Al Brick: The Forgotten Newsreel Man at Pearl Harbor

Al Brick, who took some of the remarkable pictures of Pearl Harbor in this week's issue, deserved to get the first american scoop of the war. He went to Honolulu in april 1941, so as to be there when something happened. In his nine months of waiting, he acquired the most beautiful sun tan ever seen at the Outrigger Canoe Club. On the morning of Dec. 7 he was at Pearl Harbor, photographed the Japanese attack from start to finish.

Life, December 14, 1942

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7th, 1941, was photographed by U.S. Navy and Coast Guard cameramen who, despite the surprise with which the enemy forces moved, managed to secure some excellent shots of the disaster. Most of this footage was immediately suppressed by military censors and was not released to the public for many months thereafter.

Raymond Fielding, The American Newsreel: 1911-1967

On December 7, 1942, Fox Movietone News released a single-subject newsreel to celebrate the work of one of its top cameramen, whose footage of the attack on Pearl Harbor had been withheld from the public for a full year. "Now It Can Be Shown!" featured Al Brick's sweeping panorama of the full devastation wrought by the Japanese attack as well as his stunning images of battleships ablaze.¹ A week later, LIFE printed frame enlargements from Brick's film as part of its anniversary story on the raid and gave special credit to Brick for these photos. Sixty-five years later, though, when Raymond Fielding revised his 1972 study of the American newsreel for reissue in 2006, he added a photograph of the burning battleship Arizona, noting in the caption that a number of navy and coast guard cameramen were in the harbor that morning making the films to be included in newsreels. In this rare instance, Fielding got it wrong. Navy and coast guard photographers certainly were at Pearl Harbor on December 7, but the motion picture film shot in the harbor that morning and subsequently released to newsreels a year later came from the camera of one Movietone cameraman.² Fielding is not the only one to have left Brick out of the pages of history. Few remember Brick as the creator of this famous film record, even though Movietone promoted his byline with a special newsreel when the Department of the Navy finally released his negatives a full year after the attack. How, then, has the archival evidence become so misconstrued over the decades? Understanding the process by which Brick went from a celebrated newsreel man to an anonymous navy photographer and through which film with such a clear provenance became a poorly understood body of stock footage highlights not only the importance of film archiving as a field but also the need to project its influence into historical and cultural debates.

For a single-subject release, the dope sheets for "Now It Can Be Shown!" are unusually extensive, containing thirteen separate documents, the bulk of which pertain to Brick's film.³ The published newsreel pulls film from four Movietone stories: 048-078, 048-079, 048-080, and 048-081. The dope sheet for Movietone story 048-078 deserves special study as it provides a framework for Brick's progress through the harbor on December 7 (see Figure 1 for a map of the harbor). Six rolls of film from that day are logged under this one number: five shorter rolls from Brick's Bell and Howell Eyemo and one from his Mitchell camera. The shot list for roll 1 (the Mitchell camera magazine) reads as follows:

1. Scene 1. LS Panorama of Pearl Harbor, L to R. PENNSYLVANIA burning in dry dock, USS SHAW burning in Floating Drydock, damaged battleship burning at Ford Island moorings.

2. Scene 2. CU Arizona burning.

3. Scene 3. WA ARIZONA burning at Ford Island.

4. Scene 4. West Virginia and Tennessee burning.

5. Scene 5. OKLAHOMA (capsized) outboard of MARYLAND.

6. Scene 6. CU OKLAHOMA, MARYLAND, WESTVIRGINIA [sic] and TENNESSEE at FORD ISLAND.

7. Scene 7. CALIFORNIA beached at Ford Island.

8. Scene 8. Panorama l. to r. CALIFORNIA, OKLAHOMA, MARYLAND, WEST VIRGINIA, TENNESSEE, ARIZONA, burning at Ford Island.

9. Scene 9. PAN as above with PHOENIX passing in the foreground.⁴

Figure 1.

Map of Pearl Harbor. Available from Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pearlmap2.png. Modified by the author. Key: 1. Ford Island. 2. USS Maryland. 3. USS Oklahoma. 4. USS Tennessee. 5. USS West Virginia. 6. USS Arizona. 7. USS Nevada. 8. USS California. 9. Aeia Shoals. 10. East Loch. 11. Navy yard.

Shot from the area above Aiea Shoals, scene 1 is familiar to any student of Pearl Harbor (see Figure 2). Three areas of smoke can be seen in the frame. On the left, the general haze of light smoke comes from Hickam Field. In the center, the small, dense cloud of black smoke locates the remnants of the destroyer Shaw. On the right, the prominent mass of dense, black, billowing smoke marks the final resting place of the Arizona as well as the general location of Battleship Row. Additional details help to establish the time this panorama was made. To the right of the Shaw, the outline of the Nevada can be made out, her bow aground at Hospital Point and her stern swung out into the channel currents. On the basis of the visible evidence, Brick's camera was rolling sometime between 9:50 and 10:35 that morning.⁵ He then entered the harbor to film scenes 2-9, rolling out the final frames of this shot at 11:36, the time the Phoenix sailed past the Arizona.⁶

At some point during the morning, Brick turned to his handheld Eyemo and boarded a launch. Eyemo roll 1 opens with shots of the Nevada aground at Hospital Point, then turns to the damaged sea planes (PBYs) on Ford Island and then to the Shaw in yard floating dock 2. Eyemo rolls 2-4 indicate that Brick moved up-channel past the California, Maryland, and West Virginia before filming the Arizona. He then moved through East Loch to the western side of Ford Island to film the Utah and Raleigh. Sailing back into East Loch, he approached the Vestal aground off McGrew's Point and then made another pass down Battleship Row, filming as he went. The fifth and final Eyemo roll, shot on shore at an unidentified location, shows a wrecked Japanese plane being pulled from the channel and loaded onto a truck. These scenes, then, are the known extent of Brick's camera work on the day of December 7. He continued to film in the harbor and at Hickam and Wheeler airfields from December 8 to 12.⁷

