LOCAL

Remembering the Doolittle Tokyo Raid

Robert Parker, Special to the Standard-Times

Seventy-five years ago, April 18, 1942, only four months after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, a daring air strike against the Japanese mainland took place. The historical event is known as the Doolittle Tokyo Raid.

A squadron of 16 B-25 bombers launched from the flight deck of the USS Hornet on April 18, 1942, a mission that came to be known as the Doolittle Raid.

In those four months, the world as Americans had known it crumbled. A significant portion of the U.S. Pacific Fleet sat at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese seemed unstoppable, winning victory after victory in the Far East. Morale in the U.S. was sinking day by day, and Americans were desperate for any morsel of good news.

Given the task of striking back at Japan for the attack on Pearl Harbor by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lt. Col. James "Jimmy" Doolittle and his band of gritty volunteers would accomplish what seemed nearly impossible. America needed a victory and some heroes to look up to, and Doolittle and his Raiders would deliver, striking back at the Japanese with a blow to their homeland and shattering their belief of invincibility — which had been nurtured by no other successful invasion or attack of their homeland in the 2,600 preceding years.

Dean E. Hallmark from Robert Lee was one of those Raiders.

LT. Col. James Doolittle wires a Japanese medal to the fin of a 500-pound bomb aboard the USS Hornet prior to the Tokyo raid in 1942.
From the Enquirer archives
scanned July 6, 2011
FROM AN APRIL 4, 1967 ARTICLE BY KIP COOPER, COPLEY NEWS SERVICE: Tokyo - Tora! Tora! (tiger, tiger) was the Japanese signal launching the infamous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Four months later, on April 18, 1972, 80 gallant U.S. Army Air Corps men carrying two pints of "medicinal rye" in their hip pockets, a bomb inscribed "I don't want to set the world on fire, just Tokyo" and other assorted missives, were winging their way into the "tiger's" very lair to do just that. Jimmy Doolittle's 16 B25s had been brought by stealth and daring right into the tiger's den by that intrepid U.S. admiral, William F. "Bull" Halsey, personally selected for the dangerous mission of helping avenge Pearl Harbor by the World War II naval genius, the late Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz. Doolittle's raid hit Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya and Yokosuka. Seaman Suekichi Nakamura, the lookout on a Japanese patrol boat some 700 miles from his own shores, spied two aircraft carriers on the horizon. He awakened his sleeping skipper, Chief Petty Officer Gisaku Maeda, to admire "our beautiful carriers." Maeda studied the carriers intently, then said sadly, "Indeed, they are beautiful. But they are not ours." He then shot himself. He knew what the appearance of USS Hornet and Enterprise portended. In Yokohama, European and American residents had been interned in the port city's famous Negishi Heights racetrack grandstand in the "Banzai (hurrah) Room" where Japanese bettors used to toast their winnings. "We has something to really 'banzai' about that day," recalls Britisher Hugh Walker, 57, who lives here today (1967) with his Japanese wife and five children. "I was outside when I saw the planes coming in very, very low," Walker said in an interview. "We climbed the fence to watch them go over. A Greek sailor told me he saw one of them wave at us. I knew immediately they were not Japanese, they had to be American. And I thought to myself right then, 'If the Americans can reach Japan so easily, the war will be over right away.;" American Denis Kildoyle, now 74, was in a prison in a nearby area. "The Japanese immediately drew the shades on my little cell," he told me "When I asked what was going on, the Japanese replied, 'It is none of your business, we are practicing.' But I could hear their shrapnel falling back on our roof and I knew there had been a raid; it had to be an American raid and I was happy." Ambassador Joseph Grew and his staff interned in the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo naturally were elated, but the British ambassador and his interned staff decided the occasion called for a more stalwart reaction; they drank a toast to the Americans' health. In Japanese military headquarters in Tokyo, there was anger, shock and indignation that the Americans had succeeded in such a "dastardly" act as dropping bombs on the "land of the Son of Heaven." Gen. Hideki Tojo, the premier, was furious. His was a personal loss of face. He had told his countrymen an air raid on their homeland was impossible unless neutral Russia gave the Americans air bases from which to fly. Carrier planes only had a range of 300 miles. That threat had been discounted. Japan had a network of fishing boats and radio-equipped patrol boats picketing up to 700 miles at sea. These were backed by land-based reconnaissance flights. "And after Pearl Harbor, who ruled the seas?" the confident Japanese had been saying. A radio announcer, discussing the likelihood of an American raid on Japan 72 hours before Doolittle's raiders hit, chuckled, "That is a most laughable story." Shorty after noon on Saturday, April 18, 1942, Doolittle's bombardier, Staff Sgt. Fred A. Braemer reported, "The bomb bay doors are open." Nine B25s dropped their individual loads averaging 2,000 pounds of explosives and incendiaries on steel mills, factories, oil storage tanks, refineries, power stations and gas and chemical plant dock areas in Tokyo; two B25s bombed the Yokohama dock area, refinery and oil storage tanks and then shot up a patrol boat for good measure; one plane hit the naval base at Yokosuka damaging an aircraft factories, barracks, oil tanks and an arsenal in Nagoya; one hit the Kobe steel works. One plane did not make it to Japan and had to abort is mission. Not a single plane was lost to enemy