Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (77 page)

Ski York and Bob Emmens maintained a decades-long debate over whether the Russians had moved them south in order to allow them to escape. York later said he always believed the Russians had; Emmens disagreed. Neither airman would live long enough to learn the truth. A formerly top-secret cable from October 1944 contains an important clue that indicates York’s hunch was likely true. The American ambassador to Russia, working with that nation’s foreign minster, had arranged for twenty-eight internees to be sent from Siberia to Tashkent, on the Iranian border, to join sixty-two others, most of them Navy airmen. “When this is done,” the cable stated, “an escape will be arranged for these prisoners similar to the one that took place last February.”

The war receded into the background as the raiders moved on with their lives, found jobs, married, and raised children. Jacob DeShazer followed through with his vow to return to Japan as a missionary; there he was stunned to discover that the Japanese had created a park in Doolittle’s honor. Over more than three decades, he would go on to start twenty-three
churches, including one in Nagoya, the city he had first seen through a bombardier’s sight. In an unlikely twist of fate, DeShazer’s powerful tale of forgiveness helped persuade Mitsuo Fuchida to convert to Christianity, the famed pilot who had led the attack on Pearl Harbor. Fuchida was baptized in DeShazer’s church. “I was very lost,” he later said, “but his story inspired me to get the Bible.”

DeShazer’s fellow prisoners of war would wrestle for years with the pains of that traumatic experience. George Barr, with the help of Doolittle, finally began to heal. “He appears to have complete faith in his full recovery,” Eleanor Towns wrote the general in February 1946. “For the first time since his capture I feel he now has a sense of security.” Barr recounted his own battles in an article published two months later by International News. “The nightmares are less frequent now,” he wrote. “I’m back to 170 pounds. I feel good. I want to forgot those three years as fast as I can.”

A heart attack would claim Barr in 1967, at the age of fifty. Doolittle rallied to help his fallen raider’s family after the Veterans Administration denied benefits to Barr’s widow and four children, arguing that his death was not related to his time in the service. Doolittle disagreed, offering to go to court as a witness. Under pressure, the agency backed down. “I do not believe that anyone could have been in such bad physical shape as George was at the end of the war without having some permanent deleterious organic effect,” Doolittle wrote, “in this case on his heart.”

The other former prisoners likewise suffered long-term problems. Bobby Hite’s wife in 1971—more than a quarter century after his release from prison—outlined her husband’s daily struggles in a statement to the Veterans Administration, ranging from chronic stomach pains to a half dozen bowel movements per day. Nightmares had long haunted him. “He would awake screaming, still talking in his sleep, gritting his teeth and flinging his arms as if to ward off the enemy,” she wrote. “I really don’t believe that he has had one sound night’s sleep in the nearly 25 years we have been married.”

The men put aside these battles to celebrate with one another each year. At the center of it all was Doolittle. Over the course of the war the general had commanded many airmen, but he never denied he had favorites. “It’s not that I love any of them the less,” he said at a reunion in 1955, “but only that I love these boys the more.”

The feeling was mutual.

“Young guys like us would go to hell and back for him,” remembered navigator Nolan Herndon. “And we did.”

The raiders were family. “It wasn’t only teamwork,” recalled pilot Harold Watson. “It was brotherhood.”

“I flew 40 missions during World War II, but there was nothing to pass that mission,” added bombardier Robert Bourgeois. “That Tokyo raid, that was the daddy of them all.”

But the raiders long dismissed the idea that they were heroes, a sentiment captured best by engineer Douglas Radney: “I think we’re all average American citizens who were afraid when we took off but more afraid not to.”

At the raiders’ seventeenth reunion, in Tucson in 1959, civic leaders presented the airmen with eighty silver goblets, beginning a storied tradition. Each goblet was engraved twice with the name of an airman. Doolittle’s copilot Dick Cole built a velvet-lined mahogany traveling case to allow the airmen to transport the goblets to reunions.

At each gathering the raiders would hold a private ceremony and toast their fellow fliers who had passed away, turning the deceased airmen’s goblets upside down. The second engraving allowed the name to be read. Doolittle presented his men with a bottle of Hennessy cognac from 1896, the year he was born. Tradition demanded the last two surviving raiders would open this special bottle and toast the others.

