Looking back over more than nine decades it is difficult to recall names and incidents of my very early childhood with much certainty. Unfortunately, I never knew my grandparents on either side, but my mother was a good photographer and it is through the many photographs in the albums she maintained for me that I am able to bring back memories of distant times and places.
Our branch of the Doolittle family is believed to have originated in France, relocated to England, then migrated to this country in the late 1600s or early 1700s. My grandfather, Augustus Albertus Doolittle, was born in East Canaan, Connecticut, in 1844. He was a carpenter and married my grandmother, Margaret Hobson, in the 1860s.
My father, born in 1869, was Frank Henry Doolittle. It isn’t certain whether he was born in Connecticut or Massachusetts. A restless, ambitious man who was smitten with wanderlust, he was an excellent carpenter. In his early thirties, he sailed around the Horn from Massachusetts, arrived in San Francisco, and settled down across the bay at Alameda to practice his craft. He met and married my mother, Rosa Ceremah Shephard, in the early 1890s. I came along on December 14, 1896, an only child.
I regret deeply that I cannot recall much about my mother’s family background. I know she was of sturdy pioneer stock, strong-willed yet compassionate, intent upon keeping me on a straight-and-narrow path, but a firm disciplinarian when I strayed. She guided me safely through those early years and managed somehow to see to my needs. I owe her more than I can ever express.
I guess they didn’t know what to name me for a while, since my birth certificate recorded me simply as “Doolittle.” The “James” and “Harold” were added later and I have no idea where they came from. I have never been particularly happy about my middle name.
In the summer after I was born, my father joined the thousands of dreamers and adventurers who stampeded to the Klondike in search of gold. He took his bag of carpenter’s tools with him and sailed by boat to Seattle and then to Skagway, Alaska. Then he trekked over the Chilkoot Pass to the Klondike gold fields near Dawson. Doubtless he prospected, but since gold was elusive, he kept body and soul together with his carpentry skills. However, he lost his tools in a boat accident as he traveled down the Yukon River to Norton Sound.
In 1899, my father worked his way around to St. Michael where he got a job with the Alaska Commercial Co., a supplier of tools and mining equipment for the prospectors. Still hoping to make his fortune, he pushed on to the Seward Peninsula and finally Nome when the news spread that gold had been discovered on the beaches and was easy pickings.
Once he got to Nome, my father wanted us to join him. On one of the last ships to leave before the winter freeze, he sent a letter to my mother asking her to bring me with her the following spring. So in June 1900, my mother, her sister Sarah, and I sailed on the SS Zealandia and arrived in Nome two weeks later. It was just one of the 30 steamers that carried nearly 10,000 people to Nome that month.
Contrary to popular conception, the Klondike River and the gold district named for it are in Canada, not Alaska. The real gold rush stampede to Alaska was not to the Klondike. It was to the sandy beaches of Nome, a thousand miles to the west, during that summer of 1900. It could be reached only by dog sled or boat; therefore, most took the latter course so they wouldn’t have to climb mountains, run river rapids, or backpack their own supplies to get there.
A Dawson City newspaper warned its readers, “The gold fever is no respecter of persons. Like the dew of heaven it falls with absolute impartiality upon the just and the unjust alike. Its germs once planted in the system, take root and thrive so vigorously that it dominates its victim like an all-consuming passion for drink.”1
Gold had been found in September 1898 along the Snake River near where Nome now stands. Three Swedes were the first to stake claims and took out about $2,000 in gold that year. The Cape Nome Mining District was organized and claims were staked out and recorded. That autumn about 40 men filed claims to 7,000 acres of prospecting ground. Late in June 1899, when the ice broke in the Bering Sea, several vessels reached the settlement that was growing up along Anvil Creek where about 400 people were living in tents and crude driftwood cabins.
A man named John Hummel, who was ailing and could not work much, is generally believed to have been the first to discover gold along the beach. As soon as the news got out, the miners working a few miles inland along the creeks rushed to the beaches. The strike was unquestionably the greatest poorman’s diggings ever found. Within a short time, 2,000 miners were at work sifting the sand. Within two months, using simple hand rockers to sift the sand, the miners had taken out about $750,000 in gold dust.