action. Red-faced Japanese authorities hastened to rope off and hide the damaged areas from the public. The government proclaimed that the Americans had bombed only schools, hospitals and civilian homes. No Japanese record of the damage Doolittle's raiders inflicted was ever found. But the towering chemical and oil flames and smoke certainly told the Japanese public what had been accomplished. Japanese blunders in letting Doolittle's planes get into and out of Japan, without being able to shoot down even one, were more flagrant than the errors the United States had made at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese navy knew Halsey's carrier task force was nearing Japan. But the navy figured Halsey would have to come much nearer before he could attack the nation. So the navy did not inform the army, which was the top military service. Nor did they alert civil defense officials. A Japanese patrol plane outbound from Tokyo spotted one of the B25s skimming the wave tops at 25 feet and radioed back that it was heading for Japan. Again Japanese military officers pooh-poohed the report saying, "The Americans have no twin-engine carrier planes." Japanese intelligence had intercepted message being flashed between Halsey on the Enterprise, Capt. Marc Mitscher on the Hornet and Pearl Harbor headquarters, but did nothing with them Vice Adm. Matoi Ugaki, chief of staff of the combined fleet headquarters in Tokyo, belatedly sent out aircraft, ships and submarines to locate and sink Halsey, but he next day Ugaki's frustration was complete. Lamented the Japanese admiral, "I am at the end of my resources. The enemy casts an eye of contempt at we clamoring Japanese." Japanese civilian understandably were lackadaisical about air raid defense and drills. Heavy propaganda had dulled their appreciation of the dangers they faced. A mock air raid drill had already occurred that morning, and Doolittle's raiders came in right on the heels of it. Most people though the raid to be a continuation of the drill. Japanese radio stations kept on broadcasting, enabling Doolittle's fliers to "home in" for landfall. The crew of "Whiskey Pete" said that Japanese station were "carrying on" as usual two hours after they had dropped their bombs and headed for China. Japan had warplanes in the air when Doolittle's men first arrived, but not to apprehend the Americans. they were practicing for an air show to celebrate the emperor's birthday on April 29, 1942. A considerable defense could have been thrown up against the raiders had Japan been more alert. In the Tokyo area, there were several hundred antiaircraft batteries and an equal number of fighters and fighter bombers. The Japanese first fleet was in the Inland Sea. An aircraft carrier was anchored off Tateyama (near Hayama). But Japanese defenders had written a script calling for Halsey to sail closer into a trap where land-based bombers, submarines and other surface ships could finish the job begun at Pearl Harbor of destroying the Pacific Fleet. But the "uncooperative" Halsey flubbed the lines the Japanese had written for him and went in the opposite direction after sinking three Japanese patrol craft and capturing five prisoners for later interrogation. Submarines Thresher and Trout had sunk or beached 26,000 tons of Japanese shipping. Halsey had lost only three aircraft, two men killed in a refueling accident and one man injured in the Doolittle launch. Of Doolittle's 80 men, three were killed bailing out over or crash-landing in China, four men were badly injured, five were interned by the Russians after landing their plane at Primovskkrai, and eight were captured by Japanese forces in China who tortured, beat and starved them as an example of what happened to people who bombed Japan. Three of the fliers were executed and one died of starvation and disease. Atrocities the Japanese committed against the American fliers horrified the American people and led to the idea by President Franklin D. Roosevelt of postwar war crimes trials for those responsible for such inhuman actions. The raid Halsey and Doolittle had pulled off was a sorely needed shot in the arm for America and her allies. Up to March, 1942 the Japanese had not lost a warship larger than a destroyer; the Philippines was on the brink of defeat; Hong Kong, Singapore and Rangoon had fallen; the Dutch had surrendered nearly 100,000 troops in the East Indies; the Japanese seemingly were laying the groundwork for an invasion of Australia with strikes and landings in the Solomons. The threats were an arrow pointing to Midway, Hawaii and California. The powerful Japanese fleet then controlled the entire Pacific west of an arc from Alaska to Hawaii to Australia. There was the frightful possibility the Japanese and German armies would link up in the Middle East, bringing them dangerously near their avowed goal of controlling the four corners of the earth. Halsey's daring task force and Doolittle's courageous raiders shocked the Japanese into the realization that they were vulnerable. Armies and aircraft slated for further Pacific assaults had to be retained at home. Who knew where the Americans would strike next? Washington expected the Japanese to attempt at retaliation for the Tokyo raid, and this was a correct assumption. Washington itself, or the West Coast of the United States. Capt. Y. Watanabe, a gunnery officer who helped Yamamoto plan the battle, commanded the second fleet under the renowned Japanese admiral when he met his defeat at Midway. Doolittle had taken off for the Tokyo raid at the worst possible time, arrived over Tokyo in the middle of the day and found his way to safety in China in darkness, rain and fog. Stung by the audacity, the irate tiger roared out of his den; and the U.S. Navy pulled his claws. In an epilogue to the April 18, 1942 raid, Adm. Yamamoto met his death exactly one year later, on April 18, 1943, when he was shot down over the jungles of Bougainville in an ambush personally sanctioned by Adm. Nimitz.

