American Hero Jimmy Doolittle and His Raiders

While war raged in Europe in December of 1941, the Japanese planned a surprise attack on American naval forces stationed at Pearl Harbor on the Island of O'ahu in the United States territory of Hawaii. At approximately 8:00 a.m., Sunday morning, December 7, 1941 the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Pearl Harbor where approximately 100 ships of the U.S. Navy were present. Commander Mitsui Fuchida commanded the striking force of 353 Japanese aircraft. Simultaneously Japanese assaults against the Philippines and against British forces in Hong Kong and Malaya, as well as American bases on Guam and Wake Island, created a huge, two-theater world war.[i] Curiously, the Japanese had in one single stroke made war against the two most powerful naval powers in the world undoubtedly figuring that Great Britain and the United States would be unable to commit an effective war in two theaters.

Lt. Colonel Doolittle asks for Volunteers

On April 18, 1942, just over a hundred days from the Pearl Harbor attack, Lt. Colonel James Doolittle led 16 Mitchell B-25's from the carrier Hornet. All 80 of the men aboard the B-25's were Army Air Corp volunteers who knew that they were going to attack Japan in some capacity but the details were given to them only at the last minute. Mitchell B-25's were medium-sized bombers with little defensive power and a small range. Doolittle knew they would not have the fuel to return to the Hornet so he planned on flying to China, knowing that most of his planes would be forced to crash land.

What they had volunteered for was nothing less than a mission of no return. Their mission was to exact retribution for the attack on Pearl Harbor and end Tojo's regime. The escape route to China was about 1,250 miles, a long distance for the planes. A shorter route to Vladivostok, Russia was denied by the Soviets - strange behavior from a country that had allied itself with the U.S. against the Axis Powers and had serious conflicts with the Japanese in 1905 as well as the spring and summer of 1939. The Soviet's denial would cost many injuries and death to Doolittle's airmen, as well as tens of thousands of Chinese deaths due to Japanese retribution.

Born in Alameda, California, on December 14, 1896, James Doolittle was a junior at the University of California when the United States entered World War I. He enlisted as a flying cadet in the Army Signal Corps, which gave him a commission. He spent the war as a flying instructor in the United States.

Remaining in the Army after the war, he earned a B.A. degree in 1922 and then studied aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from which he received both a Masters in aeronautics and a doctorate degree in aeronautics (the first ever given at MIT). He took a leave of absence from the Army in the period before World War II, but returned to active duty when the war began.

During his flying career he was driven to find ways to improve airplanes. In that quest he scored numerous "firsts" in flying: along with winning racing trophies, he was the first to fly across the U.S. by air in less than one day; the first to fly an outside loop; set world speed records in 1925 and 1931 for a seaplane and the Gee Bee racer respectively; and the first to land an aircraft with instruments alone. He also was instrumental in making more powerful engines with the development of high-octane aviation fuel.[ii]

The use of a B-25 in the attack was a risky strategy. The B-25 was designed to take off from 5,000-foot runways doing 90 mph. The volunteer airmen, eventually known as Doolittle's Raiders, practiced until they could put the B-25's in the air at 50 mph in only 500 feet. The practice was done off the Virginia coast only two weeks before the launch on the Hornet. However, the test planes hadn't been armed with 2,000 pounds of bombs and an extra 1,000 pounds of fuel.

The Tokyo Raid

Doolittle seeked to maneuver the Hornet within 400 miles of Japan, but the carrier was still 600 miles from its target when a small Japanese reconnaissance craft known as a "pilot ship" discovered it. One of the pilot ship's crew told his captain of the carrier but the captain didn't believe it. Finally when he was persuaded to see for himself through binoculars the captain returned to his cabin and shot himself.

Fearing the pilot boat captains would radio Tokyo of a surprise air assault, Doolittle was forced to leave early. Ted Lawson, pilot of the Ruptured Duck, described Doolittle's takeoff: "Doolittle picked up speed and held to his line, and just as the Hornet lifted itself up on the top of a wave and cut through it at full speed, Doolittle's plane took off. He had yards to spare. He hung his ship almost straight up on its props, until we could see the whole top of his B-25. Then he leveled off and watched him come around a tight circle and shoot low over our heads - straight down the line painted on the deck."[iii]

All 16 planes took off with no problem. They were given strange nicknames, Green Hornet, Ruptured Duck (humorously describing the Mitchell's peculiar twin-tailed design), Bat Out of Hell, Hari-Kari-er, Whirling Dervish, Whisky Pete, Fickle Finger of Fate. They went on to bomb Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokossuka, and Nagoya. One plane crash-landed in China but the crew made it safely to Chunking. Two planes were captured by Japanese troops when they landed in Japanese occupied China. They were able to destroy targets like the Japanese Diesel Maintenance Col, Mitsubishi plants, army and naval depots. One plane was forced to drop bombs in the sea when a group of Japanese Zeroes attacked. Ninety buildings were destroyed.

