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

by Scott, James M.

  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.

  The fliers gathered up their few belongings, and the Chinese hustled them down the trail to a nearby farmhouse. After much debate the owner escorted them inside and through a secret panel hidden behind a bed that led into a cave dug out of the hillside. The airmen sat on a platform built against the far wall, which the Chinese covered with mats. A single candle placed in a wall niche provided the only light. The men heard scuffling outside before half a dozen Chinese entered, sitting between the fliers and the door, guns cocked and ready to fire. “We felt trapped like rats,” White wrote in his diary. “I had some of the worst moments of my life while we waited for the Japs to find us.”

  The Chinese men waited and smoked, fogging the cave and threatening to choke the airmen. The fliers heard the Japanese soldiers arrive outside, splitting up to search for the airmen. “Several times we heard the questing footsteps cross the roof of our hiding-place and then we heard them enter the house which hid the entrance to the cave,” White wrote. “From there presently arose sounds of struggle and screams and shouts. One of our escorts turned to us and made whipping motions across another’s back. The Japs were beating the owner of the house trying to make him tell where we were.”

  Edward Saylor studied one of the guerrillas closest to him, who he noted had a dated and rusty rifle and cloth ammunition belt, filled with various rounds of all shapes and sizes, ammo Saylor surmised he had scrounged. “I don’t know whether he could have helped us or not,” Saylor recalled. “He was there to try.” The cigarette smoke became unbearable as the men waited. “The air in the cave, none too fresh to start with, became suffocating,” White wrote. “It was all we could do to keep from coughing and thus betraying our position.” The men heard a sudden confrontation. “Clattering noises outside, then many men talking, sounds of blows, screams,” one report noted. “The Japanese had come—they beat the old man, they beat the villagers, but nobody squealed.”

  Finally after two hours the Japanese left. “Everyone relaxed and crawled out,” White wrote in his diary. “I was never so glad to see the light of day.” The priest met the men and through sign language told of the ordeal he had suffered. “They had evidently entered his temple, defaced his idols and had even beaten him, but he showed us how he had cried, torn his hair and wrung his hands and had sworn that he had never seen us,” White wrote. “Any of these poor people could have made a very nice bit of change by betraying us to the Japanese, but the thought apparently never entered their minds. Their sense of responsibility for us and their hatred of the Jap were enough.”

  The fliers trudged on that afternoon and into the night, winding along narrow trails and around rice paddies. At a house near the water the men ate chicken, rice, shrimp, and eggs before climbing aboard a junk bound for the mainland. The clear night and breeze offered a chance for the men to relax and watch how the Chinese handled the boat. It turned out the Japanese occupied the intended destination, forcing the men to divert around 4 a.m. to a sleepy village. They stopped off at a home above a dry goods store for breakfast and an opportunity to wash with soap before continuing on foot throughout the day. “Fascinating countryside,” White noted in his diary. “Our feet were sore and blistered, the soles of our shoes cracked from drying them out over a fire.”

  The men finally boarded two small junks for ferryboats and headed several miles upriver before disembarking and walking another five miles. The magistrate gave the crew a royal welcome, and the men learned that Lawson’s crew had passed through two days earlier. The fliers afterward visited the local army headquarters, where the Chinese gave them soap for bathing and clean civilian shirts and shorts. “Glad to get off my lousy underwear!” White wrote in his diary. “Had a very nice dinner and entertainment. Small girls brought us flowers, danced, and sang about the wonders of flight.” The Chinese asked whether the fliers needed the service of women. “We replied that we appreciated the offer,” White wrote, “but were just too tired!”

