Isoroku Yamamoto's sleeping giant quotation is a film quote by the Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto regarding the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by forces of Imperial Japan. The quotation is portrayed at the very end of the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! as: Vermont Royster offers a possible origin to the phrase attributed to Napoleon, "China is a sickly, sleeping giant. But when she awakes the world will tremble". An abridged version of the quotation is also featured in the 2001 film Pearl Harbor. The 2019 film Midway also features Admiral Yamamoto speaking aloud the sleeping giant quote. Overview The director of Tora! Tora! Tora!, Richard Fleischer, stated that while Yamamoto may never have said those words, the film's producer, Elmo Williams, had found the line written in Yamamoto's diary. Williams, in turn, has stated that Larry Forrester, the screenwriter, found a 1943 letter from Yamamoto to the Admiralty in Tokyo containing the quotation. However, Forrester cannot produce the letter, nor can anyone else, American or Japanese, recall it or find it. Randall Wallace, the screenwriter of the 2001 film Pearl Harbor, readily admitted that he copied the line from Tora! Tora! Tora! Yamamoto did believe that Japan could not win a protracted war with the United States. Moreover, he seemed later to have believed that the Pearl Harbor attack had been a blunder strategically, morally, and politically, even though he was the person who originated the idea of a surprise attack on the military installation. It is recorded that while all his staff members were celebrating, "Yamamoto alone" spent the day after Pearl Harbor "sunk in apparent depression". Although almost 2,500 Americans lost their lives at Pearl Harbor and surrounding areas in Honolulu, he was only upset by the bungling of the Foreign Ministry which led to the attack happening while the countries were still at peace, thus, along with other factors, making the incident an unprovoked surprise attack that enraged American public opinion. Similar sayings On December 8, 1941, the day after the attack at Pearl Harbor, an inspirational statement was made by Don McNeill during the NBC radio broadcast of Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club. His statement ended: A portion of the broadcast was replayed on the Pearl Harbor attack-themed episode of Smithsonian Channel program documentary, The Lost Tapes (S1:E1). In The Reluctant Admiral, Hiroyuki Agawa gives a quotation from a reply by Admiral Yamamoto to Ogata Taketora