Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944)

Ellen Lawson: Oh, Ted, I'm going to write you a letter every day you're gone. I know they won't deliver them. I won't even mail them, but I'm going to write them anyway. That way we'll kind of be in touch. That way we'll feel close.

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Lt. Bob Gray: [pensively] When I was a kid, I used to dream about going someplace on a ship. Well, here I am!
Lt. Ted Lawson: And out there is Japan. My mother had a Jap gardener once. He seemed like a nice little guy.
Lt. Bob Gray: You know I don't hate Japs yet. It's a funny thing. I don't like them, but I don't hate them.
Lt. Ted Lawson: I guess, I don't either. You get kind of mixed up.
Lt. Bob Gray: Yeah.
Lt. Ted Lawson: It's hard to figure, yet here we are.

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Lieutenant Jacob 'Shorty' Manch: Well feed me corn and watch me grow! How did all this scum get in here?

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According to the documentary Going Hollywood: The War Years, for this movie, the MGM studio recreated the section of an air craft carrier flat top on a sound stage large enough to fit four genuine B25 bomber planes whilst a whole sixty foot miniature was also built, placed in the studio tank doubling as the ocean. Moreover, this special effects Academy Award winning movie utilized model planes, hydraulic jacks, wires, motors, pulleys, and a miniature model of Tokyo used to show the bombing of that city with mini explosions.
Scenes of Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle briefing the B-25 crews on the USS Hornet show a hornet's nest on a branch in the background on the overhead behind Doolittle's left. The presence of the hornet's nest, while possibly a tribute, is an accurate detail. The book upon which the movie is based mentions a dried up hornet's nest hanging nearby as Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle was speaking. The actual Hornet was sunk in 1942 soon after the raid.
The scars visible on Van Johnson's forehead at the end of the film are not makeup, they're real. He was involved in a near-fatal car accident the previous year just after filming A Guy Named Joe. The filmmakers chose to accentuate rather than hide these scars for the post-mission half of the movie, since his character Ted Lawson was quite banged up, too. They're particularly evident in the last scene of the movie when he's on the floor talking with his wife.
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