“I got it. I see the fuel tanks.” His left hand was poised just below the switches to release two incendiary bombs. Antiaircraft fire began bursting from the ground, shaking their plane. Staring down the bombsight, Jake flipped the switches, accidently sending three bombs instead of two. “Sayonara!”
Kenji froze as he and the others looked up to the sound of pounding antiaircraft fire and the approaching aircraft. Instantly a bomber roared overhead, followed by a concussion that erupted into gigantic fireballs of exploding fuel.
“Kenji!” two workers yelled in unison from across the way as others leaped for cover. Kenji sprinted and stumbled from the wicked inferno as the flames erupted behind him.
The plane banked into a high left turn to head for the next target. Jake gazed back at the boiling flashes of brilliant orange inside the clouds of jet black smoke. “Oh, yeah! Now see how it feels!” To his right in the distance, he saw more columns of smoke from the bombing strike of the #14 plane as well.
“Heads up, Jake,” Bill said. “Aircraft factory coming up.”
Jake took aim again and waited for the buildings to align with the point of his bombsight. Antiaircraft fire from the ground burst in the sky in front of him.
“Jake, let’s go. We’re getting some heat and need to move out.”
“OK ... OK ... Bombs away!” He flipped the last switch as they passed over a long set of industrial buildings which were ripped into a flaming explosion. Ground fire tracers shot in front of the plane from multiple angles. “Hey! They’re shooting at us!”
“Yeah. I don’t think they like us.” Bill pulled the plane into a steep right turn and headed back out over the ocean. Jake turned his eyes back to the blazing building with satisfaction. “Now that’s American barbecue!”
Leaving the coastline, Bill dropped the plane down to 100 feet again above the water and headed southwest along the coast.
Jake spotted a fishing boat in the distance and grabbed his 30 caliber machine gun in the nose, gave it a hard rack and swung it onto the target. The fishermen, far from the explosions and expecting only to see friendly aircraft over their waters, smiled, jumped up, and began waving their arms at the approaching airplane.
“Greetings from the U.S.A.,” Jake said, and let loose twenty-five rounds at the helpless fishermen, pocking the water, and splintering wood across their boat.
“Cut it out, Jake!” Bill yelled over the intercom. “Military targets only!”
Jake let out a sigh and stroked the gun like a pet dog as the gun smoke swirled around him.
The fishermen looked at each other in shock and confusion, baffled but unhurt, as the sound of the B-25 faded into the distance.
Jake’s heartbeat began to slow and he took an extra-big breath and exhaled slowly. Mission accomplished. Now they were heading toward China, the night, and the complete unknown.
Chapter 44
Somewhere over China.
Night swallowed day as Jake and the crew made it across the East China Sea into China, over 1,000 miles from Nagoya. Jake had abandoned his post at the nose earlier and took a seat next to George, the navigator, behind the pilots. Over China, in near pitch-black darkness, the plane flew above dark satin clouds eerily illuminated by the slimmest crescent of the moon.
George ran his finger across a flight map under a dim light bulb.
Bill came in over the intercom. “We’re in a tough situation, fellas. In this weather we can’t find our rendezvous point to land and I can’t drop below the clouds because we might bump into something – like a mountain. So I’m gonna keep on a southwest course to see if we can run out of this weather and make a landing somewhere in Free China.”
“Hey, Bill,” George piped in. “I say we fly due west for fifty minutes, then head south and bail when we run out of fuel. At least that way we’ll be out of Jap territory.”
“Can’t do that, George. It’s all mountains to the west and I wanna get this plane on the ground in one piece.” George glanced at Jake beside him and shook his head.
An hour later, George couldn’t wait any longer. “Hey Bill, we gotta find the airfields soon if we’re gonna land on wheels and not on our own two feet in a rice paddy. Bob, how much fuel we got left?”
Bob scanned the fuel gauges, then looked down at his notepad with his calculations.
“I figure, another fifteen minutes or so, but I wouldn’t count on it. We’ve been in the air over thirteen hours.”
