Capt. Ted W. Lawson - Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

TWO OFFICERS OF THE U. S. Army Air Force sat at a table in a Washington hotel, a few weeks after Pearl Harbor. One was a Generalbig, ruddy, tough and gray. The other was a Lieutenant Colonelstocky, scrappy-looking, eager.

For two hours the Lieutenant Colonel spoke to the General and marked up the tablecloth. At first the General laughed mockingly at what the Lieutenant Colonel said. Then he listened. He pulled his chair closer to the table, and listened more intently.

Finally the General slapped the table resoundingly. "By God, it sounded crazy when you first mentioned it," he said, "but I think you can do it. I'll go to bat for you and help you get things lined up. It certainly would give the country a lift."

The Lieutenant Colonel leaned back in his chair and smiled with relief. Then he grinned from ear to ear when the General wagged a finger at him and warned: "But listen here, damn you: as soon as you do bomb Tokyo you get the hell back here to Washington and go to workl"

This, then, is the story of a man who helped carry out that mission.

THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO

I HELPED BOMB TOKYO on the Doolittle raid of April 18, 1942. I crashed in the China Sea. I learned the full, deep meaning of the term "United Nations" from men and women whose language I couldn't speak. I watched a buddy of mine saw off my left leg. And finally I got home to my wife after being flown, shipped and carried around the world.

Now I'm in line for the aeronautical engineering research job which I wanted in the first place.

That's the story, briefly. Maybe the cards would have dealt out that job to me if I hadn't volunteered for the raid on Japan. Maybe not. I don't really have regrets, now. At first it was a little tough. People in little villages in China, in New Delhi and in Washington would look at me and feel sorry for me. And I'd have to curse or think hard about something else to keep from blubbering like a damned kid.

Now it's all right. I was one of the first of the badly wounded to get back to Washington. I guess I was a little hard to believe. One day I was crutching down a long corridor in the War Department when an elderly lady, a clerk, stopped me. She looked me up and down, examined my service ribbons, stepped back and said, "Why, what can you do in the Army?"

Even a month or two before this happened, it would have hurt badly. But now I could get a little fun out of it. I told her I was a Western Union boy and would have to be getting along.

I guess my story starts with Ellen. Ellen is my wife. She's twenty-two, three years younger than I am. Ellen was never very far from my mind during this whole thing. I would have drowned right after the crash, if the memory of her had not made me struggle out of the seat I was strapped to. And I guess I would have given up later on, if Ellen hadn't been so swell about my leg and face.

I didn't know Ellen's name for a long time after I met her. Ellen was the librarian of Los Angeles Junior College. She used to let me sleep in the library. I was always sleepy. I worked at the Douglas plant eight hours at night and went to school eight hours during the day. Ellen would let me sleep for ten or fifteen minutes, between classes, wake me up and I'd go out to class, stretching. That was 1937 and 1938, when I was studying aeronautical engineering.

One day I was at my mother's house, and there was Ellen, just a couple of doors away, tossing a football to some neighbor's kids. I walked out and she tossed one to me. We got to talking. You know how it is: you meet a slight acquaintance in some unexpected setting, and suddenly you're old pals.

I had to quit school about that time. It got too tough, trying to study and work at the same time. I was doing better at Douglas. I had gone beyond ordinary shop work wiring engine nascelles and installing hydraulic tubing in B-18's. I had been put to work on the B-19.

The B-19 is still the biggest land plane ever built. It has never amounted to much because it can't go very fast. But it was all that most of us ever thought about when it was coming along, behind the big screens Douglas set up in front of it. As things turned out, they let me design the landing flaps, for braking the big crate, and the cowl flaps, for regulating the flow of air around the four motors. And, of course, the hydraulic system that operated them. I was getting ahead.

I've always been hungry to learn everything about planes. That was what was in my head that day in Minneapolis, a couple of years later, when I volunteered for the "dangerous, important, interesting" mission which turned out to be the Tokyo raid.

It was that curiosity about planes, and an interest in learning more than the blueprint side of the business, that put me in a civilian flying school and made me join the Army as a flying cadet. My mother raised Cain when I did that and, from a lot of standpoints, she was right. I was chucking a $36-a-week job with a company that was beginning to get big war orders from abroad for a $75-a-month job that might break my neck. But I wanted experience. I wanted to get my fingers into different kinds of planes and see how they worked. The Army had those planes, and Ellen saw it my way, even after Douglas said they'd give me a good raise if I stayed. You see, we wanted to get married. But now we'd have to wait at least until after I had gotten my wings.

The reason I tell you this, about enlisting, is that some people have been nice enough to think that I did it because I had chosen the right cause and was getting ready