Movietone's plan for "Now It Can Be Shown!" included interviewing Brick about the scoop of his career, so he was brought home from the Pacific theater in early December 1942 to be interviewed in person by Lowell Thomas in Inglewood, California. Most of this interview fell to the cutting room floor. However, "Now It Can Be Shown!" did incorporate pictures of Brick walking across the tarmac to greet Thomas and included Brick's jingoistic aside: "We won't be satisfied until we slap the Japs right off the map." Movietone editors pressed the theme of Brick's scoop throughout the newsreel. An opening editorial note set to somber music established the provenance of the film:

Figure 2.

Panorama of Pearl Harbor from Aiea Shoals. Created by the author from individual frames of MVTN 048-078, Fox Movietone News Collection, Moving Image Research Collections, University of South Carolina.

Now that they can be of no value to the enemy, Movietone News is permitted by the Navy to release in full for the first time these films of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Movietone cameraman Al Brick was on the spot when the Japs struck and obtained exclusive dramatic pictures during the sneak raid.

Lowell Thomas then three times invoked Brick by name: "arrival home of Al Brick, cameraman who filmed the Pearl Harbor attack"; "these Movietone pictures made by Al Brick are released by the Navy"; and "Al Brick, how does it feel to be home?" Audiences leaving the theaters after "Now It Can Be Shown!" knew Brick's name and what he had accomplished. Since public attention was drawn to Brick at the time of the newsreel's release, why, then, was his name so quickly dissociated from his work? Answering this question requires an understanding of the newsreel roto system as well as the operations of official censorship during the war. Somewhat curiously, it also requires a trip through the production elements of John Ford's 1943 documentary December 7th. Wartime policy and historical accident increased the likelihood that Brick would receive less credit for his work in the years to come than he or Movietone probably envisioned, ultimately resulting in his near-complete erasure from the "Day of Infamy."

The Scoop that Never Really Was

Late on December 7, 1941, United Press International (UPI) reported:

The United States fleet steamed from Pearl Harbor Sunday after a Japanese dive bomber, torpedo plane, and parachute raid on the great American naval and air base, causing heavy loss of life and property damage in an unprovoked assault which precipitated a general war in the Pacific. Reportedly the sound of gunfire was heard off Oahu and gun flashes were seen.⁸

UPI's wire report contains a surprising amount of detail, especially since it also notifies the nation that "the Navy established censorship immediately on all outgoing cable and radio messages." The censor allowed UPI to wire back to the mainland:

Huge fires were raging at Pearl Harbor at 1:10 this afternoon and five navy vessels appeared to have been destroyed in the air raids. One ship had turned over on its side. Fires raging on four other warships appeared to be gaining in intensity and they had settled low in the water. The base itself apparently was extensively damaged in the raids and great clouds of smoke rose above it. Patrols were scouring the hills above Pearl Harbor for parachute troops reported to have been seen in the vicinity.

UPI's wire provided valuable bomb damage assessment to the entire world. The censorship immediately imposed throughout the Hawaiian territories was quickly extended to the entire nation when President Roosevelt placed J. Edgar Hoover in charge of national censorship policies. With the passing of the First War Powers Act (December 18, 1941), Byron Price took control of the newly formed Office of Censorship. Although the government did not have the authority to censor the private press, the Office of Censorship wielded authority over all stories distributed by government agencies, filmed on military complexes, or shot in sensitive industrial locales.⁹ In the weeks and months following the attack, the American public would learn little more of the raid beyond the information contained in UPI's report and saw few images exposing the extent of the damage.

Faced with the reality of a defensive and uphill military campaign, the military restricted information about overseas activities, especially, as George Roeder argues, with respect to photography.¹⁰ Concerns about censorship expressed by news organizations and others led to the establishment of the Office of War Information (OWI) in June 1942, with Elmer Davis at the helm. Davis, however, was not in control of his fate. OWI could not release material it did not have, and throughout fall 1942, the army, navy, and marine corps continued to withhold from Davis the types of still and moving images desired by the public.¹¹ By November 1942, the official handling of Pearl Harbor was being held up as an example of undemocratic government secrecy. The editors of LIFE, for example, called the public information campaign after Pearl Harbor an example of "acute verbiage and moral falsehood."¹² The brief trickle of information in the months following the attack had run dry, and for almost a year, the public had been hungry for images of the event that had finally pushed the nation into the war.

The relative lack of photographic coverage throughout 1942 is evident in the pages of LIFE, which proves a reliable barometer of the censored photographic coverage available to the American public. The December 15, 1941, issue of the magazine announced that Japan had launched a "reckless attack" on Pearl Harbor as part of a "desperate gamble"; however, the magazine was unable to accompany this news with pictures. LIFE did report that the West Virginia had been "sunk" and that the Oklahoma had been "hit and [was] burning."¹³ Just before Christmas, LIFE released its first wartime issue. With Old Glory on its cover and featuring Henry Luce's editorial essay "The Day of Wrath," this issue still lacked actual photographs of Pearl Harbor but published photographs of thirty honorable dead from Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, including a photo of Admiral Kidd of the Arizona. Only in its December 29 issue was LIFE able to publish a few images of the aftermath at Pearl Harbor. Its nine-page spread featured photos carefully selected to support Secretary Knox's initial public report on naval losses: Arizona, Utah (an antiquated battleship turned target ship), three destroyers, and one minelayer.¹⁴ Even not-so-careful readers of LIFE might take note of the significant shift in facts over the course of a week: the West Virginia and Oklahoma had been quietly resurrected. LIFE's photos of civilian areas were sourced to Pathé and the Associated Press; all others were sourced to the Signal Corps or Department of the Navy.¹⁵ More photos were forthcoming in the January 5, 1942, issue, including a close-up of the sunken Arizona, a shot of cleanup activities on board an unidentified battleship (the Nevada), and one shot of six Japanese planes sweeping over the U.S. naval air station at Ford Island.¹⁶

