Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor

by Scott, James M.

  “Captain, will you drop me off at the next mail buoy, please,” he said. “I’m a Lieutenant now but by the time I get back to Pensacola, I will have travelled half way around the world on a telephone call so I’ll probably end up as an Ensign.”

  “The hell with them,” Mitscher said. “I’ll see that you make it OK.”

  ADMIRAL YAMAMOTO’S OBSESSION with preventing an attack on Tokyo had only grown as Japan’s victories mounted and senior leaders debated the future direction of the war. The lightning successes in the conflict’s opening weeks had caught many of the nation’s strategists flat-footed. The great risks coupled with the preparations for the ambitious assault on Pearl Harbor and the seizure of the oil-rich southern territories had prompted senior leaders to postpone planning the next phase of the war, an oversight that became clear before the first month of the battle drew to a close. Combined Fleet chief of staff Matome Ugaki, who ordered his staff to prepare a blueprint of future operations by the end of February, captured that surprise in his diary. “We shall be able to finish first-stage operations by the middle of March, as far as the invasion operation is concerned. What are we going to do after that?” he wrote on January 5. “Advance to Australia, to India, attack Hawaii, or destroy the Soviet Union?”

  War planners debated several options, including ending offensive actions and preparing a defense, an idea few supported. Another option was to invade Australia, robbing America of a launch pad to push back against Japan. Alternatively forces could push into the Indian Ocean, seize Ceylon, and finish off the British fleet, a move that would allow Japan to link up with Germany in the Middle East. The final option was to advance across the central Pacific and seize Hawaii, guaranteeing a showdown with America. Bogged down in China—and afraid of overextension—the Army resisted such moves. “We want to invade Ceylon; we are not allowed to!” complained Captain Yoshitake Miwa, the Combined Fleet’s air officer. “We want to invade Australia; we cannot! We want to attack Hawaii; we cannot do that either! All because the army will not agree to release the necessary forces.” Ugaki agreed. “It’s annoying to be passive,” he wrote in his diary. “Warfare is easier, with less trouble, indeed, when we hold the initiative.”

  Throughout this debate Yamamoto maintained a single-minded focus—annihilate America’s Pacific Fleet. Despite the celebration that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto saw the strike largely as a Pyrrhic victory. Japan had anticipated the loss of as many as three of its six carriers, but the attack in the end had cost just twenty-nine planes, five midget submarines, and fewer than a hundred men. Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo should have capitalized on his unexpected success that Sunday morning and ordered his pilots to rearm and attack again, spreading the assault over several days if necessary. Yamamoto knew that the shortsighted focus only on the battleships and planes—leaving the submarine base, repair facilities, and aboveground tanks with 4.5 million barrels of precious fuel—would only help accelerate America’s rebound. Just two days after the attack—as the fires still smoldered at Pearl Harbor—Yamamoto ordered Ugaki to prepare a plan for the invasion of Hawaii. He had to clean up Nagumo’s mess.

  Yamamoto believed that the destruction of America’s carriers—absent from Pearl Harbor that Sunday morning—coupled with the capture of Hawaii would give Japan the power to bargain a peace deal, one that would allow it to keep many of its conquests. Yamamoto’s concerns on the surface appeared unwarranted, considering Japan’s great successes, but the veteran admiral spied hints of trouble to come. That threat had first materialized in the form of an American carrier raid on the Marshall and the Gilbert Islands on February 1, just fifty-six days after the attack on Hawaii. The dawn strike had robbed Japan of a subchaser and the 6,500-ton transport Bordeaux Maru, as well as damaged eight other ships, including a light cruiser. The raiders had even managed to kill Marshall Islands commander Rear Admiral Yukicki Yashiro, a Naval Academy classmate of Ugaki’s and Japan’s first admiral killed in the war. “They have come after all,” Ugaki wrote in his diary with disbelief. “They are some guys!”