When the steamers returned to the States that autumn, stories of the gold find spread around the world. Interest in “the gold sands of Nome” grew rapidly. Many thought the gold in the beach would be inexhaustible because, supposedly, the supply was being constantly renewed by the waves from the ocean bottom. It wasn’t true, but the stampede began in the spring of 1900 when the first ships left ports on the West Coast and made their way through the Aleutian Islands and the Bering Sea ice fields to this paradise of riches. The ice on the Bering Sea broke early and on May 23, 1900, the Jeanie, an old whaler, reached Nome, the first of a large fleet to follow.
We were just three of an estimated 25,000 people who landed on the Nome beach that summer. The census taken in June, the month we arrived, showed only 12,488 people, but between 5 and 10 thousand more were believed scattered along the beaches for 25 miles.
The Nome News, the city’s first newspaper, had bragged about the town in its first issue in 1899 and had helped to precipitate the rush: “It is true it is built upon sand, but the sand is golden, and … it promises to be the greatest gold camp that has ever been known in the history of gold mining.” The story of the golden sands caught the imagination of people all over the world.2
It was true that gold could be found on the beaches, although the creeks feeding the Snake River behind the city would eventually produce more gold than the beaches. But the lure was so strong that those lusting for the gold specks would endure anything to try to make their fortunes with a minimum of equipment and physical effort. All they needed was a wooden rocker box to sift the sand, a shovel, and a bucket. The gold was found mostly in the ruby-colored sand, anywhere from a foot to four feet below the surface. However, the richness of the sand varied from place to place. These shallow diggings along the beach were available to anyone by federal law and could not be staked out and claimed by any single individual. It was generally accepted that a person was entitled to hold his space on the beach—sometimes only the length of a shovel handle—as long as he worked it.
Nome had no safe harbor. Large ships had to anchor offshore and off-load their passengers and freight on barges and small lighters. Many people, boats, and cargo were lost during the violent storms that often roared toward the beaches.
The scene that greeted my young eyes as we landed was chaotic. Crowds of people stood around watching us disembark; freight was piled everywhere. Everything one could imagine was being hauled in on barges from the ships: machines, mining equipment, lumber, sewing machines, mirrors, bar fixtures, tents, liquor, hardware, tools, food, clothing, small boats, furniture, wagons, horses, dogs, and everything else needed to make life as easy and “civilized” as possible. The Nome News editorialized that there was a lot of rusting “jackass machinery” and rotten wood lying on the beach which would “tell the tale of overconfidence and misdirected energy and money.”3
Along the beach as far as one could see were hundreds of people working almost shoulder to shoulder using the simplest hand tools, rocker boxes, and crude contraptions to look for those magic gold flecks among the sand grains. A few beach miners were able to take small fortunes. According to one historian, nearly two thousand men, women, and children were stripping the pay dirt that summer on the beach and took an estimated one to two million dollars in gold from the sand. Many averaged $20 to $100 a day, and it was not unusual for a beach miner to clear between $2,000 and $5,000 for that summer’s labor, impressive sums in those days.
Of course, there were many who came to Nome with no desire to use a pick or a shovel. Hundreds arrived with literally no money in their pockets, hoping to get rich picking up gold nuggets off the beach.
Although there had been an attempt to plan the city layout properly, the streets were nothing but muddy trails winding around tents, cabins, and shacks that extended about two blocks wide and five miles long. Boardwalks were built in front of the stores and saloons to give the appearance of streets. Thousands of people slept outdoors in tents. Lumber was scarce, and all of it had to be brought in by ship or cut from driftwood logs that occasionally washed ashore. After all, the nearest tree was 100 miles to the east.
The only fuel was scrap lumber or coal, also hauled from the States. Sanitation presented serious problems. Sewage and garbage were dumped into the Snake River; typhoid fever, dysentery, and pneumonia were common. Along the Nome waterfront, public toilets were built on pilings; the toilets were washed clean each time the tide came in.
As the population increased, so did crime. Alaska during this period was a land without effective government. As a result, some citizens took the law into their own hands. Disputes were settled with guns, knives, or fists. At first, the armed ruffians of the western mining camps were relatively rare in Nome. There was only one murder during Nome’s first winter of 1899–1900. However, the gold rush attracted not only optimistic adventurers, but also gamblers, thieves, confidence men, and prostitutes in droves.
