Headscratchers / Pearl Harbor

• Where were all the Hawaiian people? You'd think there would have been some around in Hawaii and all.
  • Semi-justified in that most of the scenes in Hawaii are set on military installations, and there were few Hawaiians in the military before statehood with a very notable exception was Corporal David Akui, who captured Japanese submariner Kazuo Sakamaki, the first Japanese prisoner of war in World War II in US custody.
  • There's a similar problem about the relative absence of Japanese-Americans. Hawaii's population was nearly evenly split between native Hawaiians, Whites, and Japanese at this time. As with the Hawaiians, there would have been few to no Japanese in military installations, but there are many scenes in civilian areas before the attack.
    • According to Walter Lord's Day of Infamy, when the Japanese on the island figured out just who was attacking, most of them found a hiding place to avoid being lynched by their enraged neighbors. The latter did not happen, though several were killed when Naval shells fired at the attackers came down in civilian areas
    • There is one allusion to Japanese-Americans in the immediate aftermath, when an Asian-American doctor tries to operate on a panicked soldier while he keeps pushing him away and calling him a "Jap".
• How could McCawley read the cheat notes when he's dyslexic?
  • Memorization. He probably studied them more than just that scene, to make sure he got it right. That, plus nerves, is why he rattled them off so fast.
• During the attack scene when one of the ships is rolling over, one guy screams that he can't swim. Why would you live on an island, and be in the Navy, IF YOU CAN'T SWIM?!
  • Swimming was not mandatory in the US Navy before World War II.
  • Not to mention that if you live on an island, you're on solid ground and don't need to swim.
  • For centuries it was considered better for sailors to not know how to swim. The idea was that, with slow ships and no radio, if your ship sank you either got saved immediately (either by a boat, a raft or a nearby ship) or you wouldn't survive at all, and thus a quick death because you couldn't swim was better than surviving for hours only to succumb to exhaustion and drown anyway because you could swim.
  • Not to mention, it's only an island if you look at it from the water.
  • The non-swimmer in question might not even have been part of the ship's crew, but ground-based support personnel for the base who'd only gone on board to do some repair-work or deliver the day's mail or something.
• How did Red manage to qualify for flight status with such a severe stutter? Before the war, there were surely more qualified candidates than there were open slots.