Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (47 page)

—KEN REDDY, APRIL 18, 1942, DIARY ENTRY

THE RUSSIANS WOKE YORK
and his crew on April 19 at around 9:30 a.m., informing them that breakfast would be served in half an hour. The fliers sat down soon afterward with the colonel and his staff in the same downstairs room they had been in the night before, asking right away about obtaining gasoline to fly on to China.

“Business must never be discussed over meat and wine,” the colonel said. “All decisions will be made in due time. First you must eat and drink heartily.”

Caviar, cheeses, pickled fish, and black bread crowded the table along with other delicacies. The first course consisted of a cream soup followed by roast goose and fried potatoes. The fliers next feasted on a roast pig, which was served whole to allow the men to slice off individual portions. A hot chocolate drink rounded out the five-hour meal. “During this time, we had toasted the Red Army; they had toasted the US Army. We had toasted the Red Navy; they had toasted the US Navy. We had toasted the Russian Air Force; they had toasted the US Army Air Corps,” Emmens recalled. “We toasted victory to the free people of the world about three times.”

“Tell you what,”
York finally said to the colonel. “How’d you like to see the inside of our ship?”

The Russian eagerly accepted the offer. York even offered, despite the vodka, to give the colonel a flight, which he smartly refused. The Russians explored the bomber, enjoying a laugh over the broomstick tail guns.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a little ride?” York asked the colonel as he fired up the B-25’s twin engines. The terrified colonel almost knocked Emmens over as he rushed to climb out of the bomber.

The fliers returned to their rooms about 3:45 p.m., no closer to the goal of securing gasoline and flying to China. The inebriated airmen stretched out, only to be awakened by the interpreter forty-five minutes later.

“You must hurry and get up,” he demanded. “You are leaving at once. The airplane is waiting!”

“My God, I have never flown in this condition, but so be it,” Emmens thought. “If they have gassed our airplane, let’s get the hell out of here and get on it.”

Emmens could at least get out of bed. “I finally had to pull York up to a sitting position,” he recalled. “We were in bad shape, easy to handle.”

The Russians ushered the fliers onto an aged bus and drove them out to a waiting DC-3, which the locals dubbed the “Roosky Dooglas.”

“Where are we going,” one the fliers asked, “and what about our bags?”

“You will learn everything in due time.”

The DC-3 roared into the afternoon sky and the airmen soon fell back asleep, a journey interrupted only by the occasional trip to the rear of the plane that left Emmens paler each time. The airmen deduced that the plane flew in a northerly direction, but could discern little else over the two-and-a-half-hour trip.

“Khabarovsk,” the colonel announced as the plane circled an airport at nightfall in preparation for landing.

A large industrial city in eastern Siberia, Khabarovsk sat along the Amur River just north of Manchuria. The raiders disembarked and climbed into several waiting cars, which drove them to a nearby building. The Russians led them inside and to an office occupied by a Russian officer, who stood behind a large desk.

“May I introduce to you General Stern commanding general of the Far Eastern Red Army, who wishes
to ask you a few questions,” the interpreter said.

Stern’s physical stature wowed Emmens, who counted at least four stars on his shirt’s collar. “General Stern was the nearest to a human ape I think I have ever seen,” Emmens recalled. “His shoulders must have been three feet across, narrow hips, and his arms hung almost to his knees, practically no neck. I remember just being amazed at his totally bald head. There wasn’t a hair on it anywhere.”

The general interrogated the fliers about the raid, about targets, the route across Japan, and whether any enemy planes had followed them, a question he repeated several times. The airmen answered candidly but refused to reveal the role of the
Hornet
. The general concluded the half-hour interview with a lengthy statement, which the interpreter translated. “The General has asked me to tell you that according to a decision reached between our two governments and by direction of orders from Moscow, you will be interned in the Soviet Union until such a time as further decisions are made in your case,” the interpreter said. “You will commence your internment immediately in quarters which have been prepared for you outside the city of Khabarovsk. You will be given proper protection and attempts will be made to make you comfortable.”