The growth of Nome during the first 30 days of the summer of 1900 has never been equaled. The ships arriving daily carried knocked-down theaters, gambling halls, saloons, restaurants, and everything else needed to build an instant city. That summer, eight million board feet of lumber were off-loaded. Years later, when I witnessed the hundreds of vessels off-loading men and supplies for the invasion of Normandy, it reminded me of that scene at Nome.
One of the few recollections I have of that first summer was of the crowds along Front Street, the main thoroughfare. Because it was light all night long in the summer, there were often as many people on the streets at two o’clock in the morning as at two o’clock in the afternoon. I vaguely remember that new buildings were under construction everywhere and I assume my father was earning our living by carpentering, not mining. I learned later that there were 20 saloons in town, a brewery, and 4 wholesale liquor stores. Sixteen lawyers and 11 physicians had their shingles out; there were 12 general merchandise stores, 6 restaurants, 6 lodging houses, 4 drugstores, but only 1 bank.4
The Nome gold rush ended in the fall of 1900 as quickly as it had begun three months earlier. The onset of winter with its subhuman cold and long nights was too much for most gold seekers to contemplate. A U.S. revenue cutter gave a free ride south to numerous destitute men who did not have the price of a ticket and had no means of supporting themselves.
The population, estimated at more than 25,000 at its height, was reduced to about 5,000 in the following summers, probably 1,000 or less in the winters, and remained at those figures over the next decade. We were among those who stayed, at least for a time. Gold was still mined along the inland creeks by those with the stamina and the capital to remain. The peak years of gold production were said to be 1906 and 1907, when miners took out about $15 million.
One of the men who arrived in Nome in 1899 and stayed on to have an impact on the city’s history was George Lewis “Tex” Rickard, a famous boxing promoter and one of the owners of the Northern Saloon. He was elected to the seven-man city council in 1901 and led the move for some drastic changes. The council outlawed the driving of dog teams within city limits, firing guns or firecrackers, prostitution, and gambling at cards. However, gambling on the outcome of sporting or other measurable events was permitted. Men would bet on anything, including what day the first ship would arrive offshore in the spring and when the last one would disappear from sight in the fall. Sports of all kinds were the favorites for the gamblers. They would bet on pool matches, foot races, dog races, basketball and baseball games, and especially boxing matches, which were often brutal affairs lasting 25 rounds.
Life in Nome wasn’t as bad as many writers have made it out to be during the years after the 1900 stampede was over. We actually had electricity, and in the winter, when the days were dark, every house in town was lit up, and as one writer recalled, “the winter of 1901–02 at Nome was light-hearted, happy and gay.”5
Shortly after we arrived, my aunt Sarah married Gus Borgenson, who changed his name to Borgen. They had a child named Emily, who was the first white girl born in Nome.
If my parents had any problems between them, I knew nothing about them. I have often thought that one of the reasons my father stayed in Alaska was that it was one of the few places in the world where a skilled carpenter could make a dollar an hour. The going rate in the 48 states then for a craftsman was not much more than about 25 cents an hour.
My father built us a fairly comfortable house at 301 Third Avenue, and perhaps, as an only child, I was spoiled. I told my father I wanted a sled for Christmas. He spent a great deal of time making a small Arctic sled like the Eskimo kids had and as the white man had improved it. He fitted it out with a handlebar and steel-lined runners; the wooden parts were all laced together with rawhide. It was a beautiful piece of work. At first I was quite pleased with it. Then a friend of mine showed me he had gotten a little “store-bought” one, which in those days cost about two dollars. I was terribly disappointed because mine was homemade, and I said so. I didn’t understand at the time, but I understand very clearly now, and it hurts even today to recall my selfishness.
Christmas was a happy time for the kids of Nome. We had three churches in town—Methodist, Congregationalist, and Catholic—and they all had activities for us. The Methodists always had a Christmas tree, a rare sight. The Congregationalists gave away prizes, and the Catholics served ice cream. I went to all three.
My father was a gambler of sorts—with people, not money. He grubstaked a large number of men with the understanding that, as was common practice then, if somebody put up the money for equipment and supplies to mine a claim that made a profit, half of the profit belonged to the grubstaker. As far as I know he got little if anything back from the considerable amount of money he spent grubstaking others.
At about age five I had my first fight. An Eskimo lad and I were alone on the beach one day and we got into an argument. He pushed me and I pushed back. He started to flail at me with his fists and I returned his blows. One of my punches caught him on the nose and blood spurted all over his parka. It scared us both. He began to cry and ran home to his mother. He thought he was dying. I ran home to my mother, certain that I had killed an Eskimo.