A full month would pass before the government released more imagery. In February 1942, the Department of War officially released to Movietone four very short scenes from motion picture film shot by Al Brick: two of the Arizona; one of damaged or destroyed PBYs at Ford Island; and one of a destroyer, the Shaw. Movietone 24, rel. 44, made the best use of these short sequences, but none demonstrated the scope of the disaster. LIFE featured still frames of the same official release in a six-page spread titled "Pictures of the Nation's Worst Naval Disaster Show Pearl Harbor Hell." Credits for the photos in this spread went to "Movietone News," Bob Landry (LIFE photographer), and the U.S. Navy. The material sourced to Movietone was a series of photos of the Arizona fully ablaze (shot on December 7).¹⁷ In summer 1942, the government released several Japanese photographs of the attack that had been published in German news sources. These grainy images confirmed little of the true extent of the damage as they were snapped in the first few minutes of the assault. By the time of LIFE's November editorial about the "people's war," which decried the absence of truth telling by the American government, the American people had seen relatively little of the reality of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other Oahu bases. Perhaps LIFE's editorial struck a nerve with the OWI, perhaps the president or his aides did not like LIFE's characterization of the government, or perhaps the return of Brick's film to Movietone was already in the works when the editorial was published. Whatever the reason, the navy decided in late November to release Brick's film of the attack.

When the navy released Brick's negatives in December, it did so within the routines of the newsreel roto system. The onset of the war had necessitated the establishment of a formal roto pool agreement between the Department of War and the major newsreels whereby all newsreels shared equally in the film censored by the federal government before being released to news agencies. The pool was designed to maximize the effectiveness of the nation's stretched photographic resources while maintaining the necessary censor controls of a wartime climate. Film originating from military cameramen or from certified civilian photojournalists operating within combat zones or on military bases was first processed by army or navy labs, vetted by censors, and then released to a designated newsreel company (the company receiving the duplicate negatives from the government was selected on a rotating basis). After making copies of whatever material it felt worth copying, normally everything, that newsreel company then passed the official duplicate negatives to the next newsreel company in the queue. The company at the end of the rotation returned the official duplicate negative to the army or navy. The roto system ensured that all newsreel companies had roughly equal access to all the visual information released by the government. The challenge, then, for any newsreel was to publish its own take on the war news from the same raw material available to its competitors. In this controlled environment, scooping the competition on a war story became an increasingly rare and valuable occurrence.

Shot as it was before the establishment of the roto system, Al Brick's film fell into a special category and provided Movietone with a rare opportunity to claim a wartime scoop over its competitors. At the time of the attack, Brick was a civilian newsreel employee operating independently of U.S. armed forces control. Even though the navy had possession of his negatives, they were without question the exclusive property of Movietone and thus the only censorable military film not subject to the roto pool during the first week of December 1942. This status may have been the result of a technicality, but it was enforced at the time of the film's release. Newsreel content summaries prepared during the war for the Library of Congress confirm that the other major newsreels did not receive the wealth of material provided to Fox.¹⁸ Universal, RKO-Pathé, Paramount, and Hearst-Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer all ran stories on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, but none focused an entire newsreel on the occasion. Hearst's News of the Day 14, rel. 225, led with a story titled "Navy Reveals Full Pearl Harbor Story!" but followed it with six other stories: four war news stories, one war industry story, and one sports story. RKO's Pathé News 14, rel. 30, led with "Pearl Harbor Damage" and followed with four additional stories: two war news stories, one home front story, and one sports story. Universal Newsreel 15, rel. 143, explored the damage to Pearl Harbor by way of a story about a nation at prayer for the dead, "Nation Prays for Pearl Harbor Heroes," that segued into "Official Pictures of Pearl Harbor Attack." Universal added six more stories: four war news stories, one home front story, and one sports story. Paramount News front-loaded its reel with two stories about the home front and one war news story, with the remaining five-plus minutes of the reel devoted to a Pearl Harbor anniversary story. The copyright registration and content analysis files at the Library of Congress strongly suggest that Fox's competitors were at a disadvantage, leaving them to decide whether or how to run against Fox's scoop. Of the lot, Paramount News made the clearest effort to run head-to-head with Fox. Not only did it devote the most time to the subject but it also scrounged up its own scoop: the copyright registration file reads, "Paramount News brings you exclusive pictures of Official U.S. Navy Models of Jap warships sunk in battle, ship for ship." Although they must have been very nice models, Paramount's scoop does not quite measure up to Brick's film.