The Russians loaded the raiders back into the cars and drove them along narrow and unpaved streets. The car’s single headlight illuminated men and women dressed in rags. Factories stood behind tall fences, often overseen by guards atop watchtowers.

After about an hour the cars rolled up outside a one-acre fenced property that the fliers would later learn the Russians called a dacha, a country house often used for Red Army officers on rest. The primitive property had enough bedrooms for the raiders and guards as well as a kitchen, dining room, and odiferous toilet.

“Well, here we are,” York said.

The disheartened fliers had awakened that morning expecting to obtain gasoline and fly on to China. Now they faced an uncertain future. Would the internment last a week or a year—or worse, the war? No one knew, though the airmen definitely doubted the general’s claim that this was a joint arrangement, decided by both the American and the Russian governments. “There wasn’t anything to do but sit down,” Emmens later wrote. “We had no baggage with us, no unpacking to do.”

A Russian officer appeared
at the door, introducing himself as Mihaiel Constantinovich Schmaring, a name the raiders would soon shorten simply to Mike. “I speak a little English,” he said. “I will be staying with you.”

Mike invited the raiders to enjoy a late dinner of black bread, salmon caviar, and cheese followed by soup, meat, and potatoes and, of course, vodka. Around midnight the news came over the radio, which Mike translated for the information-starved internees. The broadcast’s final report claimed that Japan had shot down eleven bombers in the recent raid on Tokyo. The airmen had no way to know whether the report was true or just enemy propaganda, but the possibility floored the raiders. “My God, there had been only sixteen airplanes on the whole raid, and if eleven had been shot down over Japan we were one of five surviving aircraft!” Emmens later wrote. “I can tell you we felt pretty sad that night as we turned in—our first night as internees in the Soviet Union.”

The men spent the next day exploring the dacha, which included an unkempt yard that sloped down toward the Amur River, whose dark waters were all that separated the airmen from Japanese-controlled Manchuria. News reports revised down the number of bombers lost over Tokyo, from eleven to seven, prompting the raiders to conclude all such reports were likely propaganda. The airmen’s bags arrived several days later, though the raiders discovered the Russians had searched them and pilfered all candy and American cigarettes. “Anything that resembled airplane equipment was kept by them,” York would later tell American investigators, “including our pistols.”

Despite a trip to a primitive bathhouse, as well as lessons on the various types and potencies of vodka, the raiders soon grew restless. “Every day had been almost exactly the same,” Emmens wrote. “We got up at about nine-thirty, had breakfast at ten, lunch at one, supper at seven, and rounded up each day with the news and tea at midnight. The drinks of vodka were beginning to be looked forward to as a relief from boredom, but the gaps of time in between were pretty hard to fill up. We slept quite a bit, whittled wood, and attempted now and then to get a start on the language.”

A car pulled up one night at the dacha after the raiders had spent some ten days in Khabarovsk. Two Russian officers who had left earlier that day returned, summoning Mike from the dinner table. He came back moments later, sat down, and
finished his dinner before he announced that the raiders were leaving.

“Leaving!” the raiders replied. “When?”

“You must be ready tonight.”

“Where are we going?” the raiders pressed.

“You will find out,” Mike replied. “Everything in due time.”

AN INFLUX OF VISITORS
at dawn aroused Don Smith and the crew of the
TNT
. The locals appeared to show particular deference to one man, who was better dressed than the others, though much of his nose was eaten away by what Doc White suspected was leprosy. He looked over the battered fliers and then left. The host told the aviators via sign language that he departed in a boat, which the fliers feared meant he planned to betray them to the Japanese. The men scarfed down a breakfast of rice, dried shrimp, and garlic greens, pulled on their wet clothes, and left. The first person the fliers met was a fisherman with bombardier Howard Sessler in tow. “He was still intact, though chilly, having spent the night in a sheltered cleft in the rocks, about two miles from where we landed,” White wrote in his diary. “A native explained that because of a Jap gunboat in local waters we should have to wait till dark to go. Nothing for it but to go back and keep under cover.”

