When Jim first comes into the cabin of the derelict freighter to meet Basie, the fried rice which Basie stirs contains something that looks like meat. Later shots of the pan and then the served meal show rice only.
When Jim is being driven through the city at the beginning and sees the beggar, his window is up in shots from outside the car. In shots from inside the car, the window halfway down.
In an early scene, when Jamie's mother is sitting on the foot of his bed, she lights a cigarette. When she stands to exit the room, the cigarette has disappeared.
Early in the movie, Jamie is in bed, his mother is tucking him in and his father is standing over watching them both, holding a newspaper in his hand. Just before the scene ends, the father and his newspaper jump to the right.
When Jim is hiding from the guard in the muddy field, the mud on his face changes from scene to scene.
At the beginning, Jim encounters Japanese soldiers in the city as they are gathered for a meal. They eat dumplings family-style, using long, blunt-ended chopsticks. Japanese people generally use pointed chopsticks. If there is a common bowl of food, Japanese turn their chopsticks around to transfer the food to their own bowl, and then eat with the narrow end.
Jim could not have witnessed the atomic bomb explosion in Japan with anything approaching the detail shown in the film. The closest point of the Chinese mainland to Nagasaki is about 475 miles away, and Hiroshima is about 640 miles away. Even with no obstacles, the curvature of the earth would allow him to see nothing more than a brief dim glow on the horizon.
The movie depicts Kamakazi pilots preparing to leave on their suicide missions. There were no Kamakazi missions flown from mainland China airbases.
When the P51 strafe the camp in Jim is in, one P51 drops its two 500 pound bombs from no more than 30 feet above the deck. This would never be done as the blast from the bombs would destroy the aircraft. The plane would be at a much higher altitude.
Although B-29s bombed a supply depot at Hankow, China in December 1944, most targets were located in Japan. The valuable planes would not have been used on a small Chinese airfield and certainly not at low level. The B-29s bombed from high altitude until General LeMay ordered low-altitude incendiary bombing of Japan in March 1945.
When Jamie first approaches the crashed Zero at the costume party, the rudder on the tail is straight. When his model plane disappears over the hill and he gets out and goes after it, the rudder on the Zero is all the way to the left. Between those shots, he is sitting in the wrecked aircraft playing with the controls. He could have pressed the rudder pedals.
When Jamie is thrown into the truck to Soochow, Christian Bale really cuts the top of his head. Blood appears above his forehead, and a drop splashes on his nose.
In the POW camp, when Basie stands at the dead woman's stretcher and tells her children "She's with God now", she blinks behind the veil.
During the very last shot of Jim's suitcase floating in the river, a rope is visibly tied to its top right corner, leading off the right side of the screen, keeping the suitcase from drifting out of the shot.
When the P51 drops 2 bombs at low altitude the dummy bombs can be seen to bounce off the runway.
Early in the movie, when the mother pats the kids arm putting him to sleep, the way his arm moves shows the junction of two different takes.
Jim uses CPR on the dying woman. CPR was developed in 1960.
When an older kid chases Jim, they pass a poster for Gone with the Wind (1939). The film was released in 1939, but the poster is from the 1967 re-release.
In the establishing shot of the film's final scene, set in the glass house, the top deck of a modern British double-decker bus is visible, moving along behind a wall, in the background at top right.
The British ship in the harbor that Jim signals is a class of destroyer that were launched in the mid 1950s.
The model airplanes Jim sets on fire are plastic models by AURORA, released in 1957.
When the P-51D pilot waves at Jim, just before the close-up of the pilot, a white Range Rover is parked on the airfield as the Mustang passes.
As Jim is admiring the parked Japanese fighter plane, the Japanese guard dramatically chambers a cartridge into his bolt-action rifle. As he does so, however, he simultaneously ejects a perfectly good cartridge that had already been chambered.
When the choir sings at the beginning, and during Jamie's solo, the camera pans right to left. As it passes the boy to Jamie's left, the boy glances at the camera.