The Raiders, along with thousands of other supporting military personnel aboard the carrier USS Hornet, were part of a 16-ship task force that departed San Francisco Bay in early April 1942. While heading toward Japan, the armada was discovered by Japanese patrol boats ahead of the planned departure by the Raiders in 16 B-25 twin-engine bombers. This discovery forced the Raiders to depart 12 hours earlier than planned, approximately 150 nautical miles farther from Japan. Yet, despite knowing they were likely embarking on a suicide mission, the group of 80 flyers never wavered.

Compared to the devastating B-29 fire bombings of Japan later in the war, the Doolittle Raid did little material damage. Nevertheless, when news of the Raid was released, American morale soared. The raid has strategic impact on the war. The Japanese military recalled many units to the mainland for defense.

More importantly, the Doolittle Raid provoked the Japanese to attempt to grab Midway Island, an ill-fated expedition in June 1942 that resulted in the loss of four fleet carriers, many sailors and a number of highly trained aircrews from which the Japanese never recovered.

Besides being the first offensive air action against Japan, the Doolittle Raid garnered other historical facts. It was the first combat mission in which the Army Air Force and the U.S. Navy teamed up in a full-scale operation against the enemy. The Raiders were the first to fly land-based bombers from a carrier deck and the first to use new cruise-control techniques in attacking a distant target. The incendiary bombs they carried were forerunners of those used later in the war.

