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

by Scott, James M.

  Nielsen served as the prosecution’s star witness, noting in a letter to Doolittle how the defendants cringed when he entered the courtroom to testify. A photo of Tatsuta bowing to him would later run in newspapers nationwide. “I sit here with tears in my eyes,” Nielsen wrote, “when I think what has happened to the ones who were in the Jap prison camps, and feel that I want to do what little I can to help those who came back and to help prosecute those who were responsible for the executing of the others.” Nielsen testified for several days, recounting in detail the plans and training for the mission, Doolittle’s strict orders to avoid all nonmilitary targets as well as his personal recollections of the raid. The Green Hornet’s navigator then recounted in painful detail the torture and punishment he and the others suffered after their capture in China, from the beatings and waterboarding to their forced confessions.

  George Barr contributed testimony from Schick General Hospital in Iowa, a forty-three-page transcript ultimately included in the record. Hite and DeShazer in Washington likewise provided a joint four-page affidavit. Doolittle sat for questions at the Pentagon, resulting in a three-page transcript for the record in which he denied that any of his men had intentionally targeted schools or hospitals, as the Japanese had claimed. “Crews were repeatedly briefed to avoid any action that could possibly give the Japanese any ground to say that we had bombed or strafed indiscriminately,” Doolittle testified. “Specifically, they were told to stay away from hospitals, schools, museums and anything else that was not a military target.” He did concede that Japan’s dense cities made it difficult to guarantee no civilian casualties. “It is quite impossible to bomb a military objective that has civilian residences near it without danger of harming the civilian residences as well,” Doolittle said. “That is a hazard of war.”

  Prosecutor Robert Dwyer in his closing statement addressed the fallacy of the trial that had condemned some of the raiders to death and others to life in prison. “In all my life I have never seen, and I doubt whether I have even read, of any trial which was quite the mockery of justice that this one was,” he said. “The evil began when these men were placed before a tribunal, a tribunal of any kind, and secondly, once they were placed before it they had no more chance or opportunity of a fair and honest trial than I have with my right hand to stem the fall of Niagara’s waters, and these men having paid the supreme penalty, I say they stand here in spirit.” The prosecution asked the commission for the maximum punishment. “We have charged these men with the violations of the laws of custom and war,” he concluded. “We have proven it by a wealth of evidence and we close by asking for the death penalty against all four accused.”

  The defense lawyers, in contrast, blamed the trial and execution of the raiders on officers higher up the chain of command as well as on Japan’s passage of the so-called Enemy Airmen’s Act. The defendants had simply followed orders. “Every detail was decided in Tokyo and the defendants in this case in their respective official capacity acted only mechanically,” Shinji Somiya argued. “They were nothing but the men of straw manipulated at the tip. They had entirely no freedom of will to do or not to do.” In his closing statement the lawyer begged the justices to show mercy, asking them to remember the words from the Bible’s book of Matthew: “I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.”

  After deliberating for two days, the five-member commission decided to spare the lives of the defendants, agreeing that the men had only followed orders. “The offenses of each of the accused resulted largely from obedience to the laws and instructions of their Government and their Military Superiors,” the commission concluded. “They exercised no initiative to any marked degree. The preponderance of evidence shows beyond reasonable doubt that other officers, including high governmental and military officials, were responsible for the enactment of the Ex poste Facto ‘Enemy Airmen’s Law’ and the issuance of special instructions as to how these American Prisoners were to be treated, tried, sentenced and punished. The circumstances set forth above do not entirely absolve the accused from guilt. However, they do compel unusually strong mitigating considerations, applicable to each accused in various degrees.”

  The commission sentenced Sawada, Okada, and Tatsuta each to five years of hard labor. Wako received nine years, the tribunal reasoning that since he had prior legal training he was in a better position to recognize the airmen’s bogus confessions, yet he had accepted them without question. War criminals who could have swung at the end of a rope would instead walk free in just a few years. Although unable to increase the punishments, the reviewing authority blasted the weak sentences in August 1946. “The Commission by awarding such extremely lenient and inadequate penalties committed a serious error of judgment,” the review found. “It is clear that when they found the accused guilty of the capital offenses of mistreatment and murder under the laws of war, the penalties should have been commensurate with such findings.”

  Reporters who covered the trial noted that the defendants appeared impassive as the commission read the lenient sentences, even as the Japanese defense counsel wept with surprise. A member of the defense team, Moritada Kumashiro, wiped away tears before addressing the court. “On behalf of the Japanese Counsel, I would like to express my hearty thanks to this Commission to the fair and sympathetic verdict in the case,” Kumashiro said with a choked voice. “We deeply appreciate everything that has been done.” The punishment outraged Americans across the nation. “Have you any comments on leniency court martial showed Japanese murderers of your son. Please wire collect,” the managing editor of the Philadelphia Daily News cabled Hallmark’s parents in Texas. “We will be glad to print any criticism you wish to make.” A handwritten note in the Hallmark family files captured the anguish of the airman’s mother. “In my estimation the representatives of our country have fallen down in avenging the murder of our son. I am amazed at the light sentence given the murders. We have heard from people all over the nation and they feel the same,” she wrote. “This won’t ever be forgotten.”

