Back in his cell, Jake waited anxiously. He could not see what the guards were doing to George, but he could tell from the screams that reverberated around the prison that George was in serious trouble. George’s screaming went on for an hour before it subsided into low groaning. Jake waited impatiently for a Morse code message on his cell wall telling him that George was all right. Finally the message came, and Jake breathed a sigh of relief.
On November 15, 1944, Jake added up the years. It was his thirty-second birthday. He knew that his mother and stepfather would be praying for him, especially today, and now for the first time he also felt linked to them in prayer. It was a great comfort to Jake to know that he was spiritually linked with his family, even though time and distance separated them.
A little over five weeks later it was Christmas Day, and although the routine and food in the prison remained the same, the Doolittle Raiders were in for a wonderful Christmas treat. Jake sat in his cell wondering what his family back home in Oregon were doing for Christmas. As he contemplated the Christmas dinner they were probably eating, Jake became aware of a distant roar that began to get louder and louder. Suddenly he realized that it was the sound of airplanes. He quickly jumped to his feet and positioned himself to see the tiny patch of sky through the window high on the wall of his cell. To Jake’s amazement, moments later a group of shiny silver fighter planes zoomed overhead. Jake had no idea what kind of planes they were, but there was no doubt that they were American planes. Jake could hardly contain his excitement.
Moments later Jake heard the sound of machine-gun fire and then the percussive boom of bombs exploding. As quickly as he could, with hands and feet against opposite walls, Jake worked his way up the ten feet to the window to see what was happening. To his delight he could see black smoke billowing from some oil storage tanks and an oil refinery in the distance.
As he watched the smoke rise from the oil tanks, Jake found himself thinking back thirty-two months before as he and his crewmates in the Bat bombed similar oil storage tanks in Nagoya, Japan. Many horrors had been visited on him since that time, but Jake did not regret his involvement in the Doolittle Raiders attack on Japan.
As soon as Jake had climbed down from his perch by the window, he began tapping a Morse code message to the cell next door. It was hard for the four airmen to contain their excitement as a flurry of Morse code messages passed between them.
Despite his excitement, Jake felt a certain apprehension, one he was sure he had in common with his fellow imprisoned Doolittle Raiders. The war might be close to ending, but what would happen to them? Every guard who talked about it said the same thing: the remaining Doolittle Raiders would never be handed over to the Allies; they would be executed first. Did the possibility of the war ending mean liberty for the men, or did it mean death? It was a question no one could answer.
Several weeks before, a guard had told Jake and the others that the Japanese had captured New York and San Francisco and that it would be only a matter of time before they controlled the whole of the United States. Jake and the others had dismissed this news as propaganda. Now, from the dejected look on the guards’ faces, Jake decided that the guards believed their own stories. They had obviously not been expecting such an attack by American planes. And despite the clear evidence of billowing black smoke that choked the sky over Nanking, the guards tried to tell the airmen that all the American planes had hit with their bombs was the river, where they had killed some fish. The guards’ reaction demonstrated once again their blind devotion to the invincibility of the emperor and Japan. It seemed impossible for them to really contemplate the idea that Japan would be beaten and forced to surrender.
Despite the excitement of the Christmas Day raid on Nanking, nothing more out of the ordinary happened during the next six months as Jake and the others shivered their way through another unusually cold winter, which to their relief eventually gave way to a moderate spring. Then on June 15, 1945, at six thirty in the morning, Jake and the other three men were told to hurry from their cells. They were handcuffed and shackled and then engulfed in large green raincoats. A guard placed a hat on Jake and rolled a mask down over the front of it so that he could not see. Then the men were roped together and told to march—where to, Jake did not know.
Two hours later Jake found himself sitting in a train carriage. He could not see from behind the mask, but he could hear people talking in Japanese, and he could feel the train swaying along the track. As the day got hotter, Jake recoiled from the odor of a hundred people in close proximity.
The masks were taken off at noon, and Jake looked around. The carriage was filled with Japanese people, many of them men in uniform, though there were also many women sitting on luggage piled in the aisle. Jake was glad to see that his three fellow Doolittle Raiders were still with him.
Food was bought to the prisoners—meat and rice—and it tasted delicious. All that was needed was a cup of tea to wash the food down, but it did not materialize. Instead, the mask was put back on, and Jake was left to take in the sounds and smells of the journey.
The procedure at lunch was repeated at dinner. And again, curiously, there was not anything to drink with the meal. The next morning there was more food, but still nothing to drink. By now Jake had a terrible headache and asked his guard for water.
The guard just laughed and said, “The more liquid we give you, the more you will have to be escorted to the latrines. No liquid, no latrines!”
Jake groaned. How bizarre it was to be finally getting some good food, only to have to worry about passing out from dehydration.
