Blindfolded, Jake lost all sense of how long the flight actually was. Eventually the flight ended, and the men were led off the plane and onto another truck. Soon the truck rumbled to a stop and the men’s blindfolds were taken off.
The first thing Jake and his crewmates did was look around and make sure that the other four men were still there. They were, and they marched together to a cell block. It was more primitive than any prison Jake had ever seen before, but it was a prison just the same. The cells were square cages with wooden bars and a dirt floor. The only thing inside each cell was a box, obviously a toilet, since its foul-smelling contents oozed over the top. Jake wanted to gag at the sight and the smell.
Each man was shoved into his own cell, but it was possible to see the other prisoners and the endless parade of guards who patrolled the cell block. Jake wished he knew more about Asia and, in particular, the difference between Japan and China. He couldn’t even tell which country he was now in.
That night, Jake and the others were blindfolded once again and taken away one at a time for questioning.
Jake’s spirits reached an all-time low when his interrogator pulled out a piece of paper on which was written the names of the Doolittle Raiders—all eighty of them. Being a prisoner of war, Jake had told his captors only his name, rank, and serial number, and he assumed his crewmates had done the same. But along with their names and the paper, the Japanese had enough information to confirm that they had captured the entire crew of the Bat.
A new interrogator who spoke flawless English was present and wanted to know exactly what had happened. Jake couldn’t see him because his blindfold had been put back on, but he could smell cigar smoke. “You had better talk,” the man said, “because these men are very cruel, and they will torture you until you do speak. Better sooner than later, don’t you think?”
Jake held his silence, trying to divert himself from thinking of the various torture techniques that he had heard the Japanese used.
Someone in the room sighed, and Jake was stood up and led into another room, where his blindfold was removed. A short, squat man with a cigar between his teeth stood in front of him. He took the cigar from his mouth, tapped it deliberately on the desk, nodded at Jake, and then spoke in Japanese. The man who had led Jake into the room interpreted. “I am the kindest judge in all of China. You are very lucky to be standing before me. I want to help you. You tell me the truth, and I get you a glass of milk. You must be hungry and thirsty by now. Right?”
That would have been an easy question for Jake to answer! His stomach was so empty that it felt like it was glued to his backbone. “I won’t talk,” Jake replied.
The judge continued. “How do you pronounce h-o-r-n-e-t?”
“Hornet,” Jake said.
“You know that name, don’t you? Your plane was on the aircraft carrier Hornet, wasn’t it?”
Jake remained silent, worried that the judge’s tone of voice had gone from gentle and reassuring to menacing in less than a minute. Clearly these were no friends of his in the room.
“And Colonel Doolittle was your commanding officer, wasn’t he?” the judge went on.
“I won’t talk,” Jake repeated.
“We’ll see about that!” the judge sneered as he pulled a long sword from the scabbard on his belt and held it at chest height. The weapon glistened in the pool of light from the overhead electric bulb. “Tomorrow morning, when the sun comes up, I am going to have the honor of cutting off your head.”
Jake tried to remain calm—what could he say? He was not going to betray the mission by talking. He decided to turn the threat into a joke, since he didn’t appear to have anything to lose. “It would be an honor to have the kindest judge in all of China cut off my head,” he replied.
The judge and the other men in the room laughed, and the interrogation session was over for the night.
Jake was once again blindfolded and taken back to his cell. But before he was handcuffed again, a guard brought him a glass of milk. The milk was warm, and it reminded Jake of the fresh milk he drank right from the milking bucket as a boy back in Oregon. He wondered what his family was doing right at that moment. They might have heard of the Doolittle Raid, but they would have no idea that Jake had been a part of it. In time, Jake knew, they would be told some of the facts.
It was a long night, and Jake was kept company by hundreds of lice that invaded his cell and crawled all through his clothes and over his skin. Even if he were not handcuffed, he would have found it impossible to ward them all off.
Jake tried to imagine this being his last night on earth. He thought about how it would feel to get his head chopped off. Probably, he concluded, he wouldn’t feel a thing. He thought back to his childhood religion, how his father, Jacob DeShazer, had been a Church of God lay preacher and how his family had always prayed and talked about spending eternity with Jesus. It had been a long time since Jake had thought of such things, and now he couldn’t squeeze any kind of meaning out of his parents’ religion. He knew that if his mother were there with him, she would tell him to “get right with God, repent of your sins, and ask Jesus to forgive you.” The reality of doing that seemed as far away as the stars above him. Jake concluded that whatever happened, he had no control over it, and he was not now going to turn tail and pretend to believe in God.
Eventually the sun arose, and Jake felt its warmth on his skin. Then he heard a guard open the door to his cell. He felt hands behind his head and his blindfold being taken off. Jake was led out of the cell and around to the front of the building. He wondered whether this was where the chopping block was.
Instead of encountering the “kindest judge in all of China” and his sword, however, Jake was confronted with a soldier wielding a camera. The soldier snapped a couple of photos of Jake, and then Jake was loaded into another truck. He was blindfolded and handcuffed once again, and ropes were tied around his chest. Jake assumed that this was so he wouldn’t attempt an escape, though the handcuffs and blindfold made this highly unlikely.