The first school was built during the summer we arrived. I enrolled in first grade the following year at age five and immediately discovered that I was shorter than the other boys in my class. To them I was a chechako, an Eskimo word for a newcomer, tenderfoot, or greenhorn, which everyone pronounced “cheechocker.” It was a derisive name and I didn’t like it. Furthermore, I had long curls, which promptly classified me in their minds as a sissy. In my anguish I pleaded with my mother to cut them off. We had quite a discussion about it. Although she was fond of them and didn’t want to do it, she did, and I went to school from the second day curlless and much happier.
I had to fight all the same. A few of the taller boys took delight in teasing and provoking the shorter boys, and since I was the shortest one around, they tried to give me a bad time. They shoved and I shoved back. They punched and I returned their punches. My defense was not skillful and it was obvious they weren’t going to let up until I did something about it.
Since my size was against me, I decided my survival could be insured only by a speedy attack right from the start. I began to blast my opponents with a flurry of punches regardless of the consequences. The tactics worked. I found it was easy to draw blood if you were nimble on your feet, aimed at a fellow’s nose, and got your licks in early. After several antagonists went home with bloody noses, I earned a certain measure of respect. I hurt my hands a number of times because I made fists by doubling my thumbs inside. It was a while before I learned how to hold them properly.
My reputation as a brawler spread and some of my classmates would urge older and taller fellows to provoke me into fighting. Each new kid in the grammar school had to try to whip me in order to be accepted by the gang. My friends enjoyed seeing me plow into my opponents with my brand of intensity; and I must admit I enjoyed winning those early bouts. Early on I found that there was an advantage in being small. You might say it’s an incentive to tiny excellence. I still consider fistfighting a suitable way for young boys to settle their differences. It’s certainly better than the knives and guns some school kids use today.
My winning ways with fists were certainly not paralleled by academic performance in school, nor was I a model of discipline. One day my teacher caught me drawing a cartoon of the principal and sentenced me to write 25 times on the blackboard, “Jimmy Doolittle is the smallest boy in the school.” She didn’t have to remind me, but maybe she helped me resolve that whatever happened to me in the future, I would overcome any size difference with my peers one way or another.
During those preteen years, I developed a keen interest in tools. I found I liked working with my hands, and my father encouraged me by showing me how to use them and letting me help him build houses and furniture. He gave me my own little tool kit. The need for a man with his talents was great and he could work all year, unlike some of our neighbors whose work was seasonal.
There were two kinds of heroes to the kids of Nome in those days—runners and dog team drivers. We had a large gymnasium and the older boys and men would run 100- and 200-mile marathon races indoors. They would go round and round, stopping periodically to have a cup of coffee or a sandwich or to go to the bathroom. They never slept. A race would sometimes take two days and there was no letup.
Almost every kid in town ran. I didn’t have a team of sled dogs, so I ran too. I ran one time until I collapsed. I also liked acrobatics and practiced handstands and tumbling, and worked out on the parallel bars by the hour. Years later, I was told I had a heart murmur, which gave me a little trouble in physical exams for flying. Doctors told me it was probably from overexertion when very young.
Dog sled races were then and still are a popular winter sport in Nome. Races were run from Nome to the Solomon River and back for a fair division of a public purse and side bets. It was always a time for celebration when the dog teams left and when they returned.
My first hunting experience was in 1903 or 1904. I had been given a single-shot .22 rifle and was out hiking on the tundra north of Nome when I came to a little lake that wasn’t much more than a puddle. Sitting in the middle was a pair of teal ducks. I “Indian crawled” up to the edge of the lake until I was in range, aimed carefully, and hit one of them right at the waterline. The other flew away. I waded out and retrieved my prize, and vividly remember parading up and down Front Street with this duck in one hand and the .22 rifle in the other. I don’t remember anytime since being as proud of a trophy as I was of my first game.
One recollection still sends chills through me. We had many dogs running loose in town all the time and some of them were vicious, especially when they were hungry. There was a black lad in our school named Phillip Goodwin. He was older than I but we were good friends. One winter day when school let out and we were all running home, Phillip tripped and fell. In an instant, a half dozen or more malemute sled dogs jumped him. Many people came running but before the dogs could be pulled off, they killed him. It was my first loss of a close friend.
