Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (67 page)

Long proposed that the government could publish the note and inform the American people, though he questioned whether that would only inflame the anxiety of the captured airmen’s families as well as spark a backlash against people of Japanese descent. More importantly, America had only weeks earlier made a request to exchange forty-five hundred prisoners. “Any deterioration in that situation,” he wrote, “would be deplorable if there is a chance for the exchange to be effectuated.” The plan Long advocated was for the United States to make a strong protest and demand that the Swiss determine the names and locations of those alive and the details related to the execution of the others. He added that America could include a “statement to the effect that this is such a barbaric departure from the rules
of civilized warfare and such a violation of the definite agreements which Japan undertook in connection with prisoners of war that we reserve the right, though delaying its use until further information is received, to retaliate by the execution of an equal number of officer prisoners of war in our hands.”

Long ordered a draft protest readied by noon of March 22, recommending in the meantime that the United States withhold all information. “Until we know the exact number of prisoners involved in the execution, we are not in a position to announce the names or give publicity to the execution or to retaliate in kind—if retaliation should be decided upon.” Officials inside the State Department prepared a seven-page letter accusing Japan of violating the Geneva Convention and extorting confessions from the airmen through “bestial methods.” “If, as would appear from its communication under reference, the Japanese Government has descended to such acts of barbarity and manifestations of depravity as to murder in cold blood uniformed members of the American armed forces made prisoners as an incident of warfare,” the State Department wrote, “the American government will hold personally and officially responsible for those deliberate crimes all of those officers of the Japanese Government who have participated in their commitment and will in due course bring those officers to justice.”

Secretary of State Cordell Hull presented the protest to Roosevelt for approval on April 7. “Questions of retaliation had been considered and discarded with the consent of the War and Navy Departments,” Hull wrote. “The supporting memorandum and the green telegram raise questions of the highest policy in the conduct of war and I must submit it you for your consideration and approval.” The president read the protest, writing at the end of the last page, “OK, FDR.” Roosevelt sent an accompanying memo back to Hull the next day. “I am deeply stirred and horrified by the execution of American aviators,” he wrote. “In view of the severe tone of this note and especially of the warning in the last paragraph that we propose to retaliate on Japanese prisoners in our hands, I can see no reason for delaying a public announcement on my part. The note to the Japanese Government is so strong that it will not further hurt the persons of Americans now in their custody—civilians and members of the armed forces if I give out the full facts, together with a copy or paraphrase of the note.”

Roosevelt misinterpreted the final
paragraph of the protest, which stated only that the United States would “visit upon the officers of the Japanese Government responsible for such uncivilized and inhumane acts the punishment they deserve.” An unsigned April 9 memo on White House stationery pointed out his error: “Our note to Japan did not threaten retaliation—but punishment of Jap officers guilty of executing U.S. prisoners of war.” The president suggested going public with the news of the execution of the raiders the following Tuesday, though he found the State Department’s proposed public announcement insufficiently strong or comprehensive. “Please let me have a redraft of it which will be less official and more human.”

The Japanese once again looked to scoop the American government as the raid’s anniversary neared. Elmer Davis, the Office of War Information director, announced at an April 14 press conference plans to release the full story of the raid within days.

“Will we be told where Shangri La really is?” a reporter pressed.

Davis confirmed with a smile.

Two days later he had to reverse himself. “After consultation with the War Department this office finds that clearance of the Tokyo raid story has not been completed,” the director of war information announced. “It is impossible to predict at present a date when this story will be released.”

Many in the media howled over the government’s continued secrecy, including the
New York Times
. “The Japanese captured some of the American fliers,” the paper wrote. “It is altogether probable that the Japanese Government now knows much more about the details of the Tokyo bombing than the American public has been permitted to know. In justice to the magnificent exploit of the men who participated, as well as in justice to our own public, which is always entitled to know at least as much as the enemy knows, the full story of that daring raid ought now to be told.”