Throughout the next twelve hours, Jake was jostled on and off airplanes and trucks. He was fairly sure that some or all of the rest of the crew were with him, because every once in a while he could hear Will or George talking to someone. Because of the gnawing hunger in his stomach, it was becoming more difficult for Jake to concentrate on what was going on around him.
After he had been traveling for what seemed like an eternity, Jake managed to lean against the bulkhead of the airplane they were flying in and rub his head just enough to move his blindfold an inch. Jake tilted back his head slowly so as not to draw attention to himself. He looked down his nose and out the window of the aircraft, where he caught a glimpse of a perfectly conical mountain beneath them. The mountain had a dusting of snow on it. Chills ran up and down Jake’s spine as he realized instantly that they were flying over Mt. Fuji, which guarded the western approach to Tokyo. He was being taken to the place that the Doolittle Raiders had bombed.
Jake took a deep breath, hoping to shake off the dread that was settling in the pit of his empty stomach.
Chapter 8
Tokyo
Three hours after spotting Mt. Fuji through the corner of his blindfold on the airplane, Jake was sitting alone in a cell in Tokyo. His hands were still cuffed, and his feet were drawn up to his chest. He shook uncontrollably. He could have blamed this on the cold seeping in under the door, but he knew it was from shock and fear. He and his crewmates were now in the hands of the Kempei-Tai, Japan’s dreaded military police. Most military men would rather have found themselves in the hands of the German Gestapo than the Japanese Kempei-Tai.
Jake sighed. He wasn’t sure that he or any of the other crew members had information that was particularly valuable to their captors. At their last interrogation stop, the interrogator had brought up the name of the USS Hornet, so Jake concluded that the Japanese probably had the idea that they had been transported to some location closer to Japan aboard the Hornet. What Jake didn’t think they realized was that the bombers had actually taken off from the aircraft carrier, and that was a piece of information they would prize. Jake hoped that he would not divulge the information during the interrogation and torture that he knew was bound to follow soon.
Sure enough, not long after arriving at the prison in Tokyo, Jake was dragged from his cell for his first session of interrogation. He soon learned that these sessions would become torturous. He was led into a room with a table in the middle, behind which sat a Kempei-Tai officer, with an official recorder sitting to the side and three military policemen standing to the side by the wall.
“Well, well,” the interrogator began in English after Jake had been brought into the room. Then he began a barrage of questions about the mission of the Doolittle Raiders: From where had they taken off? How many planes participated in the raid? Where did they train? Who was their leader? Where were the planes supposed to refuel in China? The questions went on and on.
From the list of members of the Doolittle Raiders he had been shown in China, Jake surmised that the Japanese already knew the answers to many of the questions they were asking him. He was determined not to answer any of their questions. Instead, to each question he was asked he simply gave his name, rank, and serial number, the only pieces of information a prisoner of war was obliged to give to his captors.
Such answers to the questions did not please Jake’s interrogator, however. Before Jake knew it, the military policemen had forced him to his knees and were beating and kicking him. Jake winced with each thud of pain that pulsed through his body. But the truth was, Jake didn’t know that much. He was a lowly corporal, not an officer, and had not been privy to the strategic planning of the mission. He simply followed the orders he was given.
After Jake had been beaten he was returned to his cell, bruised and barely conscious. Day after day the routine repeated itself for Jake. Always the interrogator would start with the same words, “Well, well,” until in Jake’s mind the man’s name became Well, well. Sometimes, though, Well, well would vary the questions. Instead of wanting to know the specifics of the Doolittle Raid, he wanted to know about America. Where had Jake traveled in America? What did Americans think of the Japanese? Were they afraid of them? Did they expect them to take over the White House? As usual, Jake would remain defiant in the face of the questioning, which in turn led to a beating and his being delivered back to his cell.
In one interrogation session Jake was told that there was a difference of opinion between military headquarters and the War Department as to how the prisoners should be treated. At the War Department, General Sugiyama wanted the men put to death as war criminals, while General Tojo, Japan’s premier, saw them as prisoners of war and thought that they should get life in prison for their crimes. So whether or not the crew of the Bat lived or died depended on whose opinion eventually prevailed. At that moment Jake didn’t much care. Death seemed like a welcome escape from daily beatings.
The interrogations dragged on for eighteen days—eighteen days of beatings, torture, and subsisting on a diet of weak tea and bread. By the end of the eighteen days, Jake could feel every one of his ribs. To make matters worse, he hadn’t bathed since he had landed in the graveyard back in China, nor had he spoken to his four crewmates from the Bat.
Jake was pretty sure that other Americans were also in the prison. He had heard voices drifting out from other interrogation rooms, and he wondered whether they might be other Doolittle Raiders.
After the eighteen days the Kempei-Tai changed their strategy. They apparently decided to make life a little more bearable for the Doolittle Raiders. Jake was taken from his cell and led into a room where the other four crewmen were also brought. It was hard to look at them. They had changed so much in the three weeks they had been in prison. They were all bloodied and bruised, but Will, who was lanky to begin with, looked like a walking skeleton, and George seemed to bear the marks of the most savage beatings.
