Pearl Harbor Keeps Going with the Errors
Peal Harbor’s errors pile up faster than the attacks they depict. In the film, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel received notification about the attack while it happened. In reality, Admiral Kimmel learned about the attack after the bombs had landed. The film shows Japanese bombers hitting hospital targets, but the attack didn’t specifically target medical facilities.
The attack hit the hospital, but only one hospital staff member died, hit while he tried to cross the navy yard. The cigarettes many characters smoked weren’t actually available in the 1940s. The Jeeps in the film were Korean War era Jeeps. The weapons were inaccurate; instead of P-40Bs or P-40Cs, they were later models of the P-40. While Pearl Harbor offers some dazzling special effects, these factual errors are enough to take historians and veterans out of the story.
