CNN.com - Lavish launch for 'Pearl Harbor'

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii -- Disney's summer blockbuster movie "Pearl Harbor" has been launched with a lavish party on an American aircraft carrier.

The USS John C. Stennis, moored at the scene of the World War II battle on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, was turned into a party ship for the premiere.

For once, the actors and actresses were not the biggest stars of a movie's first screening, with the loudest cheers going to the veterans of the 1941 battle that prompted the U.S to join the war.

Members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors' Association were the first guests to arrive, and they were clapped and cheered as they made their way to the carrier along a pier covered with red carpet.

Some rode in wheel chairs, stopping to shake hands and pose for pictures with young sailors and Marines.

Actor Ben Affleck, who plays a fighter pilot in the movie, said the film contained lessons for the world 60 years after the Japanese attack.

"I think the message is not one about the United States or Japan or the Second World War, right or wrong," Affleck told the Associated Press.

"It's about what a terrible cost it is for people to have to go to war and what a terrible thing it is."

Disney spent $5 million on the party on the flight deck of one of the biggest ships in the U.S. fleet to launch its $135 million film.

A vintage B-25 bomber and a P-40 fighter were displayed on the deck of the 97,000-tonne carrier.

The Stennis was moored a few hundred meters from the memorial for 1,177 USS Arizona crewmen who went down with the battleship in the first 30 minutes of the surprise attack, which killed about 2,400 U.S. citizens.

Veteran Yuell Chandler, 83, said: "Seeing all these people, it's like coming home again."

Chandler, who was a 22-year-old Army sergeant stationed off the Pearl Harbor channel during the attack, added: "I wish all them guys that's in the Arizona was up here instead of me. And all the thousands that got shot up that day. It was a mess."

The film opens in cinemas in the U.S. on Friday and in Britain next month. It tells the story of the attack that drew the U.S. into the war through the lives of two fighter pilots (Affleck and Josh Hartnett) who fall in love with the same nurse (Kate Beckinsale).

It is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Michael Bay whose earlier partnerships include "Armageddon" and "The Rock."

The premiere party is the highlight of a massive promotional effort that includes brochures and movie trailers in Japan, where the movie is scheduled to hit cinemas on July 14.

Promoters hope the movie will be a hit in Japan, despite the sensitive topic.

Yoko Kishi, spokeswoman for the distributor Buenavista International Japan, said the content was not inflammatory to the Japanese because it did not try to make a political or social statement.

"We're confident that the film can appeal to a wide audience, from the young to the old," Kishi added. "It's entertainment, a love story."