Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

a good movie about w.w.II. if you like warbirds or stories of w.w.II and the efforts of people to servive this is a movie. it also shows a personal side of the main pilot , his crew and the men around him.

It seems relevant and important to say something about my favorite World War II film -- "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" -- on Veteran's Day. While I did not serve in the military, my dad fought in WW2 in the Pacific at Tarawa, one of the Marines' most heralded battles in history. Dad told me 6,000 men were killed in the four-day shootout for Tarawa, a little island in the Pacific we wanted for an air strip. Five thousand of those deaths, he told me, were Japanese. We buried the Americans in grave and dug trenches for the enemy dead, he said.

None of this says anything about this great film, which relates a time much earlier in the war and reconstructs our first mainland attack on Japan. What makes this film great is its authenticity, being filmed while the war was taking place, and its importance as a gift to the shattered American psyche. Knowing war was imminent after the Nazis overwhlemed Europe beginning in 1939, Americans still did not want to enter the war. After Pearl Harbor -- the equivalent of this generation's 9/11 -- there was no question we would go to war.

Spencer Tracy is magnificent, as always, playing Gen. Doolittle, the leader of the raid. What has always been most interesting for me on repeated viewing of this film is the training the pilots went through in order to lift a B-25 from the deck of a World War II-era carrier. I've seen a B-25 up close; they don't look all that big, truth to tell. Still, it had to be a trial to do this in 1942 -- get one airborne from the relatively short running distance of a carrier deck.

The aftermath of the attack, when the pilots crash their planes in the Pacific off China, and the military personnel's recovery from that Japanese-dominated country, has also always fascinated me. For these and many other reasons, this film is essential viewing for anyone that likes war films. I would be remiss if I did not admit my own private admission about "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo": I've always enjoyed Ted Turner's colorized version he ran on TNT and Turner Classic Movies far more than the original black and white.

You cannot get better than Spencer Tracy as James Doolittle who lead the raid against Japan when America was in desperate straights for a shot back at the Empire of Japan. Tracy is so much better than Alec Baldwin who plays Doolittle with a smarminess. The greater onscreen time though goes to Van Johnson who is a B-25 pilot actually going on the raid. Launching from the Hornet, the raid was a smashing psychological attack against Japan. Shamed by their incompetence, Japanese Generals and Admirals had to play a more defensive game with this unforseen boldness by American pilots. In this film, Van Johnson crash lands in China, loses a leg and makes it back home.

This movie on DVD follows remarkably well Ted Lawson's story as told in his book of the same title. For us older folks who remember World War II, there are excellent scenes of the twin engine B-25 in action. In real life Ted Lawson was injured far worse than shown in the movie, but Van Johnson captured the spirit of the man. The love scenes seem a little long for those who wanted to see more action with the airplanes and their crews. Robert Mitchum, who later became a big movie star, plays a rather small role here. Spencer Tracy plays Doolittle in a very favorable way. All considered, however, this is a well done film.

There's no question the film is framed in a very straightforward, literal way, and that the characters are somewhat hokey All-American stereotypes.

But I think to dismiss the film as simplistic is mistaken. Soon-to-be-Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo includes some deft concepts of collective responsibility and moral tension, including not just the passage on civilian casualties, but also the exchange where the soldiers agree that that they don't hate the Japanese people.

I would also recommend this disc for the special features -- a great short on bad movie etiquette, a vintage cartoon about a bear air raid warden, and a superb 15 minute documentary on the loss of the SS Normandie.