Over the years the raiders slowly passed away. Jimmy Doolittle, the legendary racing and stunt pilot, seemed to defy the odds of a man with his adventurous nature and lived to the age of ninety-six. In 2013 with just four of the raiders remaining—and all in their nineties—the men decided to amend tradition and hold the final toast on November 9 at the National Museum of the Air Force, in Dayton, Ohio.

The airmen opened this final toast to family members, friends, and dignitaries, who sat on folding chairs in one of the museum’s sprawling hangars. Dick Cole was joined on stage by Edward Saylor and Dave Thatcher, the latter the then twenty-year-old corporal who had managed to save the lives of Ted Lawson and the badly injured crew of the
Ruptured Duck
. Former prisoner of war Bobby Hite, unable to attend because of his health, held his own celebration at his home in Tennessee.

Official raid historian Carroll Glines read aloud the names of the eighty
volunteers, who on that stormy morning seventy-one years earlier had without question climbed into sixteen bombers crowded on the deck of the
Hornet
. The ninety-eight-year-old Cole, who sat right next to Doolittle at the controls on that legendary flight over Tokyo, then rose. “Gentleman, I propose a toast to those we lost on the mission and those who have passed away since,” Cole said. “May they rest in peace.”

The three raiders raised their glasses and drank.

And then taps began to play.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a book is a collaborative effort, and I am indebted to many people who helped me along the way. It was a privilege and an honor to meet four of the surviving raiders, Richard Cole, Dave Thatcher, Edward Saylor, and the late Tom Griffin, several of whom were kind enough to sit for lengthy interviews. I want to offer special thanks as well to Dave Thatcher, who graciously read an advance copy of the book.

I owe a debt to the family members of several raiders, including Jeff Thatcher, who was a tremendous help to me in my research and even proofread the book prior to publication. Furthermore, he made sure that I had a seat at the Final Toast in November 2013 in Dayton, Ohio. I also want to thank Becky Thatcher-Keller and Sandra Miller, who made me feel like part of the family that weekend. I likewise am grateful to Cindy Chal, daughter of raider Dick Cole. Cindy has spent years poring over raider records and photos and generously provided me with dozens of them. She not only spent several days going through files with me at the University of Texas at Dallas but was also kind enough to read the manuscript in advance of publication. I also owe a debt to Adam Hallmark, a cousin of pilot and executed raider Dean Hallmark, who shared with me scores of powerful records from his family’s collection, as well as raider business managers Tom and Catherine Casey, who gave of their time to read an advance copy of the book.

Nonfiction books are like historical scavenger hunts, and I therefore owe much to the army of archivists and researchers who helped me hunt down the various pieces of the narrative puzzle. At the National Archives, I want to thank Nate Patch and Eric Van Slander as well as independent researchers
Katie Rasdorf and Susan Strange. Archie DiFante and Sylvester Jackson were of great assistance during my time at the Air Force Historical Research Agency. I also want to thank my good friend George Cully in Montgomery, who has tirelessly helped me over the years and may very well have the most impressive home library I have ever seen. At DePaul University I owe a special thanks to Morgen Hodgetts and Carly Faison, who helped me unlock the records of the Japanese atrocities in China. Likewise, researcher Ken Moody was a terrific help at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, as was archivist Bob Clark. I am appreciative also of Ann Trevor for her assistance at the Hoover Institution Archives.

Others I owe thanks to include Bob Fish with the USS
Hornet
Museum; Tom Allen at the University of Texas at Dallas; the Navy Department Library’s Davis Elliot; Evelyn Cherpak at the Naval War College Library; Air Force Academy librarian Mary Elizabeth Ruwell; the University of Maryland’s Anne Turkos; Brett Stole with the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force; André Sobocinski with the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery; the National Museum of the Pacific War’s Reagan Grau; Mike Lott and Buddy Sturgis at the South Carolina Military Museum; Kay Williamson with the Darlington County Historical Society; and James D’Arc at Brigham Young University. I am indebted to Doolittle Raid researcher Ted Brisco, who shared records from his personal collection. Françoise Faulkner likewise provided me with a copy of her unpublished biography of the Reverend Charles Meeus. In Tokyo, I am especially grateful to translator Terrance Young, without whose help I would have been lost.