In addition to the copyright and content analysis sheets at the Library of Congress, the dope sheets at the University of South Carolina suggest that Brick's film was returned directly to Fox without being distributed to other newsreels. Two Department of the Navy memos filed with the dope sheet for "Now It Can Be Shown!" provide evidence that Brick's film from December 7 was excluded from the roto system. The first, from the department's Office of Public Relations in Washington, D.C., dated December 2, 1942, and addressed to "Newsreel Editors," explains the source of the enclosed "official Navy negatives" as well as the protocols for circulating those negatives and the accompanying "hold for release" document. As it survives in the Newsfilm Collections, the Movietone copy is an unsigned carbon. The second memo (undated) on navy letterhead and addressed specifically to "Fox Movietone News," not the generic address to newsreel editors, conveys back to Fox "two reels of original negative . . . made by Al Brick at Pearl Harbor from December 7th to 20th, 1941." After reminding Fox that it must wait for the official December 6, 1942, release date, Lieutenant Alan Brown makes a final, polite request: "Will you please be sure to furnish the Navy with a lavender of this material to this office for Navy use only?"¹⁹ Lieutenant Brown's careful phrasing of "original negative" is confirmed by a third memo filed with the dope sheet, erroneously dated "1/2/42" on navy letterhead and written by Anthony Muto of Movietone, that reads in its entirety: "This is Brick's original negative less 2 scenes of Arizona burning and a scene of PBY's on Ford Island, and scene of Shaw burning. These were released to us last February."²⁰ The final paragraph of Lieutenant Brown's memo reveals that the Department of the Navy claimed no ownership of Brick's 850 feet of negative; it also indicates that the department was not distributing this film to other newsreel agencies via the roto system as it would have felt free to make its own duplicate and would not have stressed that any such copy be "for Navy use only." The extent to which this final clause would fog the real provenance of Brick's film could not have been known by Movietone editors at the time, in which case, they might have refused the navy's request. After they accepted this request, however, the technical nuances keeping Brick's film the exclusive property of Movietone proved too subtle to sustain.

Enter John Ford

The enigmatic John Ford blazed a trail from Hollywood to the offices of the Department of War that many of his studio colleagues would later follow. In the early 1930s, Ford enlisted in the naval reserves and was called to active duty prior to America's entry into the war.²¹ Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was asked by the secretary of war and the secretary of the navy to produce a factual documentary of the attack for the navy. Ford arrived at Pearl Harbor in mid-January 1942, and cinematographer Gregg Toland, whom Ford selected to direct the documentary, arrived in February. The two men began filming on Oahu, staging sequences at airfields and experimenting with the problem of re-creating a spectacle with the scope of the Japanese attack. They also filmed a lot of harbor activity, concentrating on the enormous salvage work being undertaken at Pearl Harbor.²² The resurrection of the battle fleet was, after all, a logical denouement for a documentary on Pearl Harbor. Toland assumed full control of the project after Ford sailed to Midway Island in anticipation of the Japanese attack there.²³

The film Toland produced fell well outside the documentary scope of the original commission. His allegorical rumination on an ill-prepared Uncle Sam unnecessarily exposing his island territory to surprise attack angered military and political brass in Washington and was never released, the controversy reaching even to the level of the White House by December 1942.²⁴ Toland's directorial work had to be undone, leaving Ford, who had been filming in North Africa, to pick up the pieces of the project and refocus it back on the Department of War's original intent: a nonfictionalized account of the attack. The finished film was screened to war industry workers and was never released to the general public. Delia Konzett estimates that even within this limited sphere, the film was still seen by over one million people.²⁵ Ford's December 7th contains sequences from Brick's film as well as sequences from another cameraman shooting inside the harbor. Whether or not Ford had permission from Fox to use Brick's film, he did so. What Ford did not do was properly credit Movietone or Brick for the sequences he used, even though the film's credits acknowledge the copyright holders of the music used in the film.

One result of December 7th's tortured production history was a large and rather strange cache of heavily edited film outtakes, trims, and associated footage, containing everything from Kodachrome sequences showing the staging of various pieces of wrecked equipment by the film's crew to semipastoral landscapes of Hawaii to posed scenes of Oahu's Japanese inhabitants. All this material became part of Ford's Field Photographic Unit records. In the decades after the war, the Department of the Navy handed over its film records to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in stages (all eventually becoming part of record group 428). Through this process, the production elements for December 7th appear to have been turned over in installments rather than all at once.²⁶ NARA's catalog lists over thirty separate film items titled "DECEMBER 7th" (or a close variant of this).²⁷ Predictably, Brick's official Movietone footage, story 048-078, comprises a sizable portion of this material, including ARC 80389, which is a high-contrast and virtually uncut copy of 048-078.

My survey affirms that more is stored in the DECEMBER 7th records than trims from Toland's studio cameras. A few seconds from the most significant of these films (ARC 81712) appears in December 7th. Shot from the vantage point of the Argonne, this 16mm film begins sometime before 8:40 A.M. and continues off and on past 9:30 A.M., the time at which the Shaw exploded in a massive fireball.²⁸ In addition to this 16mm film, Ford also made good use of Movietone story 048-078, creating three sequences from it: (1) a close-up of the Arizona taken from Aiea, Hawaii, as part of the panorama, (2) a medium shot of a dead Japanese pilot in the water followed by the removal of his plane by crane, and (3) a montage of material shot from a launch in the harbor. When Ford released his reedited version of the film, he credited all photography to U.S. Navy cameramen.²⁹ Within one year of Brick's screen credit for his Pearl Harbor footage in Fox's special newsreel release, his footage was repurposed as navy stock footage in an Academy Award-winning short by a renowned director and shown to war workers. "For Navy use only" might have been the real intent of the Department of the Navy when it returned Brick's film to Fox. But John Ford's use of 048-078 and Ford's subsequent characterization of this film as the work of navy cameramen had muddied the waters.