  The airmen awoke the next morning refreshed for the first time in days. “Had a gorgeous night’s sleep and then breakfast,” White wrote in his diary. “Washed our teeth for the first time since leaving the ship.” The Chinese offered to let the airmen send telegrams. White sent one to his wife, Edith, that read simply, “Safe and well,” but she would never receive it. The Chinese then hosted a reception that morning in honor of the fliers attended by town officials, schoolchildren, and soldiers. The fliers looked past the out-of-tune bugle and enjoyed the cheers and singing. The magistrate and others made speeches followed by short remarks from each of the airmen. Officials presented the airmen with a silk banner. A photographer who had traveled some thirty-five miles on foot documented the event with a 12 x 12 camera, one with no shutter or diaphragm. White reciprocated and gave the magistrate’s son his helmet.

  The fliers set out that morning to find Lawson and his crew, walking through town in what White described in his diary as “a triumphal procession—soldiers, firecrackers, confetti, cheers and songs.” Outside town the aviators climbed into wicker sedan chairs for the long trip to the hospital in Linghai, escorted by ten soldiers. “We went up a long valley,” White wrote in his diary. “The broad stone-paved road degenerated to a single muddy track at times. Rice paddies everywhere, right up the hillsides. Pumps and bailers; scattered farming settlements; hay drying in trees. The age of everything and lack of repair noticeable.”

  The procession passed through a small village where schoolchildren and teachers greeted the fliers, holding up banners, cheering, and singing songs about airplanes. The fliers passed down the village’s main street, lined with shops, mostly selling food. The aviators ate eggs, pork, and sausages for lunch, then continued on up into the mountains, a trail of children following behind. “Everywhere we went people crowded around to see us,” White wrote in his diary. “One baby crawled under my chair. Its mother yanked it out and slapped it, and it started to cry. I gave it a penny and it stopped instantly.”

  The men stopped that night at an army outpost, then pressed on the next morning to Linghai, arriving around 10 a.m. on April 24. White went to the hospital and found the crew of the Ruptured Duck. Lawson’s condition had worsened. The Chinese doctor, Chen, had extracted some of the pilot’s loose teeth and enlarged the wound on his left knee to remove loose fragments of his patella. Lawson floated in and out of consciousness, responding only by opening and closing his eyes. He could not eat and was administered glucose intravenously. White wired Chungking for an airdrop of supplies, specifically an officer’s medical field kit, a complete blood transfusion kit, morphine, surgical dressing and either sulfadiazine, sulfathiazole, or sulfanilamide.

  In his first report White noted that Lawson had a compound fracture of the left patella with a deep laceration six inches long, extending into the knee joint and nearly severing the tendons. He had other lacerations on his left shin, chin, and lip, and a deep gash on his cheek, plus two more on his scalp. By White’s count Lawson had lost his upper three incisors and canine teeth. “All of the wounds were hideously infected with a very virulent organism, apparently one of the fecal-contamination type of symbiotic, anaerobic bacteria,” he later wrote. “The whole leg was swollen, crepitant and fluctuant with a foul watery discharge issuing from every opening. There was an area of dry gangrene over the inner aspect of his ankle. Motion of the knee-joint was of course extremely painful and Ted was delirious most of the time from weakness and toxic absorption.”

  The worst injury was the one to Lawson’s left leg. White was determined to save it if possible and tore apart the hospital in search of precious medicines, finally finding some Japanese bra
nd sulfanilamide, though he doubted its potency. He immediately started Lawson on it and then drained his infected wounds. “The area of gangrene over his left ankle was insensitive and I was able to excise with scissors with a minimum of discomfort,” he wrote. “My labors were rewarded when over a cupful of stinking material gushed forth.” White couldn’t help marveling at how Lawson and the other injured fliers from the Ruptured Duck had gone four days without any medical help, a point he would later highlight in his report. “The fact that Ted and Dean were still alive,” he wrote, “is just one of the many miracles which occurred on that memorable April 18th!”

  THE JAPANESE LOADED THE CREW of the Bat out of Hell onto a transport plane to Nanking the afternoon of April 20, touching down around five. Guards ushered the raiders into the back seats of separate 1938 four-door Fords with guards on either side. Hite could look out from under his blindfold at the chaotic city where dogs, donkeys, and children scattered about the streets. Guards tossed the fliers into individual cells with wooden bars that measured just four by eight feet. A can served as the toilet; the only other furnishing consisted of a damp blanket to cover up with atop the hard wooden floor. Watchful guards paced the prison passageways.

