Nobody said a word.
When he heard the mission outlined, Jake felt scared. They were about to undertake a dangerous mission that could easily get them all killed. Yet he marveled at the audacity of the plan. A part of Jake was exhilarated because the Japanese were finally going to be paid back for the Pearl Harbor attack—and he was going to be a part of the action!
Jake joined his fellow crewmen as they walked the flight deck of the USS Hornet. The men were seeing that deck through new eyes. The deck was now a heaving, twisting runway surrounded by a churning gray ocean. As the men walked, each one was alone with his own thoughts. Jake was confident that Will Farrow and copilot Bob Hite would give it their best shot, but he was also painfully aware that they were the youngest and least experienced crew of the sixteen who would be flying out over Japan. After some quick math, Jake worked out his crew’s average age to be only twenty-three and a half years.
The rest of the day passed quietly. The army and navy had a long-standing rivalry, and Jake and the other Army Air Corps men were very much aware of tension between them and their begrudging navy hosts. The B-25 crewmen were crammed into forecabins on the Hornet with old, lumpy mattresses and bed frames that squeaked every time the ship heaved. And being so far forward seemed to magnify every heave and roll the ship made as she plowed her way forward.
That night, just as the men were getting ready for dinner, a Klaxon horn began to blast and a voice over the loudspeakers howled, “Man your battle stations!” Suddenly, the twenty-two hundred crewmen of the Hornet exploded into action, with sailors running in all directions. Jake and the other Army Air Corps men made their way up to the flight deck and climbed into their bombers.
By now Jake was aware that this was just a drill, but nonetheless, all around him the chaos continued. He watched as men, all in color-coordinated shirts, swarmed the planes. The sailors in blue shirts stood by to unlash each plane and push out the chocks that kept the wheels in place. The sailors in red shirts loaded bombs into the bomb bays of the aircraft, while the sailors in yellow shirts worked with the pilots as they ran through their final checks and then stood ready to direct the planes into take-off formation.
The gunners were using the practice run to test their guns, and lines of red explosions lit up the evening sky. Several of the other vessels in the escort fleet were also manning their battle stations, adding to the noise, the bursts of bright light, and the acrid smell of gunpowder that drifted back across to the Hornet’s flight deck.
For Jake, this was an entirely new look at war. Up until this time he had been serving on land, far from conflict. Now, as his heart raced, he got the feel of what it would be like to be in an actual battle on a floating target. As he watched the drill proceed, he wondered just how far west Japanese submarines and gunboats patrolled. Every week it seemed like they were gaining the upper hand. Just four weeks ago, on March 1, 1942, the Japanese had defeated a combined U.S. Navy and Allied fleet in the Battle of the Java Sea and seized control of the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia).
Jake thought of the details that were just beginning to filter out about the cruel treatment of captured soldiers in the Philippines by the Japanese after they had overrun that country. On the island of Luzon, seventy-five captured American and Filipino prisoners of war were being moved from the Bataan Peninsula sixty miles north to prison camps near San Fernando. The Japanese refused to give the captured soldiers food or water as they marched. Those who were too weak to keep marching were tortured mercilessly by Japanese soldiers. No one knew for sure how many captured soldiers had been killed by their captors, but word had it that the route they followed was strewn with dead bodies after the Japanese and their captives had passed by. As a result, the Allies were quickly coming to the conclusion that when it came to prisoners of war, the Japanese were a much more ruthless and inhumane enemy than the Germans, whom they were fighting in Europe and North Africa, and that it was a horrible fate for a soldier to fall into the hands of the Japanese.
Colonel Doolittle briefed the men to leave behind all pictures, personal identification, orders, letters, diaries, and anything else that might link them to the Hornet, their units back in the United States, and the places where they had trained for the mission. Then, if they were captured by the Japanese, the enemy would not be able to trace them. The navy would mail all their personal belongings back to their homes in the United States.
Two days after the USS Hornet set sail from San Francisco, the ship’s master, Captain Marc Mitscher, made a shipwide announcement over the loudspeaker. “This ship is bound for Tokyo,” he said. “We will carry the army bombers to the coast of Japan for the bombing of Tokyo.”
There was total silence, and then a huge cheer went up as sailors began to jump up and down with glee. Jake, who was on deck, watched as the signalmen used their semaphore flags to signal the news to the escort ships. Soon cheers were carried on the wind from those ships as well. One of the sailors aboard the Hornet started singing aloud, “Heigh-ho. Heigh-ho. We’re off to Tokyo. We’ll bomb and blast and come back fast. Heigh-ho. Heigh-ho.”
Following the announcement of the mission, Jake and the other crew members of the B-25s noticed an immediate turnaround in respect from the Hornet’s crew. They were served first at mealtime, their rooms were upgraded, and the cooks made their favorite desserts for dinner.
On the evening of Captain Mitscher’s announcement, Jake stood alone on deck. Everyone had calmed down a little, and he had had more than enough time to think about the mission ahead. He felt alone and as if his childhood on the farm in Oregon were now a million miles away. He distracted himself by looking at the albatrosses as they wheeled and dipped over the ship. The birds appeared tireless, flying overhead with little effort. Jake watched their tail feathers turn like the rudder of a plane, and he thought of himself up there soon in a Plexiglas cone at the nose of a bomber, part of the first direct attack on one of the most powerful military powers on earth.