Restoring Brick's Legacy

Once Brick's film made its way to NARA as part of the December 7th production elements, it became fodder for many television and documentary productions. In this way, Brick's sweeping panoramas of Pearl Harbor from Aiea and his more detailed studies of harbor craft furiously fighting the flames on the West Virginia and Nevada became part of an ill-defined mass of film elements, mostly available in fragments severed from their original provenance. This provenance can, however, be restored with careful study. Some sense of Brick's history as a Fox newsreel cameraman sets the stage for understanding his work filming the attack on Pearl Harbor. After all, why Brick was at the harbor that morning with his camera remains central to ascertaining the historical authenticity of his film record.

Alfred Dillimtash Brick (1892-1951) began work for Fox Film's original newsreel, Fox News, shortly after the newsreel was launched in 1919. Dope sheets document Brick's steady rise through the ranks of newsreel photographers throughout the 1920s.³⁰ A member of the naval reserves, Brick frequently filmed naval subjects for Fox. Most notably, he sailed with the fleet during its 1920 winter cruise. Later the next year, he traveled to Japan on special assignment and filmed a number of stories for Fox focusing on the Imperial Japanese Navy. By 1931, he was based out of Los Angeles filming for Movietone, and when war broke out ten years later, Brick was one of the most senior cameramen in the Movietone stable.³¹ The decision by Movietone brass to take such an asset out of routine newsreel production and commit him to overseas duty in Hawaii would not have been made lightly.

The year 1941 began in an entirely unremarkable way for Brick. At the start of the new year, he covered the Rose Bowl (which made the newsreel) and the Rose Bowl Parade (which did not).³² In February, he covered the unveiling of a statue honoring Seabiscuit as well as the Santa Anita Derby. In March, he was busy getting ready for the 1941 baseball season, filming White Sox practice sessions. Of the eleven stories he submitted to New York in the first three months of 1941, only one spoke to America's growing unease about war. February's Movietone turnover sheets show Brick assigned to cover, with the help of established news photographer C. E. Lehmann, a feature story on the development of new bombproof shelters. The air battles and bombing raids over southern England had ceased only three months earlier, so the story was timely. It also suggested that some enterprising Americans were contemplating the probability that bombs might soon be falling on American soil. The bomb shelter story did not, in the end, make the final cut for Movietone 23, rel. 47. Along with stories like "Patty Berg Teaches Golf to Sailors" (story 042-972) and "Heart Broken Dog" (story 042-969), Brick's bomb shelter film was sent to the vault. By an odd coincidence, it was also sent to Fox's vaults with another story that would prove more important by year's end: the change of command at Pearl Harbor (story 042-977).³³

Although its published newsreels did not fully reflect the country's very real concerns about war with Japan, late in March 1941, Fox editors decided to allocate a senior news asset to this story by positioning Brick in Oahu in anticipation of war with Japan. He arrived in time to join the crew of the Arizona on maneuvers. Gordon Shive, a member of the Arizona's marine guard, wrote home to his mother: "We have a Fox Movietone camera man aboard ship with us this time at sea and he has been taking pictures of the firing and work about ship."³⁴

The tensions that made war seem imminent during spring came and went throughout the year without violence. Still, Brick remained on location for nine months, submitting only six stories to New York, all of which were delivered in the two months prior to the attack. Some of his work appeared in a local newsreel edition before the December 5 opening of A Yank in the R. A. F. (Henry King, 1941).³⁵ The absence of routine newsreel submissions from a senior cameraman argues strongly for his being on special assignment. Such an assignment would have required Brick to work closely with navy and army units to film a wide array of subjects. The fate of Brick's film record from late March through September is not clear but in all probability is tied to the fate of Brick's film from December 7.

Brick had come very far from his early work in New York with Fox News. On the morning of December 7, 1941, like everyone on Oahu, he woke unaware that he was about to participate in a day that would be written into history books. Cameras in hand, Brick headed for Pearl Harbor before the Japanese struck. The dope sheets for 048-078 provide a foundation for establishing some of Brick's movements that morning, and the film itself provides terminus a quo and terminus ad quem for the six reels of film submitted as story 048-078. A number of questions remain to be answered before the full historical context of these films can be appreciated. How do these reels fit within the day's work of Al Brick on December 7? By what means did he secure access to harbor facilities? Why did he film what he filmed? Has all the film shot by Brick that day been accounted for? The more information we know about Brick's activity on December 7, the better we can appreciate the individual parts of his work in relation to its collective whole.

Movietone's editors apparently felt a similar impulse to know everything about Brick's work that day, so they prepared in advance for his return to the United States. When Brick deplaned from a B-25 Mitchell bomber at North American's manufacturing facility, Thomas proceeded to question him about his whereabouts on the morning of December 7. His questions followed the prompts sent to him by telegram from New York:

SUGGESTED QUESTIONS QUOTE AL BRICK TELL WHERE YOU WERE WHEN THE BOMBING BEGAN AND WHAT YOU DID—1. TELL WHERE YOU HAD THE CAMERA WHEN FILMING THE BOMBING. 2. WAS IT A DANGEROUS POSITION. 3. SAY WHETHER ANY BOMBS FELL NEAR YOU. WERE YOU NEAR THE ARIZONA WHEN SHE BLEW UP. 5. TELL HOW LONG A TIME YOU WERE SHOOTING ON THE DAY OF THE BOMBING. 6. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT IT NOW. END OF QUOTE. ANY OTHER QUESTIONS THAT MAY PROVE INTERESTING BASED ON BRICKS EXPERIENCES—³⁶

Though not used in the finished reel, Lowell Thomas's interview (story 048-081) provides valuable evidence about Brick's arrival at the harbor and his actions that day. Story 048-081 can be divided into three scenes: (1) Brick arriving by plane, (2) Brick positioned in front of the engine cowling, and (3) Brick positioned in front of a wall.³⁷ The first question recorded on film asks Brick to describe where he was when the Japanese attacked. The question prompted three takes:

Take 1 (filmed in front of the engine cowling)

BRICK:     I was on my way to Pearl Harbor with one of the boys from the Arizona, a very good officer friend of mine . . . when the Jap planes came over we were about a mile and a quarter . . . about a mile . . . quarter of a mile [several stuttered corrections] from the gates of the harbor. We didn't realize that they were Japanese planes until the third wave came overhead . . . when we happened to see the bombs and the big orange disc and we just went and went until we got into the yard.

