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I went to see it...twice. I was very skeptical of Hollywood putting out anything military related, but...many Freepers told me there was no PC horsecrap in it, and that it was generally pretty accurate.

You should go see it on the big screen. I have been waiting years for someone to do a WWII Pacific movie with CGI that really showed the ships and planes in a realistic light, and they finally did it.

There were a few things I nitpicked about (they showed Doolittle taxiing his plane for launch, and I don’t believe he moved it at all...he needed every inch, and I thought the conversation between Nimitz and Layton (Nimitz’s Intelligence Officer) about the identification of “AF” by Rochefort was Hollywoodized, but...I have to read Layton’s book he wrote in 1985 before he died. Maybe that is where they got it from.

Go see it in the theater. You won’t be disappointed.

Nice job, RetainMike -- and it inspired some fascinating comments following your lead.

Hey rlmorel, I picked up that 1985 book at UGA Library after seeing the Midway 2019 film.

The book's name is And I Was There by Edwin Layton, who was the intelligence officer advising Nimitz.

I found the first 100 pages plus the chapter on Midway well-worth reading. Clearly the book provided much background material for the film.

The book explains the business of breaking codes, cryptography. It mostly covered the US side, but also gave some perspective on Japanese coding methods. Some interesting tidbits:

Layton and Rochefort became friends when they were both sent to Japan before the war to learn Japanese. At that time, Rochefort was already a top cryptographer, a fact he kept hidden from Layton, who was a general line officer.
Layton's Japanese was good enough to actually have had some one-on-one discussions with Admiral Yamamoto (as the movie showed).
U.S. military cryptography was a political mess. Much time in the book is spent discussing this. Basically, key intelligence was kept from the folks at the Pacific command as Washington saying "we'll tell you what you need to know" -- even as Langford, one of the USA's top cryptography leaders was on the Pearl staff.
A woman "Miss Aggie" was one of the foremost code breakers and she trained many other people in her techniques.
There were periods when the Japanese totally switched their coding system and the Americans would require months to learn that new system. Fortunately we were successfully reading their code in the months leading up to the Battle of Midway. But just before the actual Battle, the Japanese made a switch and we were ignorant for some time afterward.

One other comment I'll make. Somebody remarked that it would "take generations" for a hated enemy like the Japanese to be trusted again.

That's not my experience. My Dad was a gunner's mate aboard an LST at the Battle of Okinawa -- a battle where we lost 5,000 American sailors, due in part to kamikaze attacks.

But I later was stationed in Sasebo, Japan and was always treated with respect as an American sailor. My wife is from that city and when we came back to live in the States my Dad, out of habit, would use the "Jap" word from time to time, but he grew to love my wife and there was a meeting of the minds and mutual respect.

We were married at my hometown on Cape Cod, but we also later held a second wedding reception for the Japanese side of the family at the U.S. Naval Base in Sasebo where I wore my uniform.

Near the end of the ceremony my wife and I received the traditional well-wishing send-off, a big both-arms-raised Banzai (which means "May you live a 1,000 years").

And one of most energetic of those Banzais was given by an older Japanese man who had only one arm.