“Any radio contact with our airfields?”
“No response on any frequencies. Where are we?”
George glanced over his chart. “Best I can calculate, just southwest of Nanchang. Jap territory.”
Jake clearly read the faces of all. It wasn’t looking good. In the hands of the enemies they’d just bombed wouldn’t be a very good prospect.
A red light and buzzer came up on Bob’s panel. He reached over and flipped off the buzzer, but the light stayed on.
Bill looked around. “That’s all she wrote, boys. Let’s just hope this is unoccupied China, or we’re in a mess of trouble. Everybody out. If we get out fast enough, maybe we can regroup on the ground.”
Jake checked his parachute straps, his .45 pistol, and his flashlight. George released the floor hatch into the rushing wind and blackness below, hung his legs out, and took one last, serious look in the faces of his mates. “I guess I’ll be seeing ya.” He dropped out of the plane.
For the first time, Jake was gripped with the fact that he wasn’t ready to die. But he resigned himself to the thought that this is the way he’d lived and this is the way he’d die. No changing it now. He sat down and dangled his legs into the wind, which whipped them hard against the opening. Bracing his hands on the frame, he pushed himself down and fell out into the darkness as the plane shrieked away.
He gave a firm yank on his rip cord and the parachute blossomed open. As the drone of his plane faded into the clouds he found himself drifting in total quiet for the first time in what was the longest, noisiest, most intense day of his life. Enveloped by the mystical night, he could see nothing in the darkness and fog and could barely even feel the wind as he floated down with the rain. Swinging from side to side, he felt strangely alone.
Nearly 3,000 miles away, at the same moment in Madras, Oregon, Mrs. Andrus woke from her sleep. She blinked groggily and rolled toward her husband and whispered loudly. “Hiram. Hiram?” He groaned. She pulled the covers down and sat up. “I had this dream, a dreadful feeling, like I was dropping down, down, down.”
“Mmmmm. Go to sleep.”
“No, something’s happened,” she said. “I’ve got to pray for Jake.” She leaned to the night stand, pulled the chain on the light, got up, and put on her rose patterned, quilted robe. Facing a chair next to the window, she grasped the seat and lowered herself to the floor onto her knees. Resting her forehead onto her folded hands, she poured out her heart to the God of heaven to please, please help her son, wherever he was.
Early a.m., China.
Jake still couldn’t see anything as he stared down through the rain, prepared for the worst, and wondered where he’d land – in a rice paddy? On a rooftop? In the trees? On the pavement? Suddenly the ground rose up below him and he crumpled into the mud with a hard jolt as his chute drifted down beside him.
He got up onto his hands and knees and rubbed his ribs, which he’d somehow banged a bit on the landing, then hugged a mound of damp soil next to him in relief. “Ahhh, dirt!” Unhooking his parachute in the dim fog and drizzle, he saw he was surrounded by dozens of square white posts with oriental writing on them. A Chinese graveyard. “Whoa!” He looked around a little surprised. “I hope I’m not joining you guys any time soon.”
He stood up, drew his M1911 .45 and cocked it, slowly peered in all directions, then held it high in the air and fired off one round and waited for an answer. Nothing. Nothing but the steady pelting of rain. He realized his luck to have landed on the mound of graves as all around him were flooded rice p
addies. He fired off two more rounds and waited again. Nothing.
Holstering his weapon and pulling out his knife, he crouched down and cut off a strip of parachute silk, wrapping his head to keep the water off, then trudged off down a muddy path looking for shelter for the night.
After some time he came upon what appeared to be a small brick shrine, just big enough for him to sit in and keep out of the rain. It was good enough, and he was beat, so he squeezed in and got as comfortable as he could. In his utter exhaustion, he soon nodded off to sleep to the soothing hiss of rainfall.
The dawn sun poked through the gray and white clouds on the horizon and hit Jake squarely in the face, nudging him from his sleep. Squinting, he rubbed his eyes and struggled to free himself from his small quarters and stumbled out. Standing up and stretching, he took a long look around for people and for any kind of road. Not seeing either, he yanked off his parachute cap and headed in the direction that seemed to make the most sense. He needed first to find out if he was safely in Chinese territory or in occupied territory, but what he really wanted was to just find his buddies.