Take 2 (filmed in front of the engine cowling; the sound of tower commands forces Brick and Thomas to abandon this take)

BRICK:     I was on my way to Pearl Harbor when the Jap planes came over about a quarter of a mile away from the gates. I was taking a friend of mine from the Arizona out to go on duty that day when all of a sudden we heard a terrific explosion. Went right inside the gates and got my camera out immediately and set it up in back of the car and got a commander.

Take 3 (filmed against a building wall)

Brick:

I was on my way to Pearl Harbor with an officer friend of mine from the battleship Arizona when the Jap planes came over; after we recognized them as being enemy planes I went into the public relations office of Commander Drake so we could go out and start shooting immediately . . .

Thomas:

Where did you . . . ?

Brick:

. . . wherever I set the camera up there was no worry because there was plenty of shrapnel flying all around . . . yes, one fell about thirty feet away from me lucky it was a dud. . . . Commander Drake and I were getting in a motor launch to go out on the bay to photograph the Arizona when she blew up. . . . The bombing started around eight o'clock in the morning and it came off and on until around ten o'clock but I kept working all day and into the night and got some of the shots of the fire at nighttime and all the next day.

These versions all begin with a consistent fact: Al Brick was already en route to Pearl Harbor with an officer from the Arizona when the attack started. Although he stumbles over a few details, Brick was likely driving along the Kamehameha Highway from Honolulu to Pearl Harbor when the first wave of Japanese planes flew over.³⁸

Brick's description of his movements after passing through the main gate of the base warrants scrutiny. In 1941, Pearl Harbor's main gate was situated just west of the northerly bend of the Kamehameha Highway and less than a quarter mile from the waters of Southeast Loch. Passing through the gate, Brick and his officer friend would immediately have to choose between two roads leading southwest and one running north. Brick's testimony provides conflicting evidence about his route inside the base. In the first take, Brick says, "We just went and went until we got into the yard." "The yard" refers to a very specific area inside the base that was located southwest of the main gate and could be reached by driving south and west through Officer's Landing. In take 3, Brick claims that they entered the harbor and then went to find the public relations officer (PRO), Commander Drake, before doing anything else. Lieutenant Commander W. W. Drake was a member of the staff of the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC); to reach him, Brick must have turned north after entering the gate to drive the short mile to the CINCPAC headquarters building nestled on the far side of Southeast Loch in the midst of the submarine base.

In theory, Al Brick's activities on base as a private newsreel man would be coordinated with the PRO. The question is whether theory applied the morning of December 7, once the attack began. If, as Brick contends, he was entering the harbor at the height of the first wave of Japanese planes (roughly 7:55-8:15 A.M.), then his companion from the Arizona would have had one single goal: to reach his duty station aboard ship. From the area of the main gate, the most likely route for an officer to reach a battleship moored off Ford Island would be to grab a launch from Merry Point Landing just north of the main gate between it and CINCPAC.³⁹ Because Brick also mentions an unnamed commander in take 2, and because his route to the PRO's office would have taken him past Merry Point Landing—where his companion could grab a launch to the Arizona—it seems probable that Brick first moved north after entering the gate.

In addition to asserting his presence in the harbor during the attack, Brick's account of his work that day raises an important archival question: were the negatives returned to Movietone the entirety of Brick's film record of the event? As the dope sheets for 048-078 demonstrate, Brick's Mitchell roll begins shortly after 9:30 A.M. and ends with the Phoenix sailing past Battleship Row at 11:36 A.M. So where is the film Brick shot from the "back of the car" (as he notes in take 2)? Where are the shots he took when "there was plenty of shrapnel flying all around" (take 3)? Where are the shots he took that evening, the ones that documented all "of the fire at nighttime" (take 3)?

That Movietone's editors questioned Brick about his location at the time the Arizona exploded reinforces the probability that Brick was inside the base shortly after the onset of the raid. Had Brick initially described his newsreel film to Movietone editors as beginning after the attack was over, questioning him as to his whereabouts when the Arizona exploded would have made little sense. Prompted, however, by that specific question, Brick answers (take 3), "Commander Drake and I were getting in a motor launch to go out on the bay to photograph the Arizona when she blew up." Further evidence that the Department of the Navy assumed that Brick had filmed the death of the Arizona comes from the fact that Fox received film of the Arizona exploding in a massive fireball. Ironically, the footage of the great battleship's demise did not belong to Brick or Movietone. Instead, the 16mm Kodachrome sequence was made by Captain Eric Hakansson on board the hospital ship Solace, moored in East Loch with a good view of the starboard side of the Arizona.⁴⁰ Technically, this film could have been distributed to the roto along with the official navy films released on December 5, 1942, so why don't the dope sheets mention this film along with the other material passed out to the roto by the navy?