The Japanese seized on the opening, releasing a detailed and largely accurate report of the raid’s planning, execution, and conclusion, down to the precise number of airmen and bombers involved. “I take pleasure,” Major General Nakao Yahagi, chief of the Japanese Imperial Headquarters Army press section, told reporters, “in telling the people of the United States the full story.” The Japanese not only revealed the
Hornet
as Shangri-La, but even singled out Stephen
Jurika’s intelligence briefings en route to Tokyo. The Japanese did mix some fact with fiction, claiming to have shot down many of the planes and accusing Doolittle of being so scared that he fled to China without ever dropping his bombs. “We have the pleasure of conferring upon him the title ‘Did Little,’” Yahagi’s report stated. “We may expect the next commander which Roosevelt is likely to appoint as his successor will be Colonel ‘Do Nothing.’”

America had no choice but to counter with its own version, an eleven-page press release that many newspapers printed verbatim and that the Japanese ridiculed as a hurried and “patched-up production” designed to camouflage a “flop raid.” The way both countries fought to control the narrative reflected the major effect the raid had for leaders in Japan and in America, a surprise given how truly insignificant the attack was compared with the raids that would dominate the war’s final months. Japan’s humiliated leaders still smarted over the audacity of the attack and hoped to deflate American enthusiasm for what had proven an early victory in the war, particularly now that Japan had suffered a reversal of fortunes in losses in the Coral Sea, Midway, and the Solomon Islands. American leaders, by contrast, had built up a mythology about the raid, exaggerating its success, which Japan’s continued challenges only undermined.

The release of the information placed American leaders once again in a tough spot. The military had told the public when Doolittle received the Medal of Honor that all of the planes had escaped safely, but later had to admit that at least eight of the pilots had landed in Japanese captivity. Now American leaders confessed that, with the exception of the one aircrew that diverted to Russia, the United States had lost all fifteen of the other bombers. Few disputed the need for secrecy in war, but the government’s carefully crafted releases designed to deceive infuriated many. “The American people will never forget that Tokyo was raided, but at the same time they will never forget that they were fooled,” argued the
News
, the daily paper in Lynchburg, Virginia. “Not uninformed of what happened, but intentionally and with purpose fooled.” Even some members of Congress protested. “I believe that any government is playing with dynamite when it tricks its own people,” argued Representative Walter Judd of Minnesota. “We do not want soothing syrup; we want to be treated as grown-up free men and women.”

The battered White House struggled to
regain the public relations advantage over Japan—and rally the nation. Hours after the release of the raid’s details, Roosevelt issued a statement while on a tour of military posts in Texas. He admitted that the United States had learned weeks earlier that Japan had executed several of the captured raiders and ordered the State Department to release its April protest. “It is with a feeling of deepest horror, which I know will be shared with all civilized peoples, that I have to announce the barbarous execution by the Japanese Government of some of the members of this country’s armed forces who fell into Japanese hands as an incident of warfare,” the president said. “This recourse by our enemies to frightfulness is barbarous. The effort of the Japanese warlords to intimidate us will utterly fail. It will make the American people more determined than ever to blot out the shameless militarism of Japan.”

The strong response from the normally relaxed and jovial commander in chief shocked some in the media. “President Roosevelt has issued the most powerfully worded statement of his whole career,” proclaimed Robert St. John of NBC. “The statement is full of strong, red blooded words. Call them hate words, if you will.”

The reaction from members of Congress proved equally fierce. A few lawmakers went so far as to demand like reprisals, while others insisted America dedicate more resources to the war in the Pacific.

“We are fighting a bunch of beasts,” argued Representative John Rankin of Mississippi, “not a nation of human beings.”

“So gruesome it defies comment,” asserted Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn of Texas.