Jimmy Doolittle told the men honestly that he gave the mission a 50 percent chance of success. Goose bumps rose on Jake’s arms as he contemplated his own odds of ever getting home again, and he did not sleep well that night. But the following day and the next few days were busier than ever. The men were given lectures and demonstrations on first aid. The pilots and navigators received instruction from the Hornet’s navigator, Commander Frank Akers. Meanwhile, the gunner/engineers divided their time between target practice (shooting at kites flown off the back of the Hornet) and tinkering with the bombers in their care. The men were introduced to Lieutenant Commander Stephen Jurika, who had served as an American naval attaché in Japan. Commander Jurika taught the men as much about Asia as he could in the allotted time. The men were soon referring to his lectures as “How to Make Friends and Influence Japanese.”
“Memorize this phrase: lushu hoo megwa fugi, Chinese for ‘I am an American,’” the lieutenant commander instructed the men. He also told of one way to distinguish a Chinese person from a Japanese person. “Look at their feet,” he said. “The Chinese have all their toes together while the Japanese have the big toe separated from the others because of years of wearing a thong between them.”
One day when Jake was up on deck, a navy oil tanker pulled alongside to refuel the USS Hornet. Jake watched as a large, flexible hose was hauled between the two ships and then fuel was pumped through it from the tanker into the Hornet’s fuel tanks. It was a particularly rough day, and as the aircraft carrier was refueled, waves broke over the tanker. Suddenly, one particularly large wave caused the bow of the tanker to plunge beneath the surface, causing one of the sailors near her bow to be washed overboard. The “man overboard” alarm was quickly sounded, and the sailor was soon spotted floating in his life vest. A rubber raft was thrown to him from the tanker. The sailor clambered into the raft, and soon a destroyer swooped in to pick him up. A short while later an announcement was made that the sailor had been uninjured. Jake marveled at the sight. People said flying bombers was dangerous work, but so was refueling ships at sea.
The routine of shipboard life was broken with an Easter service on April 5. Many of the Army Air Corps men made a special effort to attend the service, but Jake would not go. It would have made him feel like a hypocrite. He had left his childhood religion totally behind him when he joined the army, and he was not about to go running back to it just because he had a one-way ticket to Tokyo.
Eight days later, on April 13, 1942, the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and seven escort vessels rendezvoused with the USS Hornet and her escorts. Now sixteen ships were headed toward Tokyo, one ship for each B-25 hoping to take off for Japan. The USS Enterprise was under the command of Admiral William Halsey, who took command of the combined task force headed for Japan.
On April 17, Captain Mitscher announced over the Hornet’s loudspeaker system that he wanted all of the B-25 crews to assemble on the flight deck. When they had assembled, Jake listened as the captain made a short speech: “Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox has asked me to return these to Japan.” He held up three medals that had been awarded to navy-enlisted men by Japan in 1908. He then handed the medals to Lieutenant Colonel Doolittle. Doolittle took the medals, walked over to a five-hundred-pound bomb that had been brought up on deck for the occasion, and attached them to the bomb.
“Send this one too,” Lieutenant Commander Stephen Jurika said, adding the medal he had received from the Japanese in 1940 to the other three medals on the bomb. (He had received this medal while still a naval attaché in Tokyo.)
A cheer went up from the men, and several stepped forward to scrawl slogans on the bomb. One read, “You’ll get a BANG out of this!” and another said, “I don’t want to set the world on fire—just Tokyo!”
As the medal ceremony drew to a close, Jimmy Doolittle stepped forward and announced, “Men, get your equipment packed. Make final inspections of your planes. It looks like we might be taking off tomorrow instead of the nineteenth. Remember, don’t take any personal things with you that would help the Japanese identify you. Anything you leave onboard will be mailed back to your home. Of course, you can still drop out if you want—no questions asked.”
The pronouncement hung in the air. Thirty seconds passed, then a minute. No one spoke. Doolittle broke the silence. “Oh, and when we get to Chungking, I’m going to throw you all a party!” he announced.
A cheer went up from the men; the moment of introspection was over. Jake and the other seventy-nine airmen on the mission had a job to do, and there was no turning back now. Tomorrow or the next day they would be flying their bombers directly toward the Empire of the Rising Sun.
Chapter 5
Airborne
Jake sat on the edge of his bunk. It had been a long night. Somewhere around 3:15 AM the ship’s general quarters alarm bells had gone off, and everyone, including the Army Air Corps men, had to man his battle station. Nothing happened, and little was said about the incident, but Jake and the others wondered whether possibly a Japanese ship or submarine had spotted them.
It was time to finish packing. Jake slung his B-4 bag out from beneath his bunk and emptied its contents: a navy issue gas mask, a .45-caliber automatic pistol and ammunition clips, a hunting knife like the one he’d used as a kid back in Oregon, a first aid kit, a canteen, a compass, a flashlight, emergency rations, and a life jacket. As he repacked the items, Jake wondered which of them he might need and when. Bailing out over the ocean would require the life jacket, while bailing out over the jungle would require the flashlight and the knife. But since the future was unknowable, Jake would have to wait and see what items, if any, he would need from the bag.