  Few were as outraged as Chase Nielsen, who had returned to China on a mission to seek justice for his friends. He promised Hallmark’s mother that he planned to protest the sentences with Doolittle, his senator, and even President Truman. “I thought if I went back to Shanghai to testify it would help but it looks as though I’ve been made a fool of,” he wrote. “I’ll do all I can Mrs. Hallmark as the death of my three buddies by execution and the loss of three more through the raid, means much to me and a 5 to 9 year sentence is not a just one.” Nielsen appeared to have calmed down almost two weeks later when he wrote to Dieter’s mother. “I am sorry justice could not see fit to even its sides for the Mothers and families of the three executed,” Nielsen wrote. “I feel I have done all in my power, and feel I have lost, but justice will be meted out some day yet.”

  The four convicted Japanese landed in Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison to serve their sentences, where the former general Sawada lobbied American officials to release Okada and Tatsuta, who he argued were only following his orders. The duo’s incarceration, he wrote, tormented his “heart day and night.” “Since this was the tribunal of the Japanese Army which I had ordered and summoned in accordance with the order from my superior,” Sawada wrote in 1949, “I should be responsible for all the consequences arising therefrom, and it has been a tremendous pain for me that my subordinates were punished for that matter in line with myself.” Sawada, Okada, and Tatsuta would walk free on January 9, 1950, having served a total of just 1,365 days.

  Yusei Wako was found guilty again in December 1948, this time for overseeing the beheading of eight B-29 airmen in June 1945—he personally decapitated two—and for his assistance with the execution of eight others that August. The commission this time sentenced Wako to death, a punishment Douglas MacArthur commuted in July 1950 to life in prison at hard labor. Even then he would not serve his full term, but w
as paroled in 1956, serving just six months for each man he was convicted of helping kill. Wako’s prison record shows he spent most of that time crafting musical instruments and farming. On an application for clemency the prisoner who had helped kill twenty American airmen outlined a future career path that in all likelihood startled the review board. “I intend,” Wako wrote, “to become a lawyer, public prosecutor or a judge.”

  WAR CRIME INVESTIGATORS likewise doggedly pursued former general Sadamu Shimomura, who had replaced Sawada as the commander of the Thirteenth Army on the eve of the raiders’ execution, reportedly personally signing the airmen’s death order. In December 1945, investigators orally requested that American authorities in Tokyo arrest him. General Douglas MacArthur’s staff refused. Not unlike other suspected war criminals whom American officials would prove reluctant to prosecute, Shimomura had become a valuable asset in postwar Japan. He served as the nation’s minister of war, working closely with American authorities to demobilize the army. He had given an important speech in October, publicly falling on the sword as he argued that Japanese military leaders must apologize for all of the military’s transgressions. “It is common knowledge now that extermination of militarism and the military clique is being voiced both at home and abroad,” he said. “Looking back on the past, this is only a natural consequence.”

  To American investigators in China, none of this mattered. If Shimomura played a role in the execution of the raiders, he should be prosecuted. In a January 3 memo Lieutenant Colonel John Hendren Jr., an assistant staff judge advocate, argued that evidence showed Shimomura had replaced Sawada at the time of the execution and had even issued the instructions to Tatsuta for how the deaths should occur. It would be unfair to try only Sawada if both generals were culpable in the trial and execution. “It is believed that if permission is not given to try Shimomura that Sawada should not be tried,” Hendren argued. “If these two top Generals are left out of this case it will appear to the Military Commission and the public that we are attempting to hold junior officers for offenses which they were ordered to commit on command of higher authority.”

  War crimes investigators filed a formal request for Shimomura’s arrest on January 11, 1946. MacArthur’s staff again refused, this time claiming the case would be considered from an “international standpoint.” Investigators filed a second arrest request on January 23 and followed up with a visit to Japan, arousing the international press. Now MacArthur’s staff had no choice but to allow the arrest of Shimomura, who was interned at Sugamo Prison on February 9, 1946. Rather than hand him over to stand trial in March alongside the other four defendants, MacArthur’s staff put up a fierce defense of the former general, tracking down hotel receipts and witnesses who might exonerate him. In the end, Brigadier General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur’s chief of intelligence, fell back on the defense that Shimomura was simply following orders. “As the final decision for the execution of the fliers had been made by Imperial General Headquarters, Tokyo, on 10 October,” Willoughby wrote in a memo, “the signature of the Commanding General 13th Army on the execution order was simply a matter of formality.”

  Willoughby’s argument, of course, was the same made by the other four defendants, yet the court still tried and convicted them. His long delay did in the end accomplish its goal. “The War Crimes mission in China is about to close,” Major Ralph Hinner wrote in September. “Further action by this Headquarters with respect to trial of General Shimomura is no longer possible. Accordingly, this Headquarters is not disposed to take any action in the case.” Willoughby personally oversaw the details of Shimomura’s secret release, which involved bypassing the required written instructions from the Japanese government as well as the stealth elimination of his name from the prison’s daily reports. A private sedan would pick him up at the prison and drive him to his home in Ichikawa at noon on March 14, 1947, before officials sent him away “to a quiet place for a few months.” The man who had allegedly inked his name to the execution order of Doolittle’s raiders in the end would never serve another day in jail. “It is directed,” orders stated, “that this release be given no publicity.”