Closer to home, I owe a special thanks to the kind staff at the Charleston County Public Library. Over the years Linda Stewart has been a great help with my research, along with my friend Stephen Schwengel. I have always found an open door and courteous staff at the Citadel, where I would like to thank Pamela Bennett Orme and David Goble. The College of Charleston’s Claire Fund likewise has always gone the extra distance to assist me in my research. Several other writers provided me with records and leads, including my good friend Steve Moore, who has written more books than I can list. Thanks as well go to Nigel Hamilton, author of the terrific book
Mantle of Command
, and Greg Leck, who wrote the excellent
Captives of Empire
. Official Doolittle
Raid historian and author Carroll Glines graciously read my manuscript in advance of publication, while my good friends and fellow writers Craig Welch in Seattle and Jason Ryan here in Charleston helped keep me sane.

I am indebted to my wonderful editor at Norton, John Glusman, who also happens to be the author of one of the best World War II books in years,
Conduct under Fire
. John spent hours going line by line through this manuscript, helping me at each step improve the narrative. I also want to thank his superb and ever-patient assistant, Jonathan Baker. Special Projects Editor Don Rifkin and copyeditor Otto Sonntag did a tremendous job and helped make sure I didn’t embarrass myself, while Norton’s marketing and publicity departments have proven invaluable. I have been blessed over the years with a remarkable agent, Wendy Strothman, whose strong business sense and grace have guided me through three books. Last but not least, I owe an incalculable debt to my amazing wife and best friend, Carmen Scott, who has for years, often at her own sacrifice, allowed me to indulge my passion for history and storytelling. Without her unfailing support, coupled with that of our two wonderful children, Isa and Grigs, this book never would have happened.

NOTE ON SOURCES

To tell the story of the Doolittle Raid I consulted more than three dozen archives and libraries scattered across four continents. Mission commander Jimmy Doolittle’s voluminous personal papers are divided among several institutions, including the Library of Congress, which holds copies of his original mission reports as well as his extensive correspondence with many of the raiders and the families of the airmen captured and executed by the Japanese. Other important Doolittle personal records are on file at the University of Texas at Dallas, including his extensive correspondence with his family, speeches he made after the war, and his logbooks. The National Personnel Records Center in Saint Louis holds the legendary flier’s military file, totaling more than one thousand pages and including his medical records, efficiency reports, and commendations.

Another important collection is the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders Association Papers, also at the University of Texas, which includes a file for each airman, complete with letters, diaries, oral histories, and newspaper clippings collected over more than seven decades. The Air Force Historical Research Agency, at Maxwell Air Force Base, in Montgomery, Alabama, holds copies of many of the original mission records as well as excellent oral histories, photos, and important raider correspondence. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland, contains the deck logs, war diaries, and action reports of the raid’s naval task force, as well as the voluminous war crimes files. NARA also holds the debriefing report compiled by Merian Cooper, one of the most valuable records of the raid and one that more recent writers have
failed to locate. The prize of Cooper’s report is the individual narratives of the raid and aftermath—drafted in May 1942—by fifty-nine of the eighty raiders who passed through Chungking.

One of the most important, and until now untapped, collections are the missionary files located at DePaul University. The scores of previously unpublished letters, affidavits, and personal narratives provide an important window into the horrific Japanese retaliations against the Chinese in the wake of the raid that for too long have been glossed over. The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, contains the records related to the attack on Pearl Harbor as well as policy papers dealing with the capture and execution of some of the raiders. Other important collections include those of Henry Arnold, Ernest King, and Marc Mitscher, all on file at the Library of Congress, as well as a second collection of King’s and Mitscher’s papers at the Naval History and Heritage Command. Many other smaller institutions, from the Darlington County Historical Commission to Ohio University, contain the individual papers of specific raiders.