![]() In The Reluctant Admiral, Hiroyuki Agawa gives a quotation from a reply by Admiral Yamamoto to Ogata Taketora on January 9, 1941, which is 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. 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. It is recorded that "Yamamoto alone" (while all his staff members were celebrating) spent the day after Pearl Harbor "sunk in apparent depression". Moreover, he 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 on Pearl Harbor. Regardless of the provenance of the quote, Yamamoto believed that Japan could not win a protracted war with the United States. However, Forrester cannot produce the letter, nor can anyone else, American or Japanese, recall or find it. Williams, in turn, has stated that Larry Forrester, the screenwriter, found a 1943 letter from Yamamoto to the Admiralty in Tokyo containing the quotation. Randall Wallace, the screenwriter of the 2001 film Pearl Harbor, readily admitted that he copied the line from Tora! Tora! Tora! The director of Tora! Tora! Tora!, Richard Fleischer, stated that while Yamamoto may never have said those words, the film's producer, Elmo Williams, had found the line written in Yamamoto's diary. Neither At Dawn We Slept, the definitive history of the Pearl Harbor attack by Gordon Prange, nor The Reluctant Admiral, the definitive biography of Yamamoto in English by Hiroyuki Agawa, contains the line. The line serves as a dramatic ending to the depiction of the Pearl Harbor attack, but it has yet to be verified that Yamamoto ever said or wrote anything resembling the quote.
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