Pearl Harbor 珍珠港（2001） Movie Script

The steel circle pops out, and they knock the welders down in their hurry to escape.

Some of the sailors who were trapped are naked. They fight their way toward the escape hole cut into the hull, assisted by rescue workers.

EXT. HULL OF OKLAHOMA - NIGHT The trapped sailors emerge, and they can barely take in the devastation. Destroyed ships everywhere, the smoking wreckage... The rescued sailors gaze around them in shock.

They are shivering, and other sailors put blankets around them.

EXT. WHITE HOUSE - DAY The entire Washington press corps is waiting, with fresh bulbs in the flash attachments of cameras that are already as big as a shoe box. The President is wheeled out of the White House, and not a single photographer takes a picture...not yet.

Aides help Roosevelt from the chair, and the press people all see the President struggle on legs that have no strength, to the podium. His aides lock the steel clasps at the knees of his braces into place, and the President stands at the microphone. And suddenly, from the front, Roosevelt looks powerful, even majestic.

Now all the bulbs pop and flash. He looks into the cameras.

ROOSEVELT:

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of American was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

OVER THIS, we see the bombing, the aftermath, the bodies being fished from the oil-soaked harbor.

ROOSEVELT:

The distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attacks was planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

EXT. PACIFIC OCEAN - DAY The Japanese fleet steams back toward Japan. The young officers are exultant...but Yamamoto is pensive.

ROOSEVELT:

...I regret to tell you that many American lives have been lost.

EXT. PEARL HARBOR - DAY We see rows of bodies outside the hospital where Evelyn works.

The mess hall has been converted to a silent morgue, with bodies on every table.

ROOSEVELT:

Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong... Guam... OVER THIS, EXT. ISLANDS - NIGHT We see Japanese planes bombing islands, and soldiers attacking amphibious landings.

ROOSEVELT:

...the Philippine Islands... Wake Island... And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

EXT. WHITE HOUSE - DAY

ROOSEVELT:

The facts speak for themselves. With confidence in our armed forces -- with the unbounding determination of our people -- we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war -- The words echoes out across America -- ROOSEVELT'S VOICE War...war...war... It rings through the radios of farm houses, to country boys gathered round; in the pool halls of big cities; in the fire houses and high schools... THE LINES AT RECRUITING STATIONS all across America -- men line up faster than the recruiters can handle them.

INT. WHITE HOUSE - DAY Roosevelt meets with his advisors.

ROOSEVELT:

Gentlemen, the crisis we face is not the fact that our enemies believe they can defeat us -- it's the fact that our people believe it too. I want a plan -- a workable plan -- to hit the heart of Japan, to bomb them the way they have bombed us.

ADMIRAL:

Mr. President, Pearl Harbor caught us because we didn't face facts. This isn't a time for ignoring them again. There are no planes in the entire American arsenal capable of covering the distance to Japan from any land base we control while carrying enough bombs to do any damage whatsoever.

GENERAL MARSHALL He's right, Mr. President. The Army has long range bombers, but no place to launch them from. Midway's too far, China is overrun by Japanese forces, and Russia refuses to go to war with Japan and won't allow us to launch a raid from there.

ADMIRAL:

The navy's planes are small, carry light loads, and have short range. We would have to get them within a few hundred miles of Japan, and therefore risk our carriers. And if we lose our carriers, we have no shield against invasion.

ROOSEVELT:

What if the Japanese did invade?

GENERAL MARSHALL We've done studies. We're confident we would turn them back eventually...after they'd gotten as far as Chicago.