Jake came to paddies of rice and found a path, which he followed for over an hour, then started to come upon some people in their houses that looked more like shacks to him. A woman hanging laundry beside some squawking chickens glanced at him for a second but paid no attention. He passed a couple of men on the road who weren’t even suspicious. It seemed strange. If they didn’t feel his being there was unusual, it must be a good sign.
Finally getting up the nerve, he stopped an older man pulling a small cart loaded with baskets. Jake pointed to himself. “American. Me American. You Chinese?” The man smiled and nodded his head without speaking and walked on. Not much help. Coming to a kind of feed store, he wrote a note to the clerk in English “Me American. Are you Chinese?” The clerk smiled as well but couldn’t read the note. What he thought should be a pretty simple task was proving to be rather difficult. Who were the good guys?
After another hour of walking, he eventually came to a main road with telephone lines – civilization. He was confident of finding help soon, but knew he had to be cautious. As Jake continued, he came to a series of houses with soldiers a ways off the road. Some men were washing laundry in a small creek. Chinese? Japanese? He felt it was safer to just keep on walking.
Further down he came to a house and stopped. He could hear people inside. He needed to determine where he was and had to find some people who could help him. He slowly drew his .45, racked it to put a bullet in the chamber, then reholstered it with the hammer cocked, leaving his hand on his pistol. Taking a deep breath, he walked up to the front door and peered in. He saw two young soldiers in khaki green uniforms playing with some children. The soldiers had gold stars sewn onto their caps, which had a kind of hood down the back of the neck. He had absolutely no idea which force they belonged to.
Jake poked his head in. Everyone stopped and stared, but in a friendly way. He motioned to himself with his left hand while keeping his right on his weapon. “America.” He pointed to one of the soldiers. “China or Japan?”
One soldier smiled and looked to the other soldier, then back to Jake. “China! We China!” It appeared they knew some English, but he wasn’t convinced, so he kept his hand on his gun.
The soldiers came up to him and made motions of eating and pointed to Jake’s mouth. “Food? Food?”
Jake smiled and nodded.
“Come!” The soldier looped his arm into Jake’s and the two walked him up the road back toward the encampment. As they walked, one soldier pointed to Jake’s .45 and shook his head. “No gun. No gun.”
Jake patted his holstered weapon. “The gun stays right there, OK?”
The soldier smiled. “OK, OK.”
Coming onto the grounds, the other soldiers watched curiously as Jake was walked inside a nicer, but equally tiny house – a sort of headquarters, Jake figured. They sat him at a small table and promptly brought out some food, none of which Jake could quite identify, except for the tea and the rice. He began wolfing everything down, glancing around cautiously between bites. The two soldiers stood before Jake with their arms folded, smiling and nodding. Suddenly, Jake felt a sharp pain in his back. With his mouth full of food, he looked over his shoulder. Ten soldiers had their bayoneted rifles pointed at his back. An officer in tall black riding boots slowly approached Jake and casually removed his .45, smiling.
Jake turned forward, angry. “Y’know, they always told me all you guys looked the same. I shoulda known.”
Chapter 45
April 19, 1942. Nagoya, Japan.
Workmen in white wrestled fire hoses in the morning light, spraying great arcs of water onto the smoldering, twisted steel of what was left of the destroyed refinery. Scorched holding tanks hissed and breathed out clouds of black smoke above flickering tongues of fire.
Five workers stood or squatted around a partially burned body, half covered in a white sheet. Other bodies covered in sheets lay behind them.
Kneeling beside the corpse, folded almost to the ground, Amayo in her pink kimono wept uncontrollably, heaving with near-silent sobs. She had come running when she heard the news early that morning. It didn’t seem real to her. It couldn’t be real.
The men glanced impatiently at each other.
