Synopsis
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is an American war film produced
by Sam Zimbalist, written by Dalton Trumbo, and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. It is
based on the true story of the Doolittle Raid, the U.S. retaliatory airstrike
against Japan four months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Background
On the morning of 18 April 1942 16 B-25B Mitchell
twin-engine medium bombers were launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet
(CV-8) about 650 nautical miles off the east coast of Japan. Commanded by Lt.
Col. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, the planes set off on a top secret mission to
bomb targets in Tokyo and other Japanese cities in order to (1) retaliate for
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor four and a half months prior, (2) boost
American morale, and (3) demonstrate that Japan was vulnerable to air attack.
The plan was to land the bombers in China after the raid; landing them on an
aircraft carrier was impossible. Unfortunately, the planes had to launch 170
miles farther out than was originally planned when the task force was spotted
by a Japanese patrol boat. After bombing their targets in Japan, all 16 B-25s
ran out of fuel well short of their recovery airfields in China and either
crashed on land or ditched at sea. Of the 80 airmen deployed (5 to a plane), 3
were killed in action and 8 taken prisoner by the Japanese (of which 3 were
executed, 1 died in captivity, and the other 4 eventually repatriated). With
every bomber lost and damage inflicted on Japan minimal and easily repaired,
the Doolittle Raid was, for all practical purposes, an abject and costly
failure. It was, however, a resounding propaganda success that lifted American
morale when news of the raid was splashed across America’s newspapers on 19 May
1942. In January 1943, one of Doolittle’s pilots, Capt. Ted Lawson—who lost a
leg in the raid—began to write a book about the mission entitled Thirty Seconds
Over Tokyo with the help of newspaper columnist Bob Considine. Lawson and
Considine spent four nights and two days at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington,
D.C., sketching out the story but were not allowed to publish it until after
detailed information on the raid was released by the War Department on 19 April
1943, a full year after it occurred. The book-length story was first serialized
in six successive issues of Collier’s magazine (22 May–26 June 1943). In early
July Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer Sam Zimbalist secured the movie rights from
Lawson and assigned Dalton Trumbo to adapt Lawson’s story to the screen. After
meeting with Lawson and other military officials in Washington, D.C., Trumbo came
to the conclusion that the raid had been staged for propaganda purposes only.
Accordingly, he fashioned a propagandistic script that emphasized the skill and
heroism of the bomber crews and the heroic role that Chinese guerillas played
in rescuing their American allies from the clutches of the Japanese, the latter
point meant to refute the notion pushed by the Hearst newspapers: that the
conflict in the Pacific was at base an Oriental-Occidental race war (Ceplair
and Trumbo, 2014).
Production
The filmmakers received the full cooperation of the U.S.
Navy and U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) and worked closely with Air Force chief
Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, Jimmy Doolittle, Ted Lawson, and other airmen who
participated in the raid to achieve a high degree of authenticity. Location
shooting took place at Mines Field in Los Angeles, at Mills Field in San
Francisco, at the Alameda Naval Air Station near San Francisco, at Hurlburt
Field (near Mary Esther, Florida), and at Eglin Field (near Valparaiso,
Florida), present-day Eglin AFB, which was the actual base where the Doolittle
Raiders trained. The filmmakers used USAAF B-25C and -D bombers, which were
quite similar to the B-25B Mitchells used in the raid, further ensuring
verisimilitude. Auxiliary Field 4 (aka Peel Field) was used for the
short-distance take-off practice scenes. With the war still raging, an aircraft
carrier was unavailable—the USS Hornet itself had been sunk in the Battle of
the Santa Cruz Islands on 27 October 1942—but a mix of realistic studio sets
and archival footage accurately re-created the USS Hornet scenes. Second-unit
aerial cinematography featured Los Angeles masquerading as Tokyo and Santa
Maria (between Pismo Beach and Santa Barbara) simulating the coast of China.