Senator Tom Stewart of Tennessee seized on the execution to build support for his bill to intern all Japanese and even Americans of Japanese descent, arguing in a speech that he hoped his fellow lawmakers would strip citizenship from the “yellow devils.” “Where there is a drop of Jap blood, there is treachery,” Stewart howled. “They cannot and never will be honest. The execution of the American airmen confirms that statement. They are unworthy of the rights of citizens.”

Even William Douglas, an associate justice of the Supreme Court, sounded off. “Those boys were not killed,” Douglas said. “They were murdered. They have laid on us obligations from which we cannot escape.”

Letters of outrage poured into the White House
, many exposing the nation’s long-simmering social tensions. Rollie Toles of Pasadena argued that acts just as barbaric had been committed against the nation’s blacks. Other letters targeted people of Japanese descent, just as Breckinridge Long had feared. “In the face of your report of the horrible manner our flyers were treated by Japan do you still feel any Jap of any standing whatever should be permitted the freedom of this West Coast area,” asked Ira Seltzer of Los Angeles. “We out here definitely do not.”

W. A. McMahon of Reno was far more hostile in his letter to the president. “With horror, we hear of the execution of some of Gen. Doolittle’s men, by these goddam Japs,” he wrote. “I despise them, as they are nothing but heathens, cannibals and rats. They should be treated as such, and KILLED and eliminated.”

In response to the executions, North American Aviation announced that its workers named eight new bombers after the captured raiders, while the Wright Aeronautical Corporation’s chief field engineer told reporters that he used a Japanese-made slide rule—complete with the Rising Sun markings—to perfect the power control calculations used by the Tokyo raiders. Bond sales soared, and newspapers that had been critical of the military’s evolving story of the raid now rallied in horror at the execution of the American airmen, targeting the enemy in outraged editorials with headlines such as “Japanese Beasts,” “The Savages of Tokyo,” and “Those Jap Murderers.”

Many broadcast journalists likewise vilified the enemy. “Never before has Japan committed an act so arrogant, so vicious and so impelling to immediate retaliation, as the execution, in cold blood, of American prisoners of war,” declared Joseph Harsch of CBS. “They were not killed when they had a chance to defend themselves. They were taken prisoner, tortured, finally executed on a charge which was trumped up.”

More than a few newspapers and magazines resorted to racist stereotypes, including an editorial cartoon in
Time
magazine that depicted a cocked pistol labeled “Civilization” pointed at the head of an ape on whose chest was written, “Murderers of American Fliers.”

“The Japs are even lower than the apes,” echoed the
Independent Tribune
of Anderson, South Carolina. “The sneak Pearl Harbor attack should have been ample warning of what the Monkey Men would do to war prisoners.”

Amid such calls for retaliation
a few voices in Congress and the press urged restraint, a sentiment captured by an editorial in the
Washington Post
. “Horror breeds a demand for reprisals and we must avoid reprisals on the Japanese pattern like the plague,” the paper argued. “Any such reprisals would indicate that, far from delivering Japan of its virus, we were letting the Japanese inoculate us with it. Then we should have lost the war. We must crush Japan, but without doing violence to our values.”

The executions, the loss of the bombers, and the retaliation suffered by the Chinese made some observers question whether the raid was even worth it, including syndicated columnist David Lawrence, who had previously published Billy Farrow’s creed. “The raid on Tokyo can be classed, therefore, as a stunt—a token affair designed for its psychological effect rather than its military value,” he wrote. “Stunts play a part, but they are not usually worth the risks unless they are integrated in a well-sustained military plan.”

The execution of the raiders hit hard in the military. “We must not rest—we must redouble our efforts until the inhuman war lords who committed this crime have been utterly destroyed,” Hap Arnold declared in a message sent to the entire air force. “Remember those comrades when you get a Zero in your sight—have their sacrifice before you when you line up your bomb-sight on a Japanese base.”

Admiral Halsey, who commanded the Tokyo task force, was less politic. “We’ll make the bastards pay!” he snarled through gritted teeth as the birthmark on his neck turned bright purple. “We’ll make ’em pay!”