, “Processing the News,” on how people absorb information in news media.

“There is a rising tide of anti-Japanese sentiment in this country because of bad economic times and the U.S.-Japan trade imbalance,” she said. “If you’re an auto worker in Detroit who’s just been laid off and is predisposed to disliking the Japanese, seeing the programs about Pearl Harbor could give you additional reason for not liking them. But if you’re someone, say on the West Coast, who feels he has benefited from contact with the Japanese, you’re not likely to be affected by seeing the programs. The way people respond to information in the media has to do not only with the information but what they bring to it, what’s happening in their own lives.”

At the same time, Graber said, it could be positive to have the Pearl Harbor story retold in this country.

“You wouldn’t believe how many students of mine think the Kennedy era is ancient history,” Graber said. “These programs may be helpful in gaining historical insight.” But, she added, given the attitudes in both countries, “I don’t think it will change cultural perceptions. I’m not sure how the Japanese will view the programs in their country. Again, it depends upon the programming and their own predisposition to it. There are many in Japan who would like to ignore the whole Pearl Harbor episode--and there are some who are nostalgic for the glories of their warrior past.”