Army B-25 bombers atop the USS Hornet make their way toward Japan for World War II's famed Doolittle Raid.

Thirteen Texans participated in the Doolittle Tokyo Raid:

Thad Blanton, Archer City, Texas. Co-Pilot Crew #9; after the Tokyo Raid remained in the Chinese-Burma-India Theater and escaped enemy territory after a plane crash in Burma.
William N. Fitzhugh, Galveston, Texas, Co-Pilot Crew #2; after the Tokyo Raid remained in the Chinese-Burma-India Theatre until June 1943.
Robert M. Gray, Killeen, Texas, Pilot, Crew #2; after the Tokyo Raid remained in the Chinese-Burma-India Theatre. Killed in action on Oct. 18, 1942, while on a combat mission.
Nolan A. Herndon, Greenville, Texas, Bombardier-Navigator Crew #8; interned in Russia after the Tokyo Raid for 13 months.
Dean E. Hallmark, Robert Lee, Texas, Pilot Crew #6; captured by the Japanese after the Tokyo Raid. The Japanese executed Hallmark on Oct. 15, 1942, while he was in prison.
John A. Hilger, Sherman, Texas, Pilot Crew #14; after the Tokyo Raid remained in the Chinese-Burma-India theatre.
Robert L. Hite, Odell, Texas, Co-Pilot Crew #16; captured by the Japanese after the Tokyo Raid, imprisoned and tortured by the Japanese for 40 months, liberated on Aug. 20, 1945, by American troops.
Edgar E. McElroy, Ennis, Texas, Pilot, Crew # 13; after the Tokyo Raid remained in Chinese-Burma-India theatre until June 1943.
James M. Parker, Livingston, Texas, Co-Pilot Crew # 9; after the Tokyo Raid served in North Africa as pilot of light bombardier aircraft until December 1943.
Douglas V. Radney, Mineola, Texas, Engineer/Gunner Crew # 2; after the Tokyo Raid remained in Chinese-Burma-India theatre until September 1942, and subsequently completed pilot training.
Kenneth E. Reddy, Bowie, Texas, Co-Pilot Crew # 11; returned to the U.S. after the Tokyo Raid and was killed in a plane accident near Little Rock, Arkansas, on Sept. 3, 1942.
Rodney Ross “Hoss” Wilder, Taylor, Texas, Co-Pilot Crew #5; after the Tokyo Raid served as Bombardment Squadron Commander in England, North Africa, Italy and Corsica, returned to the U.S. in May 1944.
Lucian N. Youngblood, Pampa, Texas, Co-Pilot Crew # 4; after the Tokyo Raid remained in Chinese-Burma-India theatre until May 1943, assigned to bases in South Carolina, New York and Kansas the remainder of the war.

Several Raiders later moved to Texas after the war.

The remaining survivor of the Tokyo Doolittle Raiders — Richard E. Cole, Co-Pilot Crew #1, (Doolittle’s co-pilot) — lives in Comfort, Texas.

In this April 18, 1942, file photo, one of Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle's B-25 bombers takes off from the flight deck of the USS Hornet for the initial air raid on Tokyo. Coming just four months after the Imperial Japanese Navy savaged the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle raid on Japan's home did little damage, but lifted the spirits of Americans and electrified a world at war.

Cole will be 102 years young on his birthday in September. Col. Richard E. Cole will be present at the 75th anniversary of the Doolittle Tokyo Raid celebration in Dayton, Ohio, at the United States Air Force Museum on April 17-18.

On March 6, the Texas State Senate honored Cole and the 13 Texas Raiders with a proclamation honoring the 75th anniversary of the Doolittle Tokyo Raid.

Robert Parker lives in Huntsville, Texas.

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