The roto films related to Pearl Harbor and distributed to all reels during the first week of December were logged by Fox as stories 048-079 and 048-080. Story 048-079, passed on from Paramount to Movietone, includes over twenty sequences filmed at Hickam and Wheeler fields exclusively, and it is not likely to be the source for Hakansson's film. Footage of the harbor itself taken days after the attack (discernible from Brick's film because all fires are out) was logged in as 048-080, coming to Movietone by way of Pathé. None of the twenty-six shots described on 048-080, however, matches Hakansson's film of the Arizona. If Hakansson's film is not described anywhere within stories 048-078, 048-079, or 048-080, then how did it get into Fox's Pearl Harbor special? On the basis of the newsreel content analysis files at the Library of Congress, Universal and Pathé certainly did not use the film. The shot summaries for Paramount refer to an explosion on the Arizona, and the sequence does, in fact, appear in Paramount's cut story on Pearl Harbor. If Universal and Pathé had access to roto film of the Arizona exploding, it is simply inconceivable that these reels would not make good use of it. It seems likely that Hakansson's film was presumed by Movietone to be the type of actual battle footage they expected to receive from the cache of film shot by Brick during the attack, even if they knew this film was not actually his.

The absence from the Movietone library of footage shot during the Japanese bombardment does not mean that Brick lied to Movietone about his actions on the morning of December 7. I would argue that Brick's long-standing contacts with the navy and his recent work with the Arizona's crew argue strongly for accepting his account of the day. Still, other possible explanations are worth considering. Brick might have botched the job, resulting in film so poorly shot that it was not worth keeping, but this must be weighed against the enormity of his professional experience as a newsreel photographer.⁴¹ The film also might have been ruined during processing, but no mention is made in the paper records of ruined film. Instead, the archival evidence strongly suggests that the 850 feet of film given to Movietone by the navy in 1942 was an incomplete record of Al Brick's newsreel footage taken from March through December 7, 1941. Because it seems likely that the navy retained possession of films made prior to the attack—films like the one Brick made of the Arizona on maneuvers in March 1941—the probability that the navy withheld films made on December 7 must be considered. If this is the case, it is important to accept that Brick and other cameramen moved freely about the harbor that Sunday morning, even though their tracks have not been obvious to historians. Combining Brick's oral testimony with the extant film from 048-078 allows a probable scenario to emerge. Brick drove that morning with an officer from the Arizona into the harbor just as the attack began. Having dropped his officer friend off at Merry Point Landing, Brick then proceeded to CINCPAC headquarters to find Commander Drake of the PRO. Securing Drake as a companion sanctioned Brick's presence on the base during the attack. At this point in the morning, Brick shot the combat footage he describes in the interview: bombs, shrapnel, and all. After the end of the second attack wave, Brick left the grounds of the naval base and drove to Aiea Shoals to obtain panoramic views of the harbor; he then reentered the base in time to board a launch with his Eyemo to film rescue and damage control operations.

Figure 3.

Video frame of unidentified officer with USS Arizona in the background, December 7, 1941. National Archives and Records Administration, ARC 79634.

So where is the film? Some might argue that if film of the actual attack existed, we would have seen it by now. Such was the opinion of NARA's own film specialist, William Murphy, in 1976: "The only authentic footage of the raid was taken from the air by the Japanese."⁴² Murphy's assertion certainty led others simply to repeat his claim: "There were no American newsreel cameramen present to record the destruction as it was being wreaked."⁴³ The evidence in NARA's own holdings clearly points in the opposite direction. Images of the attack are plentiful, and at least two unquestionably authentic film sequences were seen during the war: Hakansson's footage of the Arizona exploding (cut into Movietone and Paramount newsreels as well as John Ford's December 7th) and NARA's ARC 81712 (used in December 7th).⁴⁴ That these two films, excerpts from which were seen by members of the public, drifted from public awareness demonstrates how easily archival moving image material can be misinterpreted, overlooked, or even dismissed by researchers.

Figure 4.

Video frame of traffic outside Pearl Harbor, undated; note the absence of masked headlights. National Archives and Records Administration, ARC 79634.

The DECEMBER 7th NARA records provide some tantalizing clues for researchers looking for lost film because they suggest that the navy took possession of a fair amount of civilian and military film after the attack. ARC 79634 exists as almost one thousand feet of randomly spliced together trims, three of which are of particular interest. The first sequence shows an unidentified officer (Figure 3) crossing the frame as the camera is fixed steadily on the burning Arizona. The second (Figure 4), also a static shot, shows civilian traffic outside what is probably the main gate of Pearl Harbor on the Kamehameha Highway. None of the cars have headlights masked for blackout security, and no security apparatus is present, suggesting that the sequence was filmed prior to the outbreak of war. The third shows civilian traffic in Honolulu, also without the presence of post-attack security details (barbed wire, taped windows, etc.). ARC 79637, another collection of random trims, ends with a thirty-seven-second clip of outrigger canoe races at Waikiki Beach filmed in classic newsreel style: the cameraman riding parallel to the canoes as they come ashore (Figure 5). Here, too, the sequence must have been filmed prior to the attack because Oahu's famous beach was transformed with barbed wire and barricades almost overnight in anticipation of a Japanese invasion force. These pre-attack sequences have the stylistic components of newsreel stories, and the sequence of the officer crossing in front of the Arizona differs from the known amateur elements (Hakansson's and ARC 81712) in its steady camera work. Sourcing all the material found in the DECEMBER 7th records lies outside the scope of this article, but this initial review reveals that some of the unidentified film located in the trims strongly resembles the type of film shot by a newsreel man.

