A JOINT EXERCISE

In the end, the U.S. military got the movie it wanted from “Pearl Harbor”--and unlike the infamous attack, that should come as no surprise.

In exchange for substantial help from the military--including the right to film at Pearl Harbor and other military installations on Hawaii--director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer provided the Pentagon with an early script.

Pressed by military officials, the filmmakers toned down or dropped dialogue thought to have a disrespectful or anti-military edge and also changed the way certain key historic figures were portrayed. The military asked for the portrayals to be more historically accurate and thus less likely to engender controversy.

“My thanks to Disney for honoring our World War II veterans, recognizing those who currently serve, and building a bridge to our future,” Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of the Pacific Fleet, said at the recent gala premiere aboard the carrier John C. Stennis. The movie opened Friday nationwide (see accompanying box).

From the beginning, the $140-million project was developed in an aura of mutual self-interest between the filmmakers and the military, particularly the Navy. A movie branded as inaccurate or disrespectful to veterans could have been a black eye for the military and a public relations problem for Disney.

After a meeting between then-Defense Secretary William Cohen, director Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, “Pearl Harbor” enjoyed unprecedented support from the military, including the right to film on the carrier Constellation and at Pearl Harbor and other military bases in Hawaii. For their part, the filmmakers provided the Pentagon with an early script and promised to listen to concerns about historical accuracy and taste.

During filming, several uniformed and civilian employees of the federal government were on location offering numerous suggestions to Bay and Bruckheimer. The back-and-forth, both sides agree, was spirited but not overly contentious.

“A lot of changes were made,” said Philip Strub, the Pentagon’s top liaison to the movie industry.

On-location kibitzing is common practice when the Pentagon agrees to help a movie project. Then again, there is nothing common about the story of the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, an event that still holds an emotional grip on many Americans and where key facts remain hotly disputed.

For openers, the Navy was concerned with the script’s use of “hard language.” Enlisted sailors talked insultingly to officers, and nurses were portrayed as busty, libidinous and on the prowl for husbands.

The script “had a kind of post-Vietnam approach to the portrayal of the military,” said Daniel Martinez, U.S. Park Service historian at the USS Arizona Memorial and Museum at Pearl Harbor. “I mentioned that it could be seen as disrespectful to the veterans.”

Among the changes:

* Little of the language the Navy found offensive found its way into the PG-13-rated film. The young pilots are free-spirited but sport none of the “MASH”-style disdain for superiors. Tom Sizemore, playing a grizzled airplane mechanic, jumps to his feet and gives a salute when he first meets a young pilot played by Josh Hartnett (Danny Walker). The original script had Sizemore showing contempt for the fresh-faced rookie and, in effect, daring him to do something about it.

* Ben Affleck’s character (Rafe McCawley) forms fast friendships with pilots in the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain. The original script had a hard-nosed clash between Affleck and one of the RAFers.

* The filmmakers were less flexible on details involving the nurses. The overall portrayal, however, stresses the bravery and resourcefulness of the nursing corps when confronted with thousands of casualties amid the carnage, not their sexual proclivities.

While the Navy understood the need for fictional characters and situations to spice up the love story, officials were concerned about the portrayal of historic figures: Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle and African American sailor Dorie Miller.

“The Pearl Harbor story is a layer cake of controversy,” said Jack Green, curator at the Naval Historical Center in Washington. “You cut into it and you cut into all the controversies.”

Kimmel Wasn’t Golfing When Attack Occurred

Possibly the most enduring controversy involves Kimmel, commander of the Pacific Fleet at the time of the attack.

After the attack, Kimmel was relieved of command and forced into bitter retirement. Congress, picking up the punitive mood of the Navy, refused to allow Kimmel to retire as a full admiral.

For decades Kimmel’s loyalists have argued that he was made a scapegoat for the failure of the War Department and even President Roosevelt to anticipate the attack. Two years ago, Congress, by a narrow vote, exonerated Kimmel, over the opposition of hard-liners such as Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), a World War II veteran.

The script had Kimmel learning of the attack while playing golf, which Green calls “one of the biggest myths about Pearl Harbor.” The effect, the Navy felt, was to portray Kimmel as negligent and blase.

In fact, although Kimmel often played golf on Sundays, he was at home preparing to leave for the office when the bombing started.

Despite being told that the golf course scene was not accurate, Bay and Bruckheimer stuck with it.