  The Japanese pulled DeShazer out of his cell that evening and dragged him into an interrogation room occupied by several officers, one of whom spoke English with a lot of slang. The exhausted airman had been blindfolded now for twelve hours and had gone even longer since his last meal, but he still refused to cooperate. The officers taunted the blindfolded bombardier, threatening to execute him if he didn’t talk, at other times getting into his face and laughing. This proved to be only the warm-up until guards dragged him into yet another room and yanked off his blindfold. DeShazer looked up to find a squat Japanese man with a large paunch who smoked a cigar.

  “I’m the kindest judge in all China,” the Japanese man said through an interpreter. “You’re very fortunate to be questioned by me.”

  Everyone sat down.

  “Doolittle was your commanding officer, was that true?” the judge asked.

  “I won’t talk,” DeShazer answered.

  “You’re our property and we want you to talk,” the judge admonished him. “We’ll treat you very good.”

  The interrogation continued.

  “How do you pronounce H-O-R-N-E-T?”

  “Hornet,” DeShazer answered.

  “That’s the aircraft carrier you flew off of to bomb Japan,” the judge stated.

  “I won’t talk,” DeShazer repeated.

  “Sixteen B-25s took off the Hornet and bombed Japan,” the judge continued. “Is that true?”

  “I won’t talk.”

  The judge continued to pepper DeShazer with questions, and each time the flier refused to answer, prompting the judge to finally slam his fist down on the table. “When you speak,” he demanded, “look me straight in the eye!”

  DeShazer did as ordered, but the judge only grew more enraged, finally yanking his sword from his side. DeShazer’s eyes focused on the bright steel blade.

  “Tomorrow morning when the sun comes up, I’m going to cut your head off,” the judge barked. “What do you think of that?”

  DeShazer had no idea how to respond, but knew he needed to say something—then it hit him. “Well,” the bombardier answered, “I think that would be a great honor to have the kindest judge in all China cut my head off.”

  The courtroom erupted in laughter.

  The Japanese likewise pulled Bobby Hite from his cell, dragging him into an interrogation room with a major and an interpreter. Four guards stood watch.

  “You will please to sit down,” the interpreter said. “Do you care to smoke?”

  Hite spied a package of White Owl cigars and cigarettes on the table. He reached out for the latter, but the interpreter pulled them back.

  “You may have them afterward,” he said.

  “After what?”

  “After you tell us what we want to know.”

  “I’m a prisoner of war,” the Texan replied. “I am not required to give any more than my name, rank and serial number which I have done.”

  “You will give us more!” the interpreter screamed at him. “If you don’t, we will have you shot where you sit!”

  The Japanese proceeded to drill Hite about the Hornet and Doolittle, but the pilot decided to dodge, claiming that he had flown instead from the Aleutians.

  “You couldn’t fly that far,” the Japanese countered.

  “We could and we did.”

  George Barr suffered a brutal night after he, too, refused to answer questions put to him by a board of officers. Guards led him downstairs and past a room where he spotted DeShazer surrounded by Japanese shoving pencils between his fingers.

  Barr landed in his own interrogation room along with several Japanese enlisted men. Handcuffed and blindfolded, the navigator never saw the punches; he could only feel the pain as the Japanese pummeled his face and body. An officer entered the room and ordered the men to stop. The Japanese pulled Barr’s blindfold off but left him handcuffed, questioning him with the aid of a civilian interpreter.

  Barr refused to talk. The Japanese laid him on the floor, shoved rags in his mouth, and poured water over his face. He felt the water run down his nostrils, but he couldn’t cough it out. He felt he would drown.

  The Japanese stopped, and the officer asked Barr whether he was ready to talk. The navigator refused and the torture started again. “The water was going down into my lungs,” Barr later testified. “It just stopped your breathing.”