The film was shot in sequence between April and June 1944.
Plot Summary
An opening title card reads: “One-hundred and thirty-one
days after December 7, 1941, a handful of young men, who had never dreamed of
glory, struck the first blow at the heart of Japan. This is their true story we
tell here.” After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army Air Force quickly
hatches a plan to retaliate by bombing Tokyo and four other Japanese cities:
Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya, and Kobe. Tapped to lead the mission, Lt. Col.
James Doolittle (Spencer Tracy) assembles an all-volunteer force. Their
top-secret training involves learning to get their B-25 bombers airborne in the
extremely short take-off distance of 500 feet or less—the deck length of an
aircraft carrier. After depicting the training process at Eglin Field, Florida,
and Naval Air Station Alameda (San Francisco Bay), the film depicts the raid
and its aftermath. While en route to Japan, a Japanese picket boat detects the
Hornet’s task force and reports its location by radio. The boat is sunk, but
the bombers are forced to take off at the outer limit of their fuel range.
Nonetheless, they make it to Japan and drop their bombs. After the attack, all
but one of the bombers run out of fuel before reaching their recovery airfields
on mainland China, either ditching in the sea or crash-landing along the coast.
Lt. Ted Lawson (Van Johnson) tries to land his B-25 on a China beach but
crashes in the surf in bad weather and darkness. Seriously injured, Lawson and
his crew face a grueling transit back to American lines, led and aided by
Chinese allies. While he is en route, Lawson’s injuries are so severe that the
mission’s flight surgeon, Lt. Thomas “Doc” White (Horace McNally) has to
amputate one of his legs. The story ends with Lawson being reunited with his
wife, Ellen (Phyllis Thaxter), in a Washington, D.C., hospital.
Reception
Released on 15 November 1944, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
enjoyed widespread critical acclaim and did well at the box office, eventually
earning $6,247,000 in domestic and foreign ticket sales against a production
budget of $2.9 million—a $1,382,000 profit, minus promotional expenses.
Likewise, reviews were effusive. For example, Bosley Crowther called the movie
“a stunning picturization of an episode crammed with drama and suspense. And so
expert are the re-enacted film scenes that it is hard to distinguish them from
a few news shots cut in. As a matter of fact, all of the production involving
planes and technical action is so fine that the film has the tough and literal
quality of an Air Force documentary … it is certainly a most stimulating and
emotionally satisfying film” (Crowther, 1944).
Reel History Versus
Real History
In general terms, the movie version of Thirty Seconds Over
Tokyo is a faithful adaptation of Lawson’s book, though the film widens its
focus and presents a more evenly paced procedural history that recounts the
planning of the raid, the pilot training, the voyage of the Hornet, the raid
itself, and its aftermath. Lawson’s understandably more subjective account
devotes much more time to his ordeal in China after crash-landing and his
recovery stateside. Other changes were made to conform to Hays Code strictures
and for propaganda purposes. Trumbo’s script passes over the extremely risky,
even foolhardy, nature of the Doolittle mission that put half the U.S. Pacific
Fleet in jeopardy on a mission of negligible military value. Accordingly, in
the movie, the bomber pilots are excited to leave early when the task force is
spotted by a Japanese patrol boat. In reality, the sighting meant that they
would not have enough fuel to reach their destination airfields in China (i.e.,
the raid suddenly became a de facto suicide mission). An early departure also
meant that the raid would have to occur in daylight hours, when the bombers
were more vulnerable to being spotted and attacked by Japanese anti-aircraft
fire and fighters. The film’s depiction of Lawson’s crash landing is
historically accurate, though his injuries were actually far worse. Although
the movie does pays tribute to the Chinese for their invaluable help in
rendering medical aid to American fliers and getting them to safety, it
completely elides the fact that Japanese occupation forces exacted a terrible
retribution, costing a quarter million Chinese lives so that Americans could
enjoy a short-lived boost in morale.
