The film was produced by Elmo Williams and directed by Richard Fleischer, Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku, and stars an ensemble cast including Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotten, So Yamamura, E.G. Marshall, James Whitmore, Tatsuya Mihashi, Takahiro Tamura, Wesley Addy, and Jason Robards.

The tora of the title, although literally meaning "tiger", is actually an abbreviation of a two-syllable codeword (i.e., totsugeki raigeki 突撃雷撃, "lightning attack"), used to indicate that complete surprise had been achieved.

It received mixed reviews from American critics, but was praised for its historical accuracy and attention to detail, its visual effects, and its action sequences.

A 1994 survey at the USS Arizona Memorial determined that for Americans the film was the most common source of popular knowledge about the Pearl Harbor attack.

Air Staff Officer Minoru Genda is chosen to mastermind the operation, while his old Naval Academy classmate Mitsuo Fuchida is selected to lead the attack.

At Pearl Harbor, Admiral Kimmel increases defensive naval and air patrols around Hawaii, which could provide early warning of enemy presence.

However, Chief of Naval Operations Harold R. Stark is indecisive over notifying Hawaii without first alerting the President, while Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall's order that Pearl Harbor be alerted of an attack is stymied by poor atmospherics that prevents radio transmission, and by bungling when a warning sent by telegram is not marked urgent.

Similarly, the claim by the destroyer USS Ward to have sunk a Japanese miniature submarine off the entrance to Pearl Harbor is dismissed as unimportant.

General Short's anti-sabotage precautions prove a mistake, allowing the Japanese aerial forces to destroy aircraft on the ground easily.

In Washington, Secretary of State Cordell Hull is stunned to learn of the attack and requests confirmation before receiving the Japanese ambassador.

The message that was transmitted to the Japanese embassy in 14 parts – including a declaration that peace negotiations were at an end – was meant to be delivered to the Americans at 1:00 pm in Washington, 30 minutes before the attack.

The distraught Japanese ambassador Kichisaburō Nomura, helpless to explain the late ultimatum and unaware of the ongoing attack, is rebuffed by Hull.

In the Pacific, the Japanese fleet commander, Vice-Admiral Chūichi Nagumo, refuses to launch a scheduled third wave of aircraft for fear of exposing his force to U.S. submarines.

Aboard his flagship, Admiral Yamamoto informs his staff that their primary target – the American aircraft carriers – were not at Pearl Harbor, having departed days previously to search for Japanese vessels in the Pacific.

Lamenting that the declaration of war arrived after the attack began, Yamamoto notes that nothing would infuriate the U.S. more and concludes: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Note: Characters listed by rank in descending order Veteran 20th Century Fox executive Darryl F. Zanuck, who had earlier produced The Longest Day (1962), wanted to create an epic that depicted what "really happened on December 7, 1941", with a "revisionist's approach".

He believed that the commanders in Hawaii, General Short and Admiral Kimmel, though scapegoated for decades, provided adequate defensive measures for the apparent threats, including relocation of the fighter aircraft at Pearl Harbor to the middle of the base, in response to fears of sabotage from local Japanese.

[14]Larry Forrester and frequent Kurosawa collaborators Hideo Oguni and Ryūzō Kikushima wrote the screenplay, based on books written by Ladislas Farago and Gordon Prange of the University of Maryland, who served as a technical consultant.

Minoru Genda, the man who largely planned and led the attack on Pearl Harbor, was an uncredited technical advisor for the film.

[1] Four cinematographers were involved in the main photography: Charles F. Wheeler, Shinsaku Himeda, Masamichi Satoh, and Osamu Furuya.

The large fleet of Japanese aircraft was created by Lynn Garrison, a well-known aerial action coordinator, who produced a number of conversions.

[17] For the parallel filming in Japan, full-scale mock-ups of the Japanese battleship Nagato and aircraft carrier Akagi were built from the waterline up on shore, with about 90 feet (27 m) of their bows extending out over the ocean on stilts.

Predominantly, P-40 fighter aircraft were used to depict the U.S. defenders with a full-scale P-40 used as a template for fiberglass replicas (some with working engines and props) that were strafed and blown up during filming.

The 1⁄15 scale model of USS Nevada used to portray the whole ship in wide shots displayed the fore and aft turrets accurately in a 3-2-2-3 arrangement.

The film has a Japanese Zero fighter being damaged by U.S. Navy CPO John William Finn at Naval Air Station at Kāneʻohe Bay and then deliberately crashing into a hangar.

is scrupulously accurate and lays out of the tragedy of Pearl Harbor with intricate detail, but the film's clinical approach to the sound and fury signifies little feeling.

[43] Charles Champlin in his review for the Los Angeles Times on September 23, 1970, considered the movie's chief virtues as a "spectacular", and the careful recreation of a historical event.

[7] Despite the initial negative reviews, the film was critically acclaimed for its vivid action scenes and found favor with aviation aficionados.

[44] In 1994, a survey at the USS Arizona Memorial in Honolulu determined that for Americans the film was the most common source of popular knowledge about the Pearl Harbor attack.

Stating that the film "has only grown in stature over the decades", it praises the attack sequences, calling them "quite spectacular", and commends the portrayal of the Japanese as "anything but ethnic stereotypes, which adds immensely to the impact of their side of the story".