Collecting herself, trembling, and wiping her face with both sleeves, she sat upright. She nodded to the man with the clipboard. “It’s Kenji,” she said, then crumpled again to the ground in pulsating sobs.
The leader jotted a note onto his clipboard and motioned to the others who pulled the cover over Kenji’s head.
Amayo sat up with her hands to her face and let out a shriek of grief, and collapsed again in tears, this time letting herself wail uncontrollably, her long, black hair cascading across the lifeless body. She couldn’t believe she would never see him again. Ever.
Chapter 46
April 19, 1942. The aircraft carrier Akagi. East of mainland Japan.
A flagman guided a Zero fighter as he descended to the deck for a landing. In the operations room, Fuchida, Vice Admiral Nagumo, Genda, and other officers hunched over the map table. At a large, lacquered conference table nearby, other officers studied papers and maps.
Fuchida shook his head and pointed to a tiny island. “No, even Midway is too far for the B-25, and Alaska is impossible as well. They were medium bombers. That’s far outside their range.” By this time, the news had hit the American newspapers and shot around the world. Fuchida was disgusted that the Japanese newspapers announced that the army shot down nine planes, when none were shot down. Propaganda like that only backfires when people learn the truth, he thought.
Nagumo asked, “And how did they penetrate our defenses? Even though they arrived a day early, we were still on alert.”
Genda answered, “Since our fighters patrol at three thousand meters13 they came in at thirty to sixty meters14 above the ground – dangerously low, but nearly invisible to our pilots at that height.”
Another officer pointed to the map east of Japan. “We know they were spotted out here.”
Fuchida shook his head. “But you can’t launch land-based medium bombers from a carrier. It’s just not possible.”
“So few planes, so little damage.” Nagumo exhaled the smoke of his cigar. “In the end, it was a wasted attack. Even our newspapers are calling the Doolittle Raid the ‘Do-Nothing Raid.’”
Fuchida collected himself and stood upright. “Respectfully, sir, I must disagree. They’ve exposed the weakness of our home defenses – in broad daylight.”
Nagumo’s face darkened. “Never before has anyone been able to bomb our homeland.” Perturbed, Nagumo looked at the map and back at Fuchida. “Then, where did they come from?”
Fuchida took a long drag from his cigarette to buy time and scanned the map again. “I don’t know ... but I do know this: The Americans had no fear flying straight into the heart of Japan. We failed to shoot down a single plane.” Nodding
with admiration, he looked Nagumo in the eyes. “Whoever these Americans were ... they had guts.”
Chapter 47
April, 1942. The Island of Panay
Fire blazed from the windows of the school buildings of Central Philippine University – stark white plaster structures pouring out brilliant flames and jet-black smoke. Japanese soldiers with bayoneted rifles swarmed the campus.
American forces had used the buildings as a temporary base shortly after the bombing of Iloilo, but with the landing of Japanese troops at three locations on Panay three days earlier, the soldiers were forced to retreat to the mountains and scattered into the jungle at hidden locations where food and weapons had been stored to begin a guerrilla-style warfare. With the orders to leave nothing behind for the Japanese they torched the university.
Pushing through the leaves while carrying an oversized backpack, Jimmy slapped a mosquito on his neck and came to a stop. If it wasn’t one part of his body that hurt, it was another, but at least they were getting closer to their destination.
At the head was Reverend Delfin Dianala, who smiled. “The bats eat millions of mosquitoes around here, but that still leaves a few billion.”
Trekking up the steep dirt path in the tropical mountains were Jimmy and Charma Covell, Frank and Gertrude Rose, a dozen or so teachers, some students, a few local gold miners, and several children of families. Filipino members of Rev. Dianala’s church helped haul goods. The displaced teachers dragged their suitcases through a barrage of dark green, glossy-leafed foliage, towering White Luan trees, and stands of bamboo.
Fearing the deeper penetration of Japanese forces, Jimmy thought it best to move further inland. The rest agreed, so the teachers and other refugees from the university banded together and hiked up into the overgrown mountains of Panay.
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