I remember my mother with great fondness during those days. She was a Spartan in every sense of the word, a typical outdoor person and excellent with a dog sled team. One day the two of us took a dog team about five miles out of town to get water from the river. On the return trip, the dogs bolted and she cracked three ribs on the handlebars of the dog sled. She had her ribs bound up and never complained of the pain.
My relationship with my father was often strained. He did not engage in long conversations and was mostly silent when we were together. We were never close, never pals, and I’ve always regretted it. I must have made many overtures but he didn’t respond very much, although he was a good teacher when it came to instructing me in the use of hand tools. He was an excellent cabinetmaker, a competent artisan, but a loner in spirit, a true pioneer with all the individualistic traits generally attributed to frontiersmen.
One day my father whipped me for something I didn’t do. A bunch of boys had vandalized a boat that had been pulled up on the beach, and the owner included me among the list of culprits. I was totally innocent and denied having any part in the incident. My father accused me of lying. I didn’t lie then and don’t lie now. I told him that when I was big enough, I was going to whip him.
Despite the strained relations between us, in the summer of 1904, my father took me on a trip to Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles—“outside” as we called it. For reasons never explained to me, my mother stayed in Nome. We were gone about six weeks, but I never found out exactly why we went. Perhaps he was looking into job opportunities. If so, he never said that he found any.
The sights and sounds in the three big cities were strange and exciting to me at age seven, since I had forgotten everything of what I had seen before we went to Nome. I saw my first automobile, train, and trolley car. There were modern houses and stores with paint on them. My values changed right then and there. I saw everything in a new perspective and I wanted very much to be a part of the exciting life I saw all too briefly during that trip.
When we returned to Nome, everything suddenly seemed smaller to me. The streets seemed too narrow and crowded; the buildings were only two stories high; even the schoolrooms and hallways had seemed to shrink.
To make a little pocket money, I got a job selling the Nome Nugget, one of the town’s several newspapers and the only one still being published there today. I also sold the Seattle Post-Intelligencer when the ships brought them in the spring.
There weren’t any preliminary discussions about leaving Alaska that I recall but in the late summer of 1908, when I was 11, my mother and I boarded a boat for Los Angeles. Apparently, my mother had become quite disappointed and disillusioned and she didn’t want me to go any further in school in Alaska where we were isolated from the advantages of modern living. We had some relatives in Los Angeles and I suppose she was ready to return to the warmth of southern California. We moved into a modest two-story frame house at 1235 Catalina Street in downtown Los Angeles. My father stayed in Nome and I assumed I would see him again soon. There was no tearful departure, so our leaving must have been something they had agreed was necessary.
I attended Borendo Elementary School for two years and then entered Los Angeles Manual Arts High School in 1910. I didn’t have a fondness for school then except for the shop courses. My interests were more physical than academic. Three of my classmates were Lawrence Tibbets, who would make a name for himself as a great singer; Goodwin Knight, later governor of California; and Frank Capra, later an award-winning film director. Frank was slightly smaller than I and was top man in the school’s pyramid team. He was rather heavy-footed and, in climbing to the top spot, would occasionally stomp our pyramid flat. Since I was interested in tumbling and acrobatics, we got along famously.
It was just after I turned 13 that aviation came into my life. In January 1910, the first aviation meet held in the United States west of the Mississippi took place at Dominguez Field outside of Los Angeles, near the present city of Compton. It was patterned after the first air meet ever held, which had been at Reims, France, the previous summer.
One pilot there whose name was to become famous was Glenn Curtiss. He set a new world’s speed record with a passenger on board of 55 miles an hour in one of the machines he designed and built. Another star was Louis Paulhan, a Frenchman, who achieved instant fame for climbing his Farman to a record altitude of 4,165 feet. He also set a record by flying 75 miles in less than two hours and won $20,000 for his efforts.
There were two local airmen there: Roy Knabenshue and Lincoln Beachey. They raced each other in dirigibles, and Beachey won. The Wright brothers, already embroiled in controversy over patent claims about their flying machine, had sent Arch Hoxsey with one of their Wright B Flyers. Unfortunately, he was outshone by the others. What was interesting to me was to see the radical differences in the construction and design of the machines; yet, amazingly, they all could fly. However, the pilots demonstrated them only when the weather was clear and the wind not too high. I wondered why this was so.
