Turner Classic Movies showed the original uncut "censured" version of this movie on 15 September 2015. During the introduction with Ben Mankiewicz and Mark Harris, one of many reasons why the movie was censored was in 1943 it was considered too racist against the Japanese.
The Japanese planes attacking Pearl Harbor were US "Dauntless" bombers.
The attack scenes were a mix of re-creations, models and some real footage. Some of the re-creations are of such quality that they have been included in subsequent documentaries ever since, often mistaken for actual footage of the attack.
Other reasons this film was cut to 32 minutes was that it asked embarrassing questions about the military's preparedness - the lack of long-range reconnaissance flights and air patrols, for instance, which were considered damaging to the moral of the country, and it had a segment dealing with the Japanese-American population in Hawaii and how they responded to and were affected by the attack - at a time when Japanese-Americans were being evacuated and interred on the west coast of the USA.
John Ford was brought in to re-shoot some scenes, shoot new ones and re-edit the film after the Army expressed its displeasure with the results of original director Gregg Toland.