I know Hollywood was behind the war %100 back then but I think some of the print media was still doing the same second guessing and nitpicking that today's media does. Obviously not on the same scale. I can imagine how today's press would have covered Pearl Harbor.
That might have been true with some papers, but people then read mostly local newspapers and couldn't care less about newspapers outside their geographic location.
If the local paper had anything derogatary to say about America they would incur the physical wrath of the locals. Males today in the general population (not the military)are so emasculated compared to then, that you had to have live it to see the changes. - tom
For the information of any freepers in the high desert Lancaster/Palmdale area, we have some Pearl Harbor Survivors in our midst.
One (I'm having difficulty rememberig the correct name but very similar to the D.I. turned actor from full metal jacket) was part of the aircrew of the B-17s that flew into Hickam Field during the attack. As a zero came in to attack his plane, he leaned out a waist gunner's position with a brownie box camera to take a picture of the plane that was going to kill him (the B-17s were unarmed at the time). The zero pilot apparently thought he was being fired on and veered off.
The other is my friend Ken Kreese. His skipper had spent the night ashore, and couldn't get back aboard until 1330 that afternoon. Ken said that his ship did not get hit, it was across from the Utah. He told me that to him, his worst memory was of the Jappanese pilots strafing the helples men swimming to get away from their sinking and burning ships. He said it didn't seem like it would ever stop (the strafing).