Although the film does not appear within the records for DECEMBER 7th, ARC 77339, "Scenes before Pearl Harbor," is without question the work of a professional cameraman and was, I believe, shot by Al Brick. The shot list for ARC 77339 provided by NARA staff runs as follows:

This description does not note that scenes 1-5 possess an exceptional industrial aesthetic typical of a seasoned newsreel man and far beyond the capacity of an amateur or the type of photographer working within the ranks of the navy before the war. An aerial tracking shot of a machine shop (Figure 6) well demonstrates this aesthetic, as does a shot of dry dock 1 accepting a vessel for repair and refitting, the cameraman framing the shot from inside the wheelhouse (Figure 7). A similar playful geometric composition can be found late in the film wherein the cameraman circumscribes the linearity of the yard's massive hammerhead crane through the modest porthole of an unidentified vessel (Figure 8). During his newsreel career, Brick shot a great deal of industrial material, as factories and industrial processes were common enough subjects. In 1923, for example, he made an extensive study of the new electrical plants at Niagra Falls, and in 1925, he filmed the construction of the French Navy's dry-dock facilities at Le Havre. Pearl Harbor's yard would have been an obvious news story, especially because it was the subject of enormous expansion in the years leading up to the war.⁴⁶

Al Brick filmed ARC 77339, of that I have little doubt. Why, however, is the film in navy records when it does not appear in the Movietone library records?⁴⁷ The amount and quality of interior detail in the navy yard film would have made it a sensitive and

Figure 5.

Video frame of prewar surfing at Waikiki Beach, undated. National Archives and Records Administration, ARC 79637.

Figure 6.

Video frame of machine shop, U.S. Naval Base, Pearl Harbor, undated. National Archives and Records Administration, ARC 77339.

highly censorable subject.⁴⁸ As with any footage documenting the Japanese attack, Brick may have been asked by the navy to surrender this film for review. ARC 77339's survival suggests that some—if not all—of Brick's preattack and December 7 film was surrendered to the navy. Some of this material went into the December 7th project, either to be used in the film or to provide research material for Ford and Toland's documentary; these films might have been copied for this purpose anytime after February 1942. Others, like ARC 77339, seem to have been withheld without being repurposed.

Figure 7.

Video frame of unidentified ship in dry dock as seen from the wheelhouse, U.S. Naval Base, Pearl Harbor, undated. National Archives and Records Administration, ARC 77339.

The most immediate audience for any film of the attack itself would have been the Knox Investigation (December 9-14, 1941), followed by all subsequent investigative committees. Once processed and printed for this purpose, Brick's film would have become part of the mass of classified material providing documentation for committee hearings. Unlike Ford and Toland's group, which was working with motion picture film, the military and congressional hearings performed their work on paper and with still photographs. Not only would still slides or prints have been easier to incorporate into testimony, but also these materials would have been easier to file with the official records of the various committees. It is easy to file a photographic print with paper records; filing a 35mm film can is a bit more challenging.⁴⁹ The conversion of a motion picture record of an event into a series of still photographic records leaves little trace once the celluloid records have become prints. Movietone story 048-078 was subject to such a conversion: the small sample of still photography posted online by the Naval Historical Center includes several photographs that are identical to individual frames from Brick's 048-078 footage, especially stills NH h50766 (USS Phoenix) and NH h97376 (view of the harbor from Aiea).⁵⁰ Without Brick's missing motion picture film, we cannot know for certain if any more of the dramatic still frames of the attack might be properly sourced to Brick, but this possibility should be considered.

Figure 8.

Video frame of a hammerhead crane as seen though a ship's portal, U.S. Naval Base, Pearl Harbor, undated. National Archives and Records Administration, ARC 77339.

Al Brick was certainly at Pearl Harbor shortly after the attack ended; Movietone story 048-078 and its associated paperwork prove this without question. At the very least, Brick should once again be given credit for his film, as he briefly was in December 1942 by Movietone and LIFE magazine. But sufficient evidence exists to contend that Brick filmed the attack itself. His work—even in the film's absence—should be noted as part of the larger historical record of the events of that day. Some may still wish to put off Brick's account as a newsreeler's fishing yarn, and the film's absence challenges researchers to continue seeking further confirmation to substantiate the claim being made here. If Brick was lying, he continued to repeat that lie until his death, to the point that it became a defining moment for his professional career. When the San Francisco Examiner memorialized Brick, it invoked Pearl Harbor: "[He] hired a boat and went out in the harbor while Japanese planes were still overhead in the fateful attack."⁵¹ But given his long history with the ships and crews of the vessels anchored in the harbor that morning, it seems unlikely that Brick would lie about his role in the day's events. During the winter cruise of 1921, he lived with the men of the Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Oklahoma for five months; he filmed their boxing matches, their drills, and their revelry in port. It is doubtful that any sailors from the 1921 winter cruise were still aboard in 1941, but to Brick—traveling with his own unidentified "officer friend" from the Arizona—the men on those ships in the harbor that Sunday morning would have been his mates in the fullest sense of the term. When Brick finally returned to the U.S. mainland in December 1942, he took up his regular duties on the West Coast as a civilian newsreel cameraman for Movietone. In 1947, he became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was Movietone's West Coast supervisor at the time of his death.⁵²

Restoring the provenance of Brick's film is the first step of a larger and historically important project of treating the still and motion picture records of the attack as valuable historical records, each with a particular provenance locatable in space and time. Though the significance of this work for an event of the magnitude of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is readily apparent, similar work on actuality films of all types remains vitally important to our historical consciousness in the broadest sense. Understanding and promoting the provenance of our moving image historical records will be one of the field's most pressing challenges as the world moves more completely into an age awash with digital detritus.