It was two years later that I first tried my hand at flying. I had found an article in an old January-June 1909 issue of Popular Mechanics by Carl Bates, entitled “How to Make a Glider.” Fancying myself now very handy with tools, I followed the plan drawings carefully and built a biwinged glider similar to what today we would call a hang glider. The pilot was supposed to stand in the middle and hold on to it with his hands; his legs and feet would serve as the landing gear.
My mother supported my efforts by giving me a little spare change for materials like muslin, wood, and piano wire, and I earned the rest by doing odd jobs in the neighborhood and selling newspapers. I did all the work except that my mother sewed the unbleached muslin for the wings.
Bates had made flying a glider sound very simple. He wrote:
A gliding machine is a motorless aeroplane or flying-machine, propelled by gravity and designed to carry a passenger through the air from a high point to a lower point some distance away. Flying a glider is simply coasting downhill on air, and is the most interesting and exciting sport imaginable.
Proud of the finished job, I placed it on a wagon and towed it to a nearby bluff about 15 feet high. I carefully strapped it on and ran fast toward the edge, jumped off, and tried to glide down. Unfortunately, the tail of the glider hit the edge of the bluff and I came straight down. The glider fell on top of me in pieces and banged me up pretty badly. I dragged what was left home and assessed the damage as well as my ineptitude at getting it airborne. Obviously, I wasn’t able to run fast enough. What was needed was more speed.
One of my friends had access to his father’s car. So, after I made repairs, we got a rope and tied it to the bumper, and I donned the glider. He started off and I ran to keep up. I ran faster and faster and soon couldn’t run any faster. I leaped into the air, put the tail down and planned to ease upward into full flight. But there was no lift and I was dragged quite a few feet while the glider splintered around me. This time there wasn’t enough left to rebuild another biwinged glider.
Soon after, I read in another issue of Popular Mechanics about Alberto Santos-Dumont, the Brazilian air pioneer, who had designed a monoplane he called Demoiselle. I also saw pictures of Louis Blériot’s monoplane that he flew across the English Channel. I looked at my wreckage and decided that there was enough left to make a monoplane, so I made some modifications and decided that the power problem could be solved by installing a motorcycle engine. I acquired two bicycle wheels and worked many hours trying to make something that looked like it would fly. Meanwhile, I started to save up enough money to buy the engine.
After I had begun repairs, a storm came up one night, snatched my “baby” and blew it over the back fence, scattering it in small bits over several neighboring yards. I was out of money, out of materials, and out of enthusiasm. It was quite clear that I was out of the airplane design, construction, and piloting business. The more I think about it, the more I realize how lucky I was that I didn’t succeed.
Years later, I was invited to join the Early Birds, an organization of airmen who had flown before the First World War. I respectfully declined because not even by the most magnanimous stretch of the human imagination could I claim that I had ever achieved controlled flight in 1912.
It was at this time that boxing caught my fancy. We had an English teacher named Forest Bailey, who was also a boxing instructor. He saw me in a schoolyard scrap one day and said, “Look, young man, I know a little about boxing and you’re going to get hurt badly fighting the way you do. You get mad when you fight. If you lose your temper, you’re eventually going to lose a fight because you let your emotions instead of your head rule your body. Think about that. If you really want to learn to box, I’ll teach you.”
I was eager to learn. Mr. Bailey didn’t like my flailing style and introduced me to the finer points of feinting, balancing, targeting my blows, and anticipating what an opponent was going to do. He convinced me that with my short arms I had to punch so that my blows would arrive with more power. He taught me how to bob and weave and keep my right hand ready to strike the second the other fellow’s guard was down. I learned how to set myself and not make wild roundhouse swings of my arms but hit all the way from my heels with my fist. In short, he taught me the difference between street fighting and scientific boxing.
I began winning bouts immediately. At age 15, I entered the Pacific Coast amateur boxing matches at the Los Angeles Athletic Club and won the West Coast Amateur Championship as a flyweight in November 1912 at 105 pounds, then later moved into the bantamweight class at 115 pounds. At about five feet four inches, I was as tall as I was going to get. (I’ve always told people I’m five-six. It sounds better.)
