Many of us who were alive during World War II and slightly thereafter may remember the famous quote regarding America being the “sleeping giant”. ‘Be fearful of waking her!” Do not wake a sleeping giant. This is an idiom which means: Do not disturb/annoy/provoke someone powerful who was not disturbing you in the first place. Japan woke a sleeping giant when they invaded Pearl Harbor.
Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is portrayed at the very end of the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, and in the 2001 film Pearl Harbor, as saying after his attack on Pearl Harbor, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." The quotation was abbreviated in the film Pearl Harbor (2001), where it merely read, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant."
