ORIGINALLY, HOOPER WAS MEANT TO DIE When the shark attacks Hooper's cage, there's live footage of a real Great White with a rope hanging from its mouth. This shark's mouth is clearly much smaller than the shark's mouth when it attacks the boat moments later. These scenes were filmed by noted shark photographers Ron Taylor and Valerie Taylor with the help of shark expert Rodney Fox specifically for the movie. Because the Great White sharks they filmed would be smaller than the mechanical shark in the movie, they constructed a smaller version of Hooper's shark cage. Inside the cage they alternately used a small mannequin or a little person. One of the sharks they attracted got caught in the cage's cables and tore it apart trying to escape. The footage was so good that they changed the script to reflect the destroyed cage and Hooper escaping by hiding on the ocean floor. However, the small person used in the scene refused to go back in the miniature cage, wh...
As news of Pearl Harbor broke in Tokyo, diplomatic immunity vanished. American staff frantically burned codebooks as Japanese police locked the gates, turning the U.S. Embassy into a prison.
Ambassador Joseph C. Grew, along with his staff, their families, and a handful of American journalists, found themselves sealed inside. For the next six months, the roughly 65 internees lived under strict confinement. The Japanese government cut off all direct communication with the outside world, allowing contact only through the neutral Swiss legation. As the Japanese winter set in, fuel was strictly rationed, and food supplies dwindled, forcing the staff to survive on whatever provisions they had stockpiled.
While the embassy staff endured the cold, neutral nations brokered an intricate diplomatic swap between the warring powers. Switzerland and the International Red Cross negotiated an agreement to exchange Allied diplomats and civilians trapped in Asia for Japanese diplomats and citizens interned in the Americas.
The journey home began in June 1942. The Americans boarded the Japanese ocean liner Asama Maru at Yokohama, which sailed south, stopping in Hong Kong and Saigon to pick up more internees. The ship, painted with large white crosses to avoid submarine attacks, crossed the Indian Ocean to the neutral Portuguese colony of Mozambique.
In the port of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), the Asama Maru rendezvoused with the MS Gripsholm.
The Swedish liner MS Gripsholm, chartered by the U.S. government, featured massive neutrality markings to ensure safe passage across active submarine zones. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Chartered by the U.S. government, the Swedish liner had sailed from New York carrying Japanese diplomats, including Ambassador Kichisaburō Nomura and special envoy Saburō Kurusu, who had been negotiating in Washington on the eve of the attack.
The exchange was tense but orderly. Over several days in late July, the two groups swapped ships. The Japanese boarded the Asama Maru for the return trip to Tokyo, while Grew and the American internees settled into the Gripsholm. The Swedish ship sailed westward, eventually arriving in New York Harbor on August 25, 1942, ending a nine-month ordeal for the embassy staff.
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