While competing as a bantamweight amateur in 1912, I boxed exhibitions with Eddie Campi, who was a runner-up for the professional U.S. bantamweight championship. During the next two years, I had a fairly good knockout rating, which wasn’t easy to do with the eight-ounce gloves we used as amateurs. My notebook for 1912 shows that I fought 15 three-round bouts between June and December. In 1913, I fought 13 times and either won or fought all of them to a draw. The next year, I boxed in an exhibition match with Kid Williams, who was the world champion, and was able to hold my own with him without getting hurt.
My mother did not like the idea of boxing. My split lips, swollen eyes, and facial bruises couldn’t be ignored. I’m sure she thought I would be hurt seriously, and she could see no future for me in the sports world when all I would get for the pain was a ribbon or a cheap trophy. To her, boxing was nothing but legalized brawling, and she tried to encourage me to take up other sports.
One Saturday night, four of us—two friends of mine and the sister of one (who happened to be the fiancée of the other), and I—got involved in a little altercation. The event was a party given by a local dairy and we thought it was an open house affair. However, sometime during the evening, a committee began moving among the guests collecting admission fees. This was a surprise to us and the price asked was rather steep. We objected. Physical reaction followed words and in the ensuing melee, the sister-fiancée was pushed down a flight of stairs.
My old street-fighting emotions got the better of me. I landed a solid punch on the man who had pushed her, a truck driver much older and larger than me. People rushed to stop us, and before it could turn into a brawl, someone suggested the two of us settle our differences outside. The crowd followed and formed a circle.
We squared off and I knew it wasn’t exactly going to be a fight by the Marquis of Queensbury rules. The crowd was mostly made up of the other chap’s friends. Whenever I got close to the ring of onlookers, someone would punch me hard in the back or side. It was easy to see that I had to stay in the middle of the ring or be kidney punched until I dropped my guard and my adversary would find my chin. Fists flew, girls screamed, and two policemen showed up. They introduced a modicum of fairness into the fracas by holding the crowd back. I was holding my own against the truck driver, but then the police sergeant arrived and the two policemen suddenly became zealous defenders of the law. Both of us were arrested and hauled off to jail.
We were charged with disturbing the peace, a petty offense, and fined a few dollars. The other fellow paid the fine and left. Since I was only 15, the sergeant notified my mother while I languished in a cell. When I asked what she said, he shrugged and replied, “She wants you to stay here until Monday morning. She’ll drop by then and get you out in time for school.”
Mother had obviously decided it was time I learned a lesson—and it was. Being incarcerated in a cold, unheated cell for two nights and being totally deprived of the right to leave was a shocking experience for me. The jailer issued me two blankets, but a prisoner in an adjoining cell complained of the cold, so I gave him one of mine. I found out later he then had three blankets while I shivered for two nights under one. I never mentioned that to my mother. She gave me a memorable lecture concerning my transgressions on the way to school. I vowed never again to let my emotions overcome reason. Freedom is something very precious. We really don’t appreciate what freedom is until we’ve lost it.
To encourage me to quit boxing, Mother bought me a motorcycle. I complied with the spirit if not the letter of her request. From then on, I boxed professionally under the name of Jimmy Pierce instead of Jimmy Doolittle. The motorcycle proved to be an economical way to get to my boxing matches. I spent hours tinkering with it and enjoyed using it to explore the world beyond walking or bicycling distance. It was the first machine of any kind that I owned.
While I had been going through these teenage experiences, a pretty girl came into my life. Her name was Josephine Daniels. She had come to California from Louisiana with her parents and had retained the unhurried, calm demeanor that was characteristic of cultured families from the Old South.
She was a very good little girl. I was a very naughty little boy. She was a Memarian, which would be the equivalent of a Phi Beta Kappa in college. She got all A’s; I had a hard time getting C’s. She always had a happy disposition. Teachers loved her. I’m sure they only thought of me as “that Doolittle boy,” a cocky kid who was always going around getting into fights. We were almost complete opposites. So, for the first three years of high school, we just didn’t seem to travel in the same league. Then she began to tolerate me and slowly seemed to reciprocate my affections. I thought of her as “my girl” and was so smitten I told her in 1913 that after I got through school and had a job, I’d marry her. If she’d wait, I told her I’d take her on the most beautiful trip in the world—up the inside passage of Alaska. (I kept that promise. We had an enjoyable trip through the inside passage in 1973—sixty years later!)
Although her name was Josephine, she was known as “Joe,” spelled with the “e,” which she claimed was because she had a favorite uncle named Joe and the family called her “Little Joe.” I always said it was because her father named her Joseph before she came into the world; in view of her equipment, they changed the name to Josephine but still called her “Joe” and spelled it that way.
