Doolittle James Harold - Target Tokyo : Jimmy Doolittle and the raid that avenged Pearl Harbor

Frontispiece: Sailors look on as sixteen Army B-25 bombers, tied down and with wheels chocked, crowd the deck of the carrier Hornet en route to bomb Japan. (National Archives)

FOR THE MEN
FROM SHANGRI-LA

His deeds are in sharp contrast to his name.

MIAMI DAILY NEWS,
OCTOBER 4, 1929

CONTENTS

THE DOOLITTLE RAID IS one of the most iconic stories of World War II. Even before rescuers could pluck all the dead from the oily Hawaiian waters following Japans December 7, 1941, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, American war planners started work on an ambitious counterassault, a strike not against an outlying enemy base in the far-flung Pacific islands but against the heart of the Japanese Empire: Tokyo. That April 1942 raid led by famed stunt and racing pilot Jimmy Doolittle would test American ingenuity, gamble the precious few flattops and warships left in the Pacific Fleets battered arsenal, and jump-start Japan on the road to ruin.

Sixteen Army bombers crewed by eighty volunteers specially trained in carrier takeoffs would thunder into the skies over the enemys capital and key industrial cities, pummel factories, refineries, and dockyards and then escape to Free China. At home in the United States the mission would derail questions over the governments failure to guard against Japanese aggression in the Pacific and buoy the morale of a shell-shocked nation. The forty-five-year-old Doolittle would come to personify the raids success, his grinning image would be plastered around the nation on war bond posters, and strangers would write him poems and songs. A Missouri town would even take his name.

Postwar interviews and records would reveal that Doolittles brazen raid had accomplished far more, convincing Japans reluctant military leaders of the need to extend the nations defensive perimeter and annihilate Americas aircraft carriers to prevent possible future strikes. That plan would center on the capture of a tiny wind-ravaged atoll in the middle of the Pacific, one Japanese war planners knew America would risk its prized few flattops to protect. The June 1942 Battle of Midway would end in crushing defeat for JapanAmerica would sink four of its best aircraft carriersand prove the pivotal turning point of the war, setting the stage for the Navys offensive drive across the Pacific that would ravage Emperor Hirohitos empire.

But declassified records in both nations coupled with long-forgotten missionary files reveal a more nuanced story. Japanese documents show that the raidersalbeit unintentionallydestroyed private homes and killed civilians, including women and children. One of the bombers mistakenly strafed a school. Records likewise illustrate how the Roosevelt administration, desperate for positive press, deliberately deceived the American people about the missions actual losses and even the capture of some of the airmen to elevate the public relations value of the raid, sparking a propaganda battle between the United States and Japan. In one of the storys uglier chapters, General Douglas MacArthurs chief of intelligence secretly protected the Japanese general who allegedly signed the death order of some of the captured raiders, believing him too valuable a postwar asset to be prosecuted in the war crimes trials.

More importantly, the audacious raid that had so humiliated Japans leaders triggered a retaliatory campaign of rape and murder against the Chinese that reduced villages, towns, and cities to rubble. Enemy troops cut the ears and noses off of villagers, set others on fire, and drowned entire families in wells. The Japanese not only used incendiary squads to systematically torch entire towns but unleashed bacteriological warfare in the form of plague, anthrax, cholera, and typhoid. The brutal campaign that killed as many as a quarter million Chineseand prompted comparisons to the Rape of Nankingwas a slaughter senior American leaders anticipated and judged a worthwhile risk long before Doolittles bombers ever lifted off from the flight deck.

None of these facts undermine the bravery of the eighty volunteers at the heart of this story who climbed inside those bombers that cold wet morning of April 18, 1942. Those young men from small towns and cities across America, knowing that the odds of survival were against them, suppressed their own personal fears and set out to accomplish the impossibleand did. Rather, these important new elements of the story help frame the political and wartime context of an embattled America, a nation fighting for its very survival. Senior leaders calculated that victory would carry consequences and chose to deemphasize or cover up the negative aspects of Doolittles campaign in order to enhance the rightful accounts of the heroism of American airmen.

TARGET
TOKYO

Hawaii is just like a rat in a trap. Enjoy your dream of peace just one more day!

REAR ADMIRAL MATOME UGAKI, DECEMBER 6, 1941, DIARY ENTRY

VICE ADMIRAL CHUICHI NAGUMO stared at the dark sea that spread out before him from the bridge of the aircraft carrier Akagi as it steamed north of Hawaii in the predawn hours of December 7, 1941. The fifty-four-year-old admiral, whose bald head, furrowed brow, and square jaw gave him the appearance of a bulldog, brooded over his mission. The sullen humor that had haunted him for months was in stark contrast to the otherwise arrogant demeanor of a man who, with a puffed chest and a peacocks swagger, had once disrupted a royal garden party by threatening to gut a fellow officer with a dagger. Months of stress had robbed Nagumo of his trademark bravado, prompting some senior leaders to question whether he might fail. I hope he will not fall into nervous prostration beforehand, Rear Admiral Matome Ugaki, the Combined Fleets chief of staff, confided in his diary. Life and death are according to the will of heaven. If only he can obtain a glorious result in the coming fight, he may rest in peace.

Nagumos anxiety had not abated once he had put to sea. If anything, his fears increased. He seemed to draw little comfort from the fact that he commanded the most powerful carrier task force the world had ever seen. More than fifteen thousand officers and enlisted men stoked boilers, manned guns, and stood lookout across some thirty-one ships, from submarines and oilers to battlewagons and flattops. The nineteen-day-old moon occasionally punched through the storm clouds to silhouette this forbidding armada. The last of the strike forces eight oilers had turned back only hours earlier, leaving the combatants to make the final charge south through the swells toward Oahu at twenty-four knots. An arrow formation of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers shielded Nagumos flagship, the Akagi, and five other first-line carriers that steamed in two parallel columns. Some 350 fighters and dive and torpedo bombers crowded the flattops, ready to roar down the wooden flight decks at dawn.

Nagumos fears were not wholly unfounded. His orders stipulated he execute the dramatic opening act of war against the United States, a surgical strike that would mortally wound Americas powerful Pacific Fleet, anchored in the cool waters of Pearl Harbor. Even if he could make it 3,500 miles across the Pacific without running into a submarine, merchant ship, or patrol plane, Nagumo understood that an attack on Pearl Harbor was like kicking a hornets nest. Shore batteries along with battleships, cruisers, and destroyers boasted 993 antiaircraft guns that could shred Japanese pilots. Army and Navy airfields scattered around Oahu could throw up another four hundred fighters and bombers. Those planes could devastate Nagumos carriers and doom Japan before the sun set on the first day of war. The incredible risks of the mission were reflected in Nagumos final message from the Combined Fleet commander. The fate of our empire, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto warned, depends upon this expedition.