  Although derided in the Japanese press as “guerrilla warfare,” the raid impressed senior leaders. “This attack was Heaven’s admonition for our shortcoming,” declared Miwa. “Our staff could only grit their teeth and jump up and down in frustration.” Few believed that the audacious assault would prove to be the last. Such a bold strike reflected America’s adventurous national personality, Ugaki noted, and would merely help make Japan’s leaders look “ridiculous.” “Pearl Harbor was a complete surprise, but we cannot say the same for this, which happened during the war,” Ugaki confided in his diary. “It was fortunate for us that the enemy only scratched us on this occasion and gave us a good lesson instead of directly attacking Tokyo.” Ugaki wasn’t alone in his fears. Japan’s lack of defenses would no doubt invite the Americans to attack again. “Whatever happens, we must absolutely prevent any air attack on Tokyo,” Miwa said. “Against enemy aircraft carriers, the defensive is bad strategy, and worse tactics.”

  The United States followed up the raid on the Marshall and the Gilbert Islands with a February 20 strike against Rabaul, which the Japanese repelled but at a cost of nineteen planes. American carriers then hit Wake on February 24 and Marcus Island on March 4. Six days later carriers appeared off New Guinea, launching a strike of 104 fighters and bombers against Japanese forces at Lae and Salamaua. “The failure to destroy the U.S. carriers at Pearl Harbor haunted us like a ghost ever after,” wrote Minoru Genda, one of the chief planners of the attack on Hawaii. “We always worried about them and had to reckon with their potential presence in every operation we planned.” The raids convinced senior naval aviators that Japan wasted time with its own attacks against Australia and British forces in the Indian Ocean, particularly when America’s carriers remained the only formidable force left in the Pacific. Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the air attack against Pearl Harbor, even warned Admiral Nagumo, “Don’t swing such a long sword.”

  America’s carrier raids did little damage, but the marauding flattops posed a much greater potential threat. As in a game of Russian roulette, it was only a matter of time before the barrel pointed at Tokyo, the seat of the emperor. Halsey’s attack on Marcus Island had stirred up considerable concern, given that less than a thousand miles separated that island from the nation’s capital. Senior naval officers sweated out America’s attacks even as the oblivious Japanese public enjoyed victory celebrations. “If real enemy planes raided amidst the festivities, the mere thought of the result makes me shudder,” Ugaki wrote in his diary on March 12. “A great air raid over the heads of the rejoicing multitude!” As American attacks grew more audacious, senior leaders began to contemplate what had long been considered unthinkable, a question Miwa raised in his diary. “How shall we defend our capital against an enemy air raid?” he wrote. “It is a big problem.”

  Yamamoto knew the only way to protect Tokyo was to destroy America’s flattops. But that was no easy task. With its Pacific and Asiatic fleets wrecked, America treated its carriers like an endangered species, always retreating at the first sign of danger. Yamamoto’s forces had no way to predict where, in an ocean that spread across sixty-five million square miles, to find them. The admiral needed a plan to lure them into combat, an objective so precious that Admiral Chester Nimitz would have no option but to send his carriers into battle. Since the Army would never sign off on the invasion of Hawaii, Yamamoto needed a plan the Navy could tackle largely alone. He set his sights on Midway, the two-and-a-half-square-mile atoll between Tokyo and Hawaii, some thirteen hundred miles northwest of Oahu. This former stopover for the transpacific flights of Pan American Airways Clipper seaplanes had evolved into a vital American naval air and submarine base, whose proximity to Pearl Harbor led Admiral Nagumo to dub it “the sentry for Hawaii.”

  Yamamoto saw in this wind-ravaged coral atoll not only the perfect launch pad for the eventual seizure of Hawaii but a priceless piece of Pacific real estate he knew
America would never surrender. He green-lighted the plan to grab Midway, setting the stage for what he was sure would be a bitter fight with the Naval General Staff in Tokyo. Yamamoto sent Captain Kameto Kuroshima and Commander Yasuji Watanabe to Tokyo to press his case in a three-day session that began April 2, the same day the Hornet left California. Senior officers with the Naval General Staff believed America’s eventual offensive drive would not come across the central Pacific but up from Australia, where the United States and its allies could amass bombers, warships, and troops on Japan’s southern perimeter. Rather than risk resources on a quixotic hunt for a few flattops, officers favored seizing New Caledonia, Samoa, and the Fiji Islands, a move that would sever America’s vital communication lines with its ally down under.