The journey lasted for three long, dry days. By the end of the journey the men were so weak that they had to be helped down from the train. Once off the train, one of the guards announced that they were now in Peking. Jake wished he had paid more attention to geography in school. He was not exactly sure where in China Peking was, though from the position of the sun in relation to the train during the trip he had figured out that they were traveling in a northerly direction.
Later that day the four airmen found themselves back in solitary confinement in yet another military prison. Jake wondered why the Japanese had made the effort to move them out of Nanking. Whatever way he looked at it, as far he was concerned, it turned out to be a poor move. The Nanking prison guards could be cruel, although some of them showed their human side at times, whereas the guards at the prison in Peking were all business. New horrors awaited Jake when he entered his cell. Inside were a woven mat, a single blanket, and a low stool about eight inches long and four inches wide.
“Sit down and face the wall,” the guard instructed. “And don’t move or look around. You will be punished if you do so.”
Jake sighed as he perched himself on the stool and faced the brick wall of the cell. He did not dare move his body, but after a while he moved his head very slowly so that he could see the rest of the cell.
Jake soon learned that he was expected to stay sitting on the stool facing the wall for sixteen hours a day, except when eating the three meager meals that were served to him or when using the benjo. Sitting still for that long was its own kind of torture, and as he endured the sixteen hours on the stool, Jake recited the many Bible passages he had memorized. Jake’s only relief was knowing that Bob Hite was in the adjoining cell. Sometimes at night Bob and Jake could talk to each other through the benjo, since the pipes from the two toilets were connected to each other. If Jake got down close to the hole and spoke loudly, Bob could hear him, and vice versa. Of course, they were taking a risk in communicating this way. They had no idea what the punishment for talking through the benjo might be, but it was a risk that was worth taking to hear another friendly voice.
The days went by, and no one came to take Jake out of his cell for exercise, though once a week the four Doolittle Raiders were allowed a bath. This was their only opportunity to check on how the others were doing. When the men did get together, Jake was alarmed by the deterioration in George Barr’s health. Because of George’s height, red hair, and freckles, the guards constantly picked on him. And now it appeared to Jake that George was near death. Sometimes George lay unconscious while the others took their baths.
Jake realized that he was not far behind George. He had developed a severe case of dysentery, and boils had once again erupted all over his body, even on the soles of his feet. There were many times that Jake would have cried with the pain from the boils, if he’d had the energy to do so. The nights were unbearably long; sleep was fitful and interrupted by screaming and moaning throughout the jail.
After a month of agony, Jake knew that he could not go on sitting on the stool hour after hour each day. He felt like his heart was beating so slowly and erratically that it could stop at any moment. He began to pray about his predicament, and as he prayed, the story of Daniel came to mind. He remembered how King Darius had cast Daniel into a den of lions and how in the midst of the lions Daniel had knelt and prayed and God had shut the lions’ mouths so that they did not attack and kill Daniel. Without hesitation, Jake slipped off the stool and knelt in front of the cell door, his hands folded in prayer. Whatever happened next, as far as he was concerned, he was in God’s hands.
A guard came by and peered into the cell. When he saw Jake on his knees facing the door, he beat on the cell door with his sword and ordered Jake to get back on the stool and face the wall. But Jake continued praying, even though he knew it was against prison rules for anyone to so much as look at the door. Jake heard the guard walk briskly away and then return a minute or so later with several other guards.
The cell door swung open, and Jake braced himself for the beating that was sure to follow. But there was no beating. Instead, the guards walked around Jake, as if they were amazed at what he was doing. Then, without saying a word, they left and returned a short time later with a medic. The medic laid Jake on the woven mat on the floor. He then knelt down beside Jake and gave him a shot of medicine, after which he told the guards to leave Jake alone to rest.
It felt heavenly for Jake to be off the stool and free to lie down. Even better news was to follow. At mealtime Jake thought he was hallucinating. On the enamel plate that was slid through the slot in the cell door were boiled eggs, nutritious bread, and thick vegetable soup. And then a guard handed Jake a pint of milk to wash down the meal. While the medicine and the food made Jake’s body stronger, it was Jake’s faith that was bolstered the most through the experience. Even in the midst of prison, Jake now knew that God was always with him, looking after him and giving him strength to go on.
Several weeks later, on August 9, 1945, something even more astonishing happened for Jake. He awoke on his woven mat on the cell floor in the morning with the distinct impression that he should pray for peace. Not at some time in the future but right then and there! Jake started to pray as hard as he could. He asked God to put a great desire in the hearts of the Japanese leaders so that they would want to end the senseless war.
Throughout the entire morning Jake prayed, and through lunchtime as well. Then at around 2:00 PM he felt God tell him, “You can stop now. You don’t need to pray anymore. The victory is won.”
Jake was ecstatic upon hearing this. Nothing had changed on the outside, but Jake was 100 percent sure that the war was over. Now all that the captured Doolittle Raiders had to do was wait for word of the end of the war to reach Peking.
