MovieChat Forums > Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo Discussion > Out of the Country for Three Months?

Out of the Country for Three Months?

posted 14 years ago by TorontoJediMaster
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One scene that I found somewhat jolting was a scene where Ellen Lawson is on the beach with two other pilot's wives.

They're wondering what they'll do with their husbands gone for three whole months. They were worrying about three months? One was planning on taking a war job for exactly that duration and probably give it up as soon as her husband returned.

Was this something the screenwriters came up with, or was that a genuine sentiment of military wives at that early stage in the war that they would be distressed over their husbands being gone for three months?

Did anyone point out to them that the war had been raging for almost three years at that point? It seemed to me that they all had been living like they still weren't in the war and had been enjoying a (comparatively) normal homelife. They would follow their husbands to various bases and have them come home at night. I guess they would have been shocked to learn that there were fighting troops that hadn't seen their homes or families for over two and a half years already (e.g. The 1st Canadian Division had gone overseas in December of 1939, and would remain until the war ended). Some U.S. Army and Marine Divisions had already been sent to Britain and/or the Pacific with an indefinite return time, not to mention the troops already in combat (troops in the Phillipines, naval units, etc.) who would definitely not be returning anytime soon. Meanwhile, they wonder what to prevent boredom setting in over three months?

You would think that some of the wives were married to career officers and recognized that long separations were a norm. As well, wouldn't they be aware that overseas deployments would just over the horizon for Army Air Force personnel and three months would be nothing?

It seemed to me that the wives shown in the film were blissfully ignorant about what was ahead. Was this a genuine sentiment, or an image of beautiful detachment that the screenwriters had?

[–] whiskeyTango-06 9 years ago

this film was released in 1944, but the actual raid took place just about 4 months after the attack on pearl harbor -- in early 1942.

so, to your point, the men would be away from their wives almost as long as the war itself had existed (from a US point-of-view) at the time.

[–] Reedmalloy 9 years ago

In the opening scene, when Doolittle is on the phone to York, he tells him to "Get 24 B-25s with volunteer crews down to Eglin Field as soon as you can. The job will take them out of the country for about three months."

The original concept for the raid was to fly to fields in China still held by the Nationalists, refuel, and fly to India. The bombers would then be left there and the crews returned to the United States and their original group. That was estimated to have required about three months from date of departure from Oakland to return to their base in South Carolina. Undoubtedly husbands told wives they expected to be gone three months.

The move to Eglin took place less than three months after Pearl Harbor and few in America, military or civilian, had any realistic expectations of what to expect. Except for a meager number of pilots sent to Australia to reinforce the Philippines, few had even begun to think about deployment. No American divisions arrived overseas until April 1942, when the 41st and 32nd Divisions arrived in Australia. The first elements of the 1st Marine Division did not deploy to the South Pacific until June. All these moves were secret and the public was unaware of them.

Most of the crews were not career servicemen (although a number went on to careers after the war) but men with less than two years experience (and they were the most experienced B-25 group in the Army Air Forces, which was why they were selected). These were the first wave of new men who had joined in 1940 or early 1941 during the rapid expansion of the Air Corps from a small total force that had totaled only 20,000 men in the summer of 1939.