  The officer looked on as Barr struggled. The torture continued for twenty minutes before Barr felt he could no longer tolerate it. He would talk. Barr confessed that the fliers had taken off from an aircraft carrier. The guards led him back to his cell.

  The raiders suffered a long night in the vermin-infested jail. Someone even stole DeShazer’s watch. “My hands were tied and my legs were tied,” he recalled. “I laid there with my clothes on, the lice just crawling all over me.”

  The guards hauled the Americans outside the next morning, photographed them, and then loaded them aboard an airplane, handcuffed, blindfolded, and tied with ropes. DeShazer stole peeks outside the window and saw only empty water as the plane droned on for hours. He eventually spotted an iconic landmark—Mount Fuji—that told him exactly where he was going. His destination, he knew at that moment, was Tokyo.

  THE JAPANESE LOADED Dean Hallmark, Bob Meder, and Chase Nielsen into chairs and carried them several miles over a mountain trail to the garrison, arriving around 5:30 p.m. “Nobody said anything to us on the trip, but the soldiers kept looking at us, grinning and nodding. I couldn’t think much,” Nielsen later wrote. “I tried to work out a plan, but nothing seemed feasible. I made up my mind I’d do the best I could and if I had to I’d kill some Japs before they killed me.”

  At the garrison the Japanese fed the men boiled eggs and vegetable sandwiches before marching them down to a dock and aboard a diesel-powered boat. The airmen changed boats at Ning-po, but otherwise spent the four-day trip handcuffed in a tiny cabin, the only furnishing a grass mat. At night the Japanese even cuffed the airmen’s legs together. Meals consisted of eggs, vegetable soup, and pastries. At about 2:30 p.m. on April 24, the boat reached Shanghai, a fact Nielsen surmised when he spotted signs along the waterfront for the Shanghai Power Company and Shanghai Docks.

  The Japanese blindfolded the airmen upon arrival and tethered each one to a guard with a rope around the waist. Guards then placed the fliers in separate cars and drove them to an airport about twenty minutes away, locking them into narrow individual cells. Nielsen hardly had time to settle in before guards pulled him out and led him to an interrogation room. The cramped room was hot and had a single window, the bottom half of which was frosted and blocked his view outside. Six officers sat around a table along with one enlisted man and a civilian interpreter. The Japanese offered Nielsen a cup of tea, which he awkwardly drank with ha
ndcuffs.

  One of the officers started the interrogation. Where did Nielsen come from and what was he doing in China?

  The navigator gave only his name, rank, and serial number.

  The interrogators slapped him about the face and head—by his own estimate as many as thirty times—making his ears ring. Others kicked him in the shins hard enough to draw blood. With his hands cuffed behind the chair and his ankles tied to the legs, he was powerless to defend himself.

  “We have methods of making you talk,” the interpreter told him. “You understand, nobody in your country know you alive. If we happen to torture you to death your people think you missing in action. You want to talk now?”

  Nielsen again refused. “That crack about my folks never knowing what became of me sort of got me, but I was so tired that my feelings didn’t register,” he recalled. “He was watching me closely and he seemed disappointed at my reaction.”

  The officer snapped his finger and issued a guttural order, triggering the door to burst open. Nielsen watched as four husky enlisted men marched inside. “There was absolutely no expression on their faces,” he later wrote. “They seized me, hauled me to my feet and though I tried to resist at first they tossed me on the floor without any trouble. One held my handcuffed arms. Two others held my legs. The fourth put a towel over my face, arranging it in a cup-like fashion over my mouth and nose.”

  The guard then poured water over his face. To his horror Nielsen felt the tepid liquid run into his mouth and nostrils. “A man has to breathe,” he recalled. “Every breath I took I sucked water into my lungs.”

  Nielsen struggled to fight back. He turned his head and managed to suck in a mouthful of air before the guard forced his head back. He likewise fought without success to move his arms and legs. He started to lose consciousness. “I felt more or less like I was drowning,” he recalled, “just gasping between life and death.”