Chiang Kai-shek cabled U.S. authorities saying, "Japanese troops slaughtered every man, woman, and child in those areas, reproducing on a wholesale scale the horrors that the world had seen at Lidice . . . " Kai-shek referred to the Nazi destruction of the tiny Czech village of Lidice after Czech commandos killed the Nazi's RSHA's (Third Reich's Security Central Office) number two man, Reinhard Heydrich. It is believed that the Japanese slaughtered 250,000 Chinese in the three-month revenge attack. The Japanese flew 600 raids against the Chinese coast where the American flyers found refuge. Japan's retribution included throwing children down wells among numerous other atrocities.

After the war, the facts were uncovered in a War Crimes Trial held at Shanghai, which opened in Feb. 1946 to try four Japanese officers for mistreatment of the eight POWs of the Tokyo Raid. On August 28, 1942, Hallmark, Farrow, and Spatz were given a "trial" by Japanese officers, although they were never told the charges against them. On Oct. 14, 1942, Hallmark, Farrow, and Spatz were advised they were to be executed the next day. The three men wrote letters to their families, which were never sent and found in 1946 in Japanese military records. Only after the war did the families see the letters. Spatz wrote to his father: "I want you to know that I died fighting for my country like a soldier." Hallmark: " . . . I did everything that the Japanese have asked me to do and tried to cooperate with them because I knew that my part in the war was over." Farrow wrote to his fiance that "you are, my life" and thanked her "for bringing to my life a deep, rich love for a fine girl . . . Please write and comfort Mom, because she will need you -- she loves you, and thinks you are a fine girl . . . "

At 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 15, 1942 the three Americans were brought by truck to Public Cemetery No. 1 outside Shanghai. In accordance with proper ceremonial procedures of the Japanese military, they were each shot in the head. The remaining men stayed in prison until August 1945.

The American public did not learn of the executions until nearly a year later when President Franklin Roosevelt broke the news. The executions, a blatant war crime, outraged the president as it did the public. In later years when the war had turned against Japan, Hirohito tried to gain a conditional surrender through secret negotiations with the Russians. With the memory of Spatz, Hallmark, and Farrow clearly in mind, Roosevelt refused to acknowledge anything but an unconditional surrender, a decision that dramatically changed the length of the war and world history.

Capt. Ed York's plane was the only one to land safely. After dropping his bombs, York realized that he would never reach the Chinese coast. The plane's carburetors were reworked without Doolittle's permission. The plane consumed too much gas, which forced York to land in Russia. Hopefully, they could get fuel to fly to China but the Russians were bemused by their uninvited guests and sent the crew to several internment camps in Russia. They eventually ended up at Ashkhabad near the Persian border. They escaped into Iran where they found the British consul and finally returned to the U.S. in May 1943, over a year after their liftoff from the Hornet.

The trials of the plane called the Ruptured Duck and its crew were told in the book written by its captain, Ted Lawson. In 1944 the book was turned into a movie Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, starring Spencer Tracey as Doolittle. In the same year the film The Purple Heart (starring Dana Andrews, directed by Lewis Milestone) portrayed the difficulties of eight American fliers as they were tortured for information about their mission and presented in front of a Japanese military trial. The eight Americans, though their names are changed, were based on the eight captured Doolittle airmen. The film portrays a military trial where the Americans refuse to provide information on where their mission began (The Hornet) and are all sentenced to execution.