Still, the movie shows Kimmel as a diligent, if not particularly decisive, commander who was fatally hampered by Washington’s refusal to share intercepted intelligence and by his own inability to consider that the Japanese might launch an aerial attack from carriers.

“Pearl Harbor” implies that the majority of blame lies with lunkheads in Washington who failed to heed the warning of a Navy intelligence officer (played by Dan Aykroyd) that the Japanese were preparing to strike Pearl Harbor. The character and the warning are fictional.

Yamamoto (played by Mako), the architect of the attack, says at the end that he fears the attack has only “awakened a sleeping giant.”

Martinez said he could find no historic documentation that Yamamoto had any second thoughts until months later, when the tide of war began to change. The “sleeping giant” quote seems to have been an invention of the 1970 movie “Tora! Tora! Tora!”

“It’s as if the movie created the phrase and suddenly it came to be accepted as real history,” Martinez said.

In his definitive 1991 study, “Long Day’s Journey Into War,” scholar Stanley Weintraub says that Yamamoto was exultant about the smashing success of the attack and wrote a poem that night to Emperor Hirohito in celebration.

The Navy was also concerned that “Pearl Harbor” might make the Japanese pilots too sympathetic, suggesting a moral equivalency between the Japanese pilots and their American victims. In “Tora! Tora! Tora!,” the pilots are shown as mere youth going into combat for the first time.

“It’s just not true,” Green said. “Japan had been at war [in China] for two years, and many of these pilots were combat veterans. They were not boys.”

An initial script line has a Japanese officer saying that the pilots are but “young eagles.” The line does not appear in the movie.

Rather, the Japanese pilots are youthful and exuberant, but there is no dialogue to suggest they are anything but trained and ready to strike.

As for Doolittle--who led the first U.S. counterattack, a bombing run on Tokyo--the Navy and some surviving members of Doolittle’s Raiders felt the script made him seem too “Pattonesque,” a leader who depended on a threatening countenance.

The real Doolittle--a lieutenant colonel back then--was a short man with a quiet voice whose leadership came from an extraordinary ability to inspire others by example, not verbiage. The script was toned down.

For example, one scene in the script had Doolittle snarling profanely when he saw one of his pilots making the sign of the cross. Navy officials protested, and the scene was rewritten.

In the movie, Doolittle looks over and says softly, “Pray for me.”

Dorie Miller’s Bravery Unquestioned

The issue of Doris “Dorie” Miller is a particularly sensitive one to the Navy and to survivors who served with Miller aboard the battleship West Virginia, which was sunk in the attack.

Like other African Americans in the Navy at that time, Miller, a mess attendant, was given only menial jobs.

During the attack, Miller stayed by the side of his mortally wounded captain and then, although he had no training, began firing an antiaircraft gun.

For bravery under fire and loyalty to his captain, Miller was awarded the Navy Cross, becoming the first African American to receive that honor. He died in combat later in the war.

African Americans have asserted that Miller was prevented by the Navy’s institutional racism from getting the Medal of Honor during the war.

The original script showed Miller, played by Cuba Gooding Jr., shooting down planes in a fury of righteous anger. The problem, Martinez said, is that there is no confirmation that Miller actually shot down any planes.

West Virginia veterans, invited by the Navy and the filmmakers to weigh in with their opinions, said that crediting Miller with unconfirmed kills would be unfair to the memory of other sailors who fought just as bravely and have never been credited.

A compromise was reached. The movie heavily implies that Miller shot down at least one plane but leaves some room for doubt. The film also underscores Miller’s devotion to his captain.

To deflect criticism from either side in the Miller controversy, the Navy posted information about Miller on its own Pearl Harbor Web site, including his Navy Cross citation, an “after-action” report by a ranking officer talking of his bravery, and a history of African Americans in the Navy.

“We were not there as censors or history police,” noted Green. “We were there as advisors. The bottom line is that this is a movie, not a documentary.”

Bruckheimer said the filmmakers “got the best of both worlds: The right to tell a compelling story and assistance in keeping it historically faithful.”

In San Diego, a group of Pearl Harbor veterans received a standing ovation at a premiere hosted by a Top 40 radio station. Many in the youthful crowd were tearful during the attack scene and hugged the veterans at the movie’s end.

“They asked us if it was really that terrible,” said Arthur Kowalski, 80, who was a seaman first class aboard the battleship Pennsylvania. “We told them, ‘Yep, the movie got it right.’ ”