Hawai Mare Oki Kaisen (“The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya”)

The crew of Hawai Mare Oki Kaisen position scale models of American battleships at a recreation of Pearl Harbor in the Toho Studios lot in Tokyo, Japan. Toho created a pond to float models for the film.

Hawai Mare Oki Kaisen (“The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya”), directed by Kajiro Yamamoto (March 15, 1902 – September 21, 1974), was a big-budget special effects film released to commemorate the first anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The most expensive Japanese movie ever made up until then, full of special effects that had never been seen before. The battle scenes, shot with miniature models, were so realistic, and so skilfully blended with newsreel footage, that some Americans who saw the film after the war thought they were real. The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya was one of the films that highlighted Eiji Tsuburaya’s (July 7, 1901 – January 25, 1970) talent in special effects. He went on to make the miniatures for Gojira (Godzilla) in 1954. Special effects footage of the attack on Pearl Harbor from this film was so convincing that the Supreme Command Allied Powers (SCAP) confiscated the film and sold the footage to Movietone News Corp. The footage was released as actual Japanese footage of the infamous attack.