The raiders returned to the hut to find that the leader had come back with the news that the Japanese were near. The aviators had no choice but to remain in the hut that day, napping and drying their clothes. Five men arrived at dusk and escorted the fliers down to a small junk in a cove. The airmen crawled into the boat, where the Chinese had them lie on the bottom and covered them with mats before sculling out to sea. No wind and a cold drizzle made the passage slow. “Several times other boats passed nearby and we always kept very quiet until they were out of earshot. Once we heard motors and saw a searchlight in the distance,” White wrote. “We got awfully cramped and uncomfortable lying still in the bilge of the little junk so the fishermen gave us some rude raincoats made of tree bark to cover our clothes in case we should be seen. We could then sit up and look around, though there wasn’t much to see in the dark and drizzle.”

The boat reached the island of Nandien—where Lawson’s
Ruptured Duck
had crashed—around midnight, and the crew
tied up at a small stone pier. The fliers remained in the boat except for White, who set off down the pier with two of the Chinese men and a couple of lanterns. The trio hiked for over an hour along narrow footpaths that snaked between rice paddies, over steep hills, and through crevices. There was no wind, but a heavy mist hung in the air; the sole relief from the darkness came from the two lantern candles. “The only sound was the croaking of innumerable frogs and the scrape of our feet,” White later wrote. “The utter alien-ness of the surroundings made it seem as though I were taking a stroll on another planet.”

After an hour the group reached a farmhouse, where White met guerrilla leader Jai Foo Chang, whom Lawson had referred to simply as Charlie. He informed White that another B-25 crew had crashed on the island and that he had helped the men escape. Charlie produced a few mementos from the crew, including a card with Davenport’s name. White knew immediately that the crew was Lawson’s. Charlie informed him that most of the crew was injured, mimicking broken teeth, arms, and legs and injured eyes. White wanted to know how quickly the airmen could follow, but Charlie told him the men would have to wait. White sent a note back to the boat with one of Charlie’s men, telling the others to come to the farmhouse. White then sat up for a couple of hours, drinking tea and chatting. Charlie was disappointed to learn that the men had been unable to salvage any guns from the plane. He likewise was pained to hear about the fall of Singapore.

“Damn and fuck,” he said.

The others arrived, and the fliers set off to a nearby farmhouse, where the locals provided them mats to stretch out on atop the dirt floor. Charlie appeared soon after daybreak with several chickens. The presence of a Japanese garrison on the island forced the men to spend the day hiding out. White passed out coins and pictures of his kids. Sanitation he noted was nonexistent, though it didn’t stop the airmen from feasting on the chickens. The plan was to travel that night, and Charlie detailed five men to guard the fliers. Word arrived late that afternoon that the Japanese were coming, so the aircrew split up into small groups and set off, hiking through the lush hills.

The various groups reassembled on the banks of a canal, bidding Charlie farewell before climbing into a flat-bottomed skiff. Villagers would run out and shout information
, part of what the airmen dubbed the grapevine telegraph. At other times locals would offer up hard-boiled eggs. The journey down the canal fascinated White, who described the primitive scene in his diary. “I noticed the extreme age of everything we saw,” he wrote. “Carving on the ridgepoles of tiled roofs; others thatched; sluice gates of carved stone; extensive canals and terraces. Everything was just as it had been for thousands of years except for us and the guns of our companions.”

The boat reached the end of the canal around dusk. The aviators disembarked and walked about a mile to a local barracks, where they ate eggs, rice, and shrimp and drank tea and wine before pushing on another couple miles in the dark, arriving at an abandoned house. The group waited until the moon set, then climbed aboard another small boat for a short trip before continuing on foot to an old temple. A local priest greeted them. “The old priest had fine features, wild hair and beard, and wore a black gown,” White wrote. “Our leader and the priest offered up prayers for us and then tested the omens via the jumping sticks three times. Once for them, once for us, and once for Chiang Kai-shek!”

The men had a late dinner of eggs and tea and then shivered as they tried to sleep on mats on the floor without any blankets. The next day the fliers remained hidden in the temple. White shared chocolate and crackers with the priest; in exchange he offered hard black Chinese candy. Around 3 p.m. one of the scouts arrived with the news that sixty-five Japanese soldiers were en route to the temple.