Her mother considered, quite rightly, that I was no bargain. Even my mother, who was devoted to me, fell completely in love with Joe. When we began going steady and boldly considered marriage sometime in the future, my mother told her it would be wonderful to have her as a daughter-in-law but for her own good suggested that she shop around a little longer. She never did, although there were always rivals hovering around vying for her attention.
Joe was unimpressed with my boxing and my motorcycle. It seems she wanted me to be a gentleman, and gentlemen did not go around looking for fights. Only the “fast” crowd rode motorcycles, and certainly good girls did not ride on the backs of motorcycles.
There’s no doubt that Joe changed my life. I began to comb my hair, wear a tie, look after my clothes, and watch my language around her. I wanted to take her out on dates, but my finances were always meager. However, when we did date, I always gave her carfare to get home because if anybody said anything nasty to her, I was going to punch them in the nose.
The best way for me to earn money was by boxing professionally under the name I had already adopted—Jimmy Pierce. Although I was only a junior in high school, by then I looked older than my contemporaries. Unknown to my mother, I motorcycled up and down the coast on weekends, entering bouts in the various boxing clubs that were so popular then. Being undersized compared with some of the pros I fought made me seem like the underdog, and fans rooted for me. I either won each bout entered or boxed to a draw, and made as much as $30 a bout.
Joe was not happy when she found out I was still boxing. She refused to see a bout and wouldn’t even talk to me about it. It hurt me when I displeased her and one day during our high school senior year, I suddenly asked her if she would marry me.
“You must think I’m out of my mind,” she replied indignantly. “I could never marry a man who wants to fight all the time.”
“I’ll give up fighting,” I said. “As soon as school’s out I’m going to Alaska and get a good job. As soon as I have some money, I’ll send for you.”
Joe seemed pleased but said, “My mother would never approve.”
Her reply made me a little angry. “I’m going to marry you, not your mother,” I retorted.
When I graduated from high school I thought I knew all I needed to know to make a good living. My father had written and asked me to visit him in Seward, Alaska, where he had relocated after leaving Nome. Perhaps he thought he could persuade me to live there permanently, but we had never talked about it. After completing high school in late spring of 1914, I withdrew the money I had saved and took the boat to Seward with visions of making a lot of money working there and living with him. He had bought two lots, and that summer we built a house on one of them—more like a shack. He paid me apprentice wages.
My relations with my father were still uneasy. Shortly after I arrived, he asked me if I remembered what I’d said when he had whipped me years before for something I didn’t do.
“Sure,” I said.
He asked, “Are you going to do it?”
Full of confidence from my boxing experience, I looked him in the eye and asked if he figured I could. Thoughtfully, he replied that he believed I could.
I have never been proud of this conversation. Perhaps he meant it as a compliment, that I had grown up and was now a man. But I think this exchange showed the distance between us, a distance that was never closed. I don’t think that kind of dialogue between father and son should ever have to take place. He never said that he was sorry or that he was wrong in accusing me of lying. I just wish he had had more faith in me because I’ve never tolerated or engaged in lying. I have always thought lying is a form of cowardice.
Alaska was not the land of opportunity I thought it might be. I had saved enough money to get there, but there were no jobs available for a teenage kid, even one who had graduated from high school, a rarity among Alaskans in those days. World War I had started in Europe, and no foreign companies were investing in Alaskan enterprises.
I bought some provisions and left my father to search for gold. I ended up at Six-Mile Creek and lived in a tent and subsisted on salmon three times a day for about three weeks while I tried to pan for gold. Now, sure that there was no future for me in Alaska and being somewhat homesick to see Joe, I hiked back to Seward. To get back home, I got a job as a steward on a Seattle-bound ship, but couldn’t afford the fare to get from there to Los Angeles. I stowed away aboard the SS Yale and arrived home in time to enroll at Los Angeles Junior College in 1915. It was a far wiser Jim Doolittle who entered college. I told Joe that we’d have to wait a while before we tied any knots. I wanted to get a college education. She seemed pleased at the thought.
When I was very small, I knew that there were two things I wanted to do in life: build things and see the world. To build things, one had to be an engineer. In those days, there were only two types of engineers who could see the world. One was the civil engineer who built bridges, harbors, and dams; the other was the mining