  Captain Sadatoshi Tomioka and Commander Tatsukichi Miyo spearheaded the Naval General Staff’s skillful attack on the Midway operation, an attack the men feared risked dangerous overextension in exchange for little strategic reward. Miyo argued tearfully at times that the United States had no doubt learned a valuable lesson on December 7. The Americans had likely reinforced Hawaii and now diligently tracked Japanese fleet movements, refusing to be caught off guard again. The atoll’s proximity to Hawaii furthermore gave the United States the clear tactical advantage. While Japan would have to fight more than two thousand miles east of Tokyo and depend largely on its exhausted carrier forces, the United States could flood the waters with submarines and the skies with Hawaii-based bombers. Furthermore, there was no guarantee that America would even risk its precious carriers to protect Midway. Why not let Japan capture the austere atoll, then strangle it by blockade, making it impossible to reinforce?

  Even if Japan managed to capture Midway, Miyo argued, what strategic value did the tiny atoll really offer? An advancing American armada could easily bypass the limited range of Midway air patrols. Furthermore, the atoll was so far from the West Coast that its capture would have a negligible effect on the morale of the American public. As the debate dragged on over several days, it became clear that Yamamoto’s plan had less grounding in large-scale tactical goals and more in his fixation on destroying America’s carriers. “One wonders whether C. in C. Yamamoto appreciated just how ineffective aerial reconnaissance using Midway as a base would be,” Miyo wrote in an article published after the war. “Had he really taken into thorough account the enormous drain on resources and difficulty in maintaining supplies on such an isolated island, or the reduction in air strength necessary in other areas in order to keep it up, and the influence on the fleet’s operational activities?”

  With both sides reluctant to budge, Watanabe phoned Yamamoto for instruction on April 5. The admiral made it clear he planned to dictate, not negotiate. Japan would either seize Midway, or he would resign. “The success or failure of our entire strategy in the Pacific will be determined by whether or not we succeed in destroying the United States Fleet,” he warned in a final statement. “We believe that by launching the proposed operations against Midway, we can succeed in drawing out the enemy’s carrier strength and destroying it in decisive battle.” Yamamoto had made a similar threat when faced with opposition over his plan to attack Pearl Harbor and the Naval General Staff had caved. Now this son of a former samurai warrior was more popular than ever. How could the Naval General Staff explain his sudden resignation? Rear Admiral Shigeru Fukudome, who headed the Naval General Staff’s plans division, knew Yamamoto had again won. “If the C. in C.’s so set on it,” he said, “shall we leave it to him?”

  Miyo lowered his head and wept.

  CHAPTER 8

  We shall not begrudge our enemies the impressive victories which exist in their imaginations and in the ether waves of their radios.

  —JAPAN TIMES & ADVERTISER, FEBRUARY 8, 1942

  LIEUTENANT STEPHEN JURIKA JR. met Doolittle and his men on board the Hornet to brief them about what to expect in the skies over Tokyo and Japan. Few in the Navy could compete with the thirty-one-year-old’s expertise. Jurika had grown up in the Philippines, where his father had settled after the Spanish-American War, operating a plantation on Sibuco Bay, on the southwestern tip of the island of Mindanao. His adolescence was filled with exotic tales most children found only in adventure books. He had learned to swim and sail in azure seas infested with sharks, hunted cobras that nested in abandoned coconut shells, and even shot crocodiles in leech-infested swamps. The ethnic diversity of his childhood friends reflected the Philippines’ historical role as the crossroads of Asia—a mix of Filipino, Chinese, Spanish, and Japanese, all languages Jurika picked up. As he grew older, his parents sought to further broaden his experience, sending him to boarding school in the Japanese city of Kobe and later in Shanghai, China.

  When Jurika finished high school at fourteen, his father encouraged him to attend Stanford University, hoping he would return to the Philippines to run the family business, but Jurika balked. He had wanted to be a naval officer since he was a child, but even though he was an American citizen, he had no congressman or senator who could appoint him to Annapolis. Jurika had no choice but to enlist, serve two years, and then sit for the academy’s entrance exam. He faked his age and joined the Navy at just fifteen. Jurika went on to graduate from the Naval Academy in 1933 and to serve on the cruisers Louisville and Houston, playing bridge on the latter against his commander in chief during Roosevelt’s 1934 voyage to Latin America. Jurika later earned his wings, flying torpedo bombers for several years off the carrier Saratoga. The head of naval intelligence wrote Jurika in 1939, asking whether he was interested in serving as an assistant naval attaché in Tokyo. Jurika jumped at the opportunity.

