"Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" is one of the best movies made during the war years. While the typical war film made during WWII avoided realism in favor of jingoism and propaganda, this one excels because it tried to get the facts right and plays almost like a documentary merged with a typical Hollywood drama. When you read about the efforts that MGM went to make the film, you realize it was a real labor of love and the movie holds up remarkably well today.

This film is about the famous Doolittle Raid on Japan which occurred in 1942. While the actual physical impact of the bombing raid was not especially great, it was a bit public relations victory-- bolstering American morale and reducing the Japanese sense of invulnerability which had been prevalent.

The movie begins shortly before the men were recruited for the raid and follows them through training, the actual raid and the fate of a bomber crew. Incidentally, all the planes were lost in the raid...it was intended as a one-way mission.

What makes the film strong is not just the emphasis on realism but the acting and direction. Van Johnson was sort of an 'everyman' for the audience to love and root for...and MGM did a great job ladling on the sentimentality but not laying it on too thick. Having supporting actors like Spencer Tracy, Robert Walker and Robert Mitchum sure didn't hurt, either! All in all, a great film and an excellent tribute to these crazy but very brave men who did what their country asked. As for the best scene in the movie, it's a little one with no dialog...as you see a Chinese woman crying silently as some of the injured Americans are being taken to safety. Stunning.

By the way, an excellent but over-the-top film about crew captured by the Japanese following the Doolittle Raid is also portrayed in Twentieth Century Fox's "The Purple Heart". It's an excellent film but occasionally lapses into propaganda mode a few times too often to be taken as seriously as "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo".

I know it's a World War Two propaganda movie. And I know that Hollywood treatments of historical subjects must be taken with a huge boulder-size grain of salt. That being said, this is a credible movie that is worth watching. The fact is that the Doolittle Raid DID happen, that in early 1942 the outcome of the war against Japan was at best uncertain, and that Japanese aggression post Pearl Harbor posed a clear and imminent threat to the United States. It's hard to believe that Japan was THAT powerful, but it was. Japan occupied or controlled about one-quarter of the surface of the world, including most of eastern China, all of Manchuria, the ENTIRE Korean peninsula, ALL of southeast Asia, including ALL of Indonesia and Singapore, the Philippines, and the entire western Pacific Ocean. And Japan accomplished this ALL BY ITSELF. So the Doolittle Raid was a truly momentous event, as the movie aptly shows. The Doolittle Raid marked the beginning of the end for Japan, because it blew away the myth of Japanese invincibility and proved to the world that it was just a matter of time before a fleet of sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers would be followed by huge air armadas of B-29s that would crush Japanese militarism for all time and eventually convert Japan from an implacable enemy to an allie and a friend.

On April 18, 1942 my mother was then 17 years old and working at the Bausch and Lomb factory in Rochester, New York after school. Like other factories in America, this place which made optical equipment was converted to making gas masks for the war effort. She was also worried as were the rest of her family about an uncle of mine who was in the service.

Morale was pretty low among the civilian population and in the Armed Services. Four months after Pearl Harbor and Wake Island and the Phillipines we were in a bad way. The Japanese who attacked were thousands of miles away, their naval task force roamed the Pacific at will.

Her biggest memory of the homefront during World War II was the news of the Doolittle raid over Tokyo. In terms of damage and especially with what was later done when Curtis LeMay got a lot closer, it was minimal to say the least. But the news at the homefront sent folks into rapturous delight. The enemy that had hit us had now been struck back on his home turf.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (and that's just about all it was) came out two years later when it was decided by the powers that be in Wasington, DC that the story could be told. The film is based on the real life experience of one of the B-25 crews that Lt. Colonel James Doolittle commanded. Major Ted Lawson and the survivors of his B-25 crashed on the China shore and with the help of Chinese guerillas, managed to escape the occupying Japanese army.

These aren't World War II movie heroics, this was in fact the real deal. Van Johnson who probably typified the American Armed Service man in World War II more than any other actor, including John Wayne, gives one of his best performances as Major Lawson.

When the wartime censors lifted the ban, Lawson told his story in the pages of Collier's magazine, with Bob Considine doing the co-writing. The movie is pretty faithful to the story, making Thirty Second Over Tokyo one of the best if not the best war combat film made in Hollywood during the conflict.

Doing the guest star shot as Doolittle himself is Spencer Tracy. Jimmy Doolittle had quite a career himself and it's a pity that no one has sought to make a film of his life. Too bad also that Spencer Tracy didn't reprise the part in such a film after World War II.