U.S. Propaganda in War Movies?

A movie named 'Air Force' (1943) was shown Wednesday night on Turner Movie Classics, cable channel, directed by Howard Hawks. It's a great action film about the Flying Fortresses in the Pacific. It's not entirely realistic, though, as it had the bombers flying from Pearl Harbor to the Phillipines and being used defensively to fight off Japanese fighters.

The surprising ('propaganda?' part of the film though was that it showed the flight of B-17s from the mainland approaching Pearl Harbor just as the Japanese attacked on Dec. 7 1941. The bombers have to make emergency landings on other Hawaiian islands, where they are fired upon by civilian snipers, apparently Japanese residents from the Islands. For safety they take off and land at a devastated Pearl Harbor, where they learn that U.S. fighters had been sabotaged by civilian 'vegetable trucks from Honolulu' that smashed the tails off the U.S. planes, while civilian truck drivers elsewhere shotgunned soldiers in jeeps.

Isn't it now known that no such fifth-column sabotage by Japanese-Americans took place? And wouldn't that have been clear by 1943, when the film was made? Was this theme fictionalized as part of a propaganda war effort (the sneaky enemy everywhere) or just a thoughtless dramatic device?

Do any readers have other examples of blatant fictional propaganda in WWII-era movies?

Yes.

Yes.

Perhaps the movie makers believed the early [false] reports of fifth column activities in Hawaii. Or perhaps they were trying to justify the mass incarcerations that had occurred on the mainland.

Well, that part is at least correct. There was a flight of B-17's that were to land at Hickam Field right as the Japanese attacked. To save weight none of them had their machineguns installed, so they were unable to defend themselves. Only one was destroyed; the others landed at various airfields all over Oahu.

John Lansford

The unofficial I-26 Construction Webpage:

I believe in the postscript to the film, the commentator stated that this was erroneous information. He's right. People believed it then, and why not. Years of propaganda about the mythical 'fifth column' had prepared them well.

Not only did the 17s fly overnight from the West Coast to Hawaii, but they requested (as was customary) the commercial radio station in Honolulu to remain on the air, to provide a homing signal. Which signal, of course, proved very useful to the Japanese carrier planes vectoring to Pearl Harbor.

Or so the story is told. Perhaps the station would have been on the air again by 7 a.m. Sunday morning in any event.

It was of course customary to make Hawaii flights overnight, so as to land with daylight beginning instead of ending. The Pan Am Clippers did the same.

- Dan Ford

See 'Nothing New About Death' at http://www.danford.net and the message board at http://www.delphi.com/annals/

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