A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, James M. Scott is the author of The War Below and The Attack on the Liberty, which won the Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor
eBook
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ISBN-13:
9780393246766
- Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
- Publication date: 03/31/2015
- Sold by: Barnes & Noble
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 640
- Sales rank: 99,083
- File size: 5 MB
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Finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History.
"Like Lauren Hillebrand's Unbroken…Target Tokyo brings to life an indelible era." —Ben Cosgrove, The Daily Beast
In December 1941, as American forces tallied the dead at Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt gathered with his senior military counselors to plan an ambitious counterstrike against the heart of the Japanese Empire: Tokyo. Four months later, on April 18, 1942, sixteen U.S. Army bombers under the command of daredevil pilot Jimmy Doolittle lifted off from the deck of the USS Hornet on a one-way mission to pummel the enemy’s factories, refineries, and dockyards and then escape to Free China. For Roosevelt, the raid was a propaganda victory, a potent salve to heal a wounded nation. In Japan, outraged over the deaths of innocent civilians—including children—military leaders launched an ill-fated attempt to seize Midway that would turn the tide of the war. But it was the Chinese who suffered the worst, victims of a retaliatory campaign by the Japanese Army that claimed an estimated 250,000 lives and saw families drowned in wells, entire towns burned, and communities devastated by bacteriological warfare.
At the center of this incredible story is Doolittle, the son of an Alaskan gold prospector, a former boxer, and brilliant engineer who earned his doctorate from MIT. Other fascinating characters populate this gripping narrative, including Chiang Kai-shek, Lieutenant General Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, and the feisty Vice Admiral William “Bull” Halsey Jr. Here, too, are indelible portraits of the young pilots, navigators, and bombardiers, many of them little more than teenagers, who raised their hands to volunteer for a mission from which few expected to return. Most of the bombers ran out of fuel and crashed. Captured raiders suffered torture and starvation in Japan’s notorious POW camps. Others faced a harrowing escape across China—via boat, rickshaw, and foot—with the Japanese Army in pursuit.
Based on scores of never-before-published records drawn from archives across four continents as well as new interviews with survivors, Target Tokyo is World War II history of the highest order: a harrowing adventure story that also serves as a pivotal reexamination of one of America’s most daring military operations.
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The story of the Doolittle Raid is well known and thoroughly documented. Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the American military to plan a retaliatory strike against Japan. In April 1942, 16 B-25 bombers and 80 airmen led by James Doolittle were launched from the carrier Hornet. The bombers reached their target cities and inflicted minimal damage on the Japanese Home Islands. Low on fuel, most of the bombers crashed in China and one landed in the Soviet Union. The results of the effort were mixed. All the planes were lost and the military damage inflicted was slight. The Japanese responded severely against China, killing as many as 250,000 Chinese citizens. The raid did boost American morale while damaging Japanese confidence, which was important as the Japanese had experienced a string of major victories since Pearl Harbor. Scott (The War Below) alternates his narrative between the larger picture of the raid and the individual stories of the five-man crews. VERDICT This popular history will appeal to fans of Laura Hillebrand's Unbroken and is comparable to other histories of the Tokyo Raid including Craig Nelson's The First Heroes and Carroll V. Glines's The Doolittle Raid.—Michael Farrell, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, FL
A new treatment of the daring Doolittle raids over Tokyo that fills in many of the gaps in the true story.In his glowing assessment of the bravery and innovation of the Doolittle raiders, historian Scott (The War Below: The Story of Three Submarines That Battled Japan, 2013, etc.) does not neglect to explore the ultimate horrendous cost of the mission in human lives. After the sneak attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt and his military commanders were desperate for a retaliatory measure that would help buoy national morale. Figuring out how to wage a bombing mission over Tokyo took the best heads of the Navy and Air Force, specifically Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold's staff troubleshooter, the legendary racing pilot Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle. Immediately taking up the mission and demanding that he also lead it, Doolittle chose the "aerial workhorse" B-25 as the sole craft whose wingspan could clear the superstructure of an aircraft carrier. The problem was the fuel load required to fly from a Pacific carrier to Tokyo then onward to China—landing at approved airfields not in the control of the Japanese—all while keeping absolute secrecy. Spotted by the Japanese well over 800 miles from Tokyo (they were supposed to get 200 miles closer), the all-volunteer crews of the 16 bombers aboard the carrier knew when they took off on April 18, 1942, that they had little chance of reaching the Chinese coast. Of the 80 men, 61 survived the war; four died in crash landings, and four fell into the brutal hands of the Japanese. The damage to Tokyo spurred the Japanese to focus next on Midway, while the Japanese retaliatory slaughter against the Chinese as a result of the raids totaled some 250,000 deaths, a fact that Scott does not fail to note. A spirited, comprehensive and highly readable account of the tremendous wherewithal required for this extraordinary effort.