Doolittle ordered his men to bail out over China. Doolittle landed in a rice paddy at night; a night so dark that he was never sure when he would hit earth. He splashed into the paddy that was recently filled with "night soil," fertilizer of human excrement. He found a farmhouse, knocked on the door and announced in Chinese that he was an American. The lights went off and there was silence. He left the farm and found a box on a sawhorse topped with planks. Hoping to find shelter from the cold night rain he jumped in the box only to find a dead man beneath him -- he had jumped into a coffin. Finally he found a Chinese military installation. A major, who spoke a little English, demanded Doolittle's sidearm. The colonel refused to relinquish his pistol, declaring that he was an ally. The major was unconvinced and became more so when they returned to the farm and the owners refused to recognize any of Doolittle's story. The major's troops searched the premises and found Doolittle's parachute, which verified his story. Eventually the colonel was shipped to a friendly Chinese city by train, where President Roosevelt ordered him to Washington immediately.

Execution and Mistreatment

Of the eighty men aboard the 16 B-25s, the Japanese captured eight. The Japanese executed three of the captured men (Hallmark, Farrow, and Spatz). Three of the Raiders died when trying to escape the plane during emergency landings: Cpl. Leland Faktor died when bailing out of his plane; Sgt. William Dieter and Sgt. Donald Fitzmaurice died in a crash landing. From the Ruptured Duck four received serious wounds, one being Lawson who lost his leg.

Of the eight men captured by the Japanese, three were executed, one died of malnutrition, and four remained in captivity. Lt. Meder, Lt. Robert Hite, Lt. George Barr, Lt. Chase Nielsen, Cpl. Jacob DeShazer were held captive by the Japanese with most of that time spent in solitary confinement at Kiangwan Military Prison, Shanghai. Hornet co-pilot Robert Meder, a twenty-five-year old lieutenant from Cleveland, died from malnutrition on December 1, 1943. In April 1943, Hite, Barr, DeShazer, and Nielsen were moved to Nanking, the port city in eastern China on the Yangtze River. The survivors waited for their comrades to rescue them.

Rescue in Peking

During their captivity the Doolittle Raider survivors were bitten by bugs, rats, and lice, which swelled their faces and hands. They were fed a half pint of rice, five ounces of bread and a half a cup of water a day. For the first 120 days of captivity they were not allowed to shave or bathe. They were continually beaten.

Lt. Meder died of malnutrition on December 1, 1943. After Lt. Meder's death and funeral, the other four men began to receive a slight improvement in their treatment though all were suffering from dysentery and beriberi. They gained additional comfort from a lone copy of the Bible. The Bible would give DeShazer particular inspiration as he read and reread it.

In December of 1944 American planes bombed Nanking. The spirits of the men soared. They believed their rescue was imminent. However, weeks went by and there was no return of the planes. On June 15, 1945 a train moved them from Nanking to Peking. They were placed in a Japanese military prison and made to sit all day in their cells on wooden stools facing a wall.

Jacob DeShazer's skin became covered with huge boils. He drifted close to death until a Japanese doctor revived him with vitamin shots. On August 9, 1945, the day the second atomic bomb was detonated over Nagasaki, DeShazer began to pray for peace after hearing a voice instructing him to do so. In the afternoon he heard the same voice again. "The Holy Spirit told me 'you don't have to pray any more. The victory is won.' "[iv]

Six American paratroopers with the OSS were secretly dropped into the outskirts of Peking on August 17. Though the surrender had not been officially signed the OSS agents worked with Japanese officers in locating Doolittle's four remaining men. On August 20 they were located and released. "If they had waited another month," declared Chase Nielsen, "we would have come out feet first."[v] They were flown back to America where they learned that many of their Tokyo comrades had gone on to further combat duty in Europe, North Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific. At the end of the war 61 of the original 80 Raiders were still alive.

DeShazer dedicated his life to Christianity and wrote a pamphlet, "I was a Prisoner of the Japanese," the story of how he learned to forgive his torturers. American missionaries distributed thousands of translated copies throughout Japan. DeShazer's capacity to forgive his captors impressed many Japanese. One of the Japanese that was impressed with DeShazer's attitude was Mitsuo Fuchida, flight commander of the assault on Pearl Harbor. In 1948, Jacob and his wife returned to Japan to preach and were visited by Fuchida. DeShazer's book overwhelmed Fuchida. He became a devotee to Christianity in April of 1950. Fuchida, with DeShazer's inspiration, traveled the world teaching the message of forgiveness became an American citizen in 1966 and died in the United States in 1976.

