65%User score 65 percent
Why We Fight: Prelude to War
1942 · Documentary · War
User Score
27 votes
"Docudrama" about the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 and its results, the recovering of the ships, the improving of defense in Hawaii and the US efforts to beat back the Japanese reinforcements.
Recommendations based on this film
talisencrw
July 16, 2016
This was solid. Recently I have taken an interest in both the propaganda films and wartime documentaries of World War II from both sides. I especially wanted to see this, since I love Ford's 'They Were Expendable' so much. Definitely worth the effort to find if you have a similar inclination for the material. I have always wondered if a truly 'objective', 'unbiased' documentary can be made. Simply the decisions a dir…
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CinemaSerf
August 20, 2025
Though technically a docu-drama, this is really more of a conspiratorial retrospective on just how the Japanese managed to catch the US military on the hop, disastrously, on this fateful day. It’s narrated, of sorts, by way of a supposed conversation between a notional “Uncle Sam” (Walter Huston) and “Mr. C” (Harry Davenport). They start off by extolling the virtues of the multi-national/ethnic population that has re…
Read the full review on TMDBReviews are written by the TMDB community, not by December 7th's publisher.
