THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO 315
scenes of extraordinary beauty and power, but the film as a whole doesn’t quite
cohere into a meaningful statement about war, real ity, or human nature. Traditional
war movie buffs dislike the movie, finding it too diffuse, ultimately ponderous and
pretentious.
Reel History Versus Real History
James Jones’ novel provides a semi- fictionalized account of the Battle of Mount
Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse (15 December 1942–23 January
1943), a series of American assaults on hills at the northeastern end of Guadal-
canal in the closing days of the campaign. Mounted by several U.S. Army and
Marine regiments (part of a total American force of 50,000), these attacks pushed
10,000 defeated, starving, and disease- ridden enemy soldiers— the last remnants
of Japan’s invasion force— toward Cape Esperance, where they were evacuated by
Japa nese destroyers in early February 1943. The taking of Hill 210 in Malick’s
film is therefore synecdotal for what was actually a much larger, bloodier, and
complex battle. The combat action in the film is suitably realistic, as is the film’s
depiction of the condition of the Japa nese troops, but what’s missing is any larger
sense of situational context. As historian Kenneth Jackson points out, the “viewer
learns too little about Guadalcanal, either as personal experience or as grand
strategy. Why was that tiny island impor tant? Why was the fighting on Guadal-
canal dif fer ent from most other Pacific campaigns?... [Nor] does Malick give us
the kind of texture from the novel that would reveal the combat infantryman’s
perspective. For example, we learn nothing of taking souvenirs or gold teeth
from dead and dying enemy soldiers, of trading such trinkets for whiskey from
the Air Corps personnel in rear areas, of homo sexuality in the shared darkness
of a tent, of the ranking of wounds according to how far back from the front each
type of disability would take a person, of the constant strug gle for promotion and
position within the com pany, and most especially of the kind of loyalty for small
units and for each other that would help explain to the viewer why so many per-
sons put their own lives at risk to help fallen comrades. All of those issues were
at the core of Jones’s book.” Jackson further observes that The Thin Red Line prob-
ably does not even render nature the way that soldiers experienced it: “Malick
gives us... paradise, replete with lush green mountains, tropical waterfalls,
and glorious beaches... In fact, American ser vicemen regarded Guadalcanal as
a tropical hell. Ninety- two miles long and thirty- two miles wide, it was mostly
dense jungle, infested with ferocious ants, poisonous snakes, and malarial mosqui-
toes, not to mention lizards, crocodiles, spiders, leeches, and scorpions” ( Jackson,
1999).
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)
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