  The few attachés worked out of the embassy, collecting intelligence on the Japanese Navy. Much of the information came from open sources, ranging from newspaper articles to the Navy’s annual ship construction budget, debated each year in parliament. Other times Jurika traveled south to Kobe to surreptitiously photograph the launches of new ships, reserving a fourth-floor room at the Oriental Hotel with a view of Mitsubishi’s sprawling shipyard, which employed a wartime peak of almost 23,000 workers to hammer out freighters, submarines, and naval auxiliaries. Every three months the attaché hopped an American President Line ship south to the Philippines to log his required hours in a cockpit, persuading the skippers en route to steam near Japanese shipyards, which often used scaffolding and netting to block views from shore. Other days Jurika attended air shows—he once got to sit in the cockpit of a Mitsubishi Zero fighter—or played golf next to air stations so he could clock takeoffs and landings.

  As the war in China raged—and tensions between Japan and America increased—authorities ramped up efforts to crack down on American spying. Military police interrogated Japanese guests who had visited the homes of the attachés, a move that discouraged locals from befriending the Americans. Meanwhile, police began to shadow the military diplomats. When Lieutenant Commander Henri Smith-Hutton rode the train past the naval base at Kure, the attendant entered the compartment, lowered the shade, and demanded that the embassy’s senior naval attaché leave it shut. When the train stopped in Hiroshima—home to a large Japanese Army base—attendants again lowered the shade, this time barring Smith-Hutton from even leaving the compartment. “Tokyo is really a city of the living dead; so different from last year!” Jurika wrote in an October 1940 letter. “Most of the American and British women and some of the men have gone, and now everyone else is packing or about to pack.”

  Despite the added challenges, Jurika soldiered on, broadening his sleuthing into an area that would make him a vital asset to Doolittle’s mission. “As an aviator I was interested in more than just ships,” he recalled. “I became interested in targets.” Oil depots, chemical plants, and blast furnaces—the beating heart of any steel mill. The industrial might that powered a nation and its war machine, Jurika knew, would prove the Achilles’ heel in a life-and-death struggle—and in Japan’s capital and sprawling suburbs, the studious attaché found such industry everywh
ere. “Each time I drove from Tokyo down toward Yokohama, going through the fantastic industrial district of Kawasaki, I would take a different route and go by the petro-chemical factories, the chemical factories, the iron and steel mills, and see for myself where these big things were located, factories that covered hundreds of acres,” Jurika said. “It was really unending, just one succession of one big factory after another, all the way down.”

  Jurika and his colleagues realized in the summer of 1940 that they had no target maps of Japan or its principal industries. Some of that information, the officers discovered, was available through books and commercial brochures, published by steel mills, silk factories, and shipyards. The intelligence officers collected detailed land maps—printed by the Japanese government—that pinpointed homes, roads, and principal thoroughfares. Armed with the commercial data, the officers fleshed out the maps, labeling important industries and even specific buildings. “We started to fill in a host of what we considered primary targets, first, in the Tokyo area, and then on down through Kawasaki to Yokohama, where we identified the shipbuilding, the tank farms for fuel oil and gasoline, some major wharves, bridges that were strategic in the sense that the main Tokkaido line would cross, or tunnels where bombs could be dropped and possibly obstruct traffic for a considerable period.”

  But the American naval attachés, more accustomed to sizing up new ships and armament, struggled to complete the target maps, prompting Jurika to turn to an unlikely ally—the Russians. Though the Soviet attachés largely kept to themselves, despite Tokyo’s vibrant diplomatic social scene, Jurika managed to befriend assistant Russian naval attaché Ivan Egoricheff one day on a local tennis court, scoring an invitation to lunch. When Jurika arrived at the Russian embassy, Egoricheff escorted him to his office, seating him next to a potted palm as he handed him a glass of straight vodka. Jurika took a few reluctant sips of his noontime cocktail, watching as his host downed his own drink. “When he went over to fill his,” Jurika remembered, “I dumped mine into the flower pot.” Egoricheff repeatedly refilled both drinks, and Jurika continued to feed his to the palm, never drinking more than a quarter of his vodka. “By the time I’d had one drink,” Jurika recalled, “he’d had four.”