<P> Although the quotation may well have encapsulated many of his real feelings about the attack, there is no printed evidence to prove Yamamoto made this statement or wrote it down . </P> <P> The line serves as a dramatic ending to the depiction of the Pearl Harbor attack, but it has yet to be verified that Yamamoto ever said or wrote anything resembling the quote . Neither At Dawn We Slept, the definitive history of the Pearl Harbor attack by Gordon Prange, nor The Reluctant Admiral, the definitive biography of Yamamoto in English by Hiroyuki Agawa, contains the line . </P> <P> 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! </P> <P> Regardless of the provenance of the quote, Yamamoto believed that Japan could not win a protracted war with the US . Moreover, he seems later to have believed that the Pearl Harbor attack had been a blunder--even though he was the person who came up with the idea of a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor . It is recorded that "Yamamoto alone" (while all his staff members were celebrating) spent the day after Pearl Harbor "sunk in apparent depression". He is also known to have been upset by the bungling of the Foreign Ministry which led to the attack happening while the countries were technically at peace, thus making the incident an unprovoked sneak attack that would certainly enrage the Americans . </P>

Who said i fear we have awoken a sleeping giant