Lieutenant George Barr, the twenty-five-year old, red-head native of Brooklyn, was the last of the Raiders to return to the U.S. The Kempei Tai (the Japanese Military Police noted for their brutality and special torture methods), believing him to be especially barbaric, mistreated George more than the others. When freed he was too weak to stand, or eat solid food, and American doctors decided he was too ill to travel to the U.S. He was hospitalized at the Grand Hotel de Peking upon his release from Japanese captivity. When he was able to return to the U.S. his mental condition was so dire that he tried to escape hospitals as if he were still in Japanese custody and eventually he tried to commit suicide. He was reported to be "a confused, blocked individual who seldom says more than two or three words at a time."[vi] Eventually he seemed to be lost in the U.S. Army's bureaucracy until a family friend wrote an angry letter to Doolittle. Doolittle quickly found that George had become forgotten in the system; he was without clothes, money, or real medical care. Doolittle was enraged at what happened to George. He immediately got Barr a new uniform, retroactive promotion, $7,000 in back pay, and serious attention from a psychiatrist. He fully recovered and became employed as a management analyst for the Armed Services, but died in 1967, at the age of 50.

Four Japanese officers were tried for their war crimes against the eight Tokyo Raiders. They were found guilty and sentenced to hard labor. Three were sentenced to five years and the fourth to a nine-year sentence.

General Doolittle and His Legacy

Caroll Glines, author of several books on the Doolittle Raid, noted that the Japanese in 1942 were confident that their isolated island was safe from aerial attack. No country, the Japanese leaders told their countrymen, had the technology or nerve to attack Japan. The attack was "a supreme touché to the Japanese warlords," wrote Glines.[vii] Doolittle said of the raid that it was to "give the folks at home the first good news that we'd had in World War II. It caused the Japanese to question their warlords." Doolittle was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and was promoted from Lt. Colonel to Brigadier General for leading the first carrier-based bomber attack on mainland Japan. He continued to lead air operations during the war, on the European, North African, and Pacific fronts, winning promotion to lieutenant general in 1944. He commanded the 12^th Air Force in North Africa, the 15^th in Italy and the 8^th in Okinawa as well as England, where he commanded attacks on Germany during 1944-5.

In 1985 President Reagan made Doolittle a four-star general, the stars pinned on his epaulets by President Reagan and Senator Goldwater. In 1989, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. General Doolittle died at the age of 96 in California on September 27, 1993 and was buried in Section 7-A of Arlington National Cemetery, with his high school sweetheart, Josephine Daniels Doolittle (May 24, 1895-December 24, 1988). Doolittle's citations rank with some of America's greatest military heroes.[viii]

Should the particulars of this story be remembered and detailed? Let General Doolittle have the final word: "I think it deserves to be told not to open old wounds nor to condemn the Japanese. Rather, so that we will all remember what evils an uncontrolled militaristic government can bring to its people and to point up what the consequences can be of our own unpreparedness to meet aggression."

[i] Kirdpatrick, Lyman. Captain Without Eyes - Intelligence Failure in World War II, Westview, Boulder, Colorado, 1987, p. 75.

[ii] Glines, Carroll V. Jimmy Doolittle, Master of the Calculated Risk, Von Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1972, p. 2.

[iii] Counts, Stephen, ed. War in the Air - True Accounts of the 20^th Century's Most Dramatic Air Battles, Pocket Books 1996, New York, 1996.

[iv] Glines, Caroll V. The Doolittle Raid, Orion Books, New York, 1988, p. 187.

[v] Glines, Caroll V. Four Came Home, D. Van Norstrand Co., Princeton, New Jersey, 1966, p. 161.

[vi] Ibid. , p. 200.

[vii] Television interview with Caroll V. Glines, April 2002, in reference to the April 2002 reunion of the Doolittle Raiders, CBS, Sunday Morning.

[viii] Along with the Congressional Medal of Honor he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, with Oak Leaf Cluster; Silver Star; Distinguished Flying Cross, with Two Oak Leaf Clusters; Bronze Star; Air Medal, with three Oak Leaf Clusters; Official Order of the Condor (Bolivia), Yon-Hwei, Class III (China); Knight Commander, Order of the Bath (Great Britain); Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor an Croix de Guerre with Palm (France) Grand Officers of the Crown with Palm and Croix de Guerre, with Palm (Belgium); Grand Command (Poland); Abdon Calderon, First Class (Ecuador). General MacArthur won 22 medals, 13 for heroism; the most decorated American being Audie Murphy who won over 30 citations before the age of 21.