  EPILOGUE

  Immortality will always be theirs.

  —HOWARD PYLE, ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT TO DWIGHT EISENHOWER, 1955

  ON THE EVE OF the Tokyo raid, as his seventy-nine men crowded around him on board the Hornet, Doolittle had made a promise. “When we get to Chungking,” he told them, “I’m going to give you all a party that you won’t forget.”

  But the airmen had trickled into Chungking in waves, and the party never materialized. Doolittle held a reunion in 1943 in North Africa for about two dozen of the fliers, but that was not the party he wanted to have, not the party he had promised.

  So with the war over—and the last of his airmen home—Doolittle sent a letter to his raiders. “Now seems to be the right time to have our get-together and I, for one, would appreciate nothing more than a chance to swap handshakes, yarns and toasts with the old, original gang,” he wrote in November 1945. “I plan to throw a dinner with all the food you can eat and whatever liquid you choose to float the food on.”

  The first reunion in Miami the weekend of December 15, 1945, started a tradition that would carry on for nearly seven decades. The responses were overwhelming as telegrams and letters clogged Doolittle’s in-box.

  “I will be there with bells on,” Davy Jones wrote. “In fact, I’m going in training this week so that I will be in good drinking shape by the time the 15th rolls around.”

  “General, I want to see those men and be at that party so badly that I can taste it,” replied Shorty Manch.

  “You may count on me,” wrote Ross Greening, “unless the Empire State Building falls on me.”

  The prospective party gave pause to Chase Nielsen, still adjusting to his new life as a free man. “When I realize that I am the only one left of the crew on my ship,” he wrote, “I feel almost alone, but exceedingly lucky.”

  Of the eighty men who roared off the Hornet’s deck, sixty-one had survived the war. The raid had claimed the lives of Leland Faktor, Bill Dieter, and Don Fitzmaurice. The Japanese had executed Billy Farrow, Dean Hallmark, and Harold Spatz, and Bob Meder had starved to death in prison. Twelve others had died in the war: Bob Clever, Bob Gray, Denver Truelove, Donald Smith, Richard Miller, Ken Reddy, Edwin Bain, George Larkin, Eugene McGurl, Omer Duquette, Melvin Gardner, and Paul Leonard. The last was Doolittle’s trusted crew chief, who the day after the Tokyo raid had stood amid the B-25’s wreckage on the Chinese mountainside and assured his commander he would not only make general but receive the Medal of Honor.

  Doolittle was with Leonard when he was killed in 1943 in Algeria, hit by a bomb in a German attack on the airfield. “The softening point of this tragedy is that he never knew that it was coming and never knew that it hit him,” Doolittle explained to Leonard’s widow in Denver in what he later described as “the saddest letter I ever wrote.” “If he had to go it was the way he would have preferred, quick, clean and painless.” Doolittle spared her the awful reality of what the bomb did to her husband, though the horrible scene would haunt the general for decades. “I found what was left of Paul. It was his left hand off at the wrist, with a wristwatch still in place. This was all that remained of the wonderful boy who had tried to cheer me up in China in my saddest moment,” he wrote. “Paul’s loss was my greatest personal tragedy of the war.”

  That April 1942 Doolittle and his raiders had accomplished the impossible, taking off at such a great distance that most knew the chance of survival was slim at best, yet the airmen still managed to bomb Japan and escape. That more were not captured or killed is miraculous, saved only by a tailwind that pilot Harold Watson later described as the “hand of heaven.” The Tokyo raid had not only buoyed the morale of a wounded nation, but postwar records and interviews with senior Japanese leaders would reveal the raid’s effect on the plans to capture Midway, an unintended consequence that would yield the
mission’s greatest success. The June 1942 battle, which cost Japan four aircraft carriers, shifted the balance of power in the Pacific, setting the stage for America’s offensive drive across the Pacific. “The carrier action at Midway,” concluded the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, “was perhaps the decisive battle of the war.”

  But the raid came at great expense. Claire Chennault, leader of the Flying Tigers, later complained that the intense secrecy cost the mission all the bombers. Had he been informed of the operation, Chennault wrote, radiomen could have talked Doolittle’s men down to friendly airfields. “My bitterness over that bit of bungling,” he wrote, “has not eased with the passing years.” That in part led to the government’s deception, keeping secret the loss of the bombers and the capture of two of the crews. But the greatest toll, of course, came in the human and property losses suffered by the Chinese, a consequence of the raid that American leaders knew was a possibility yet decided was worth the risk. The estimated 250,000 Chinese killed was a by-product of the raid that drew far too little notice by the American public at the time and in the years since. “The invaders made of a rich, flourishing country a human hell,” wrote one Chinese journalist, “a gruesome graveyard, where the only living thing we saw for miles was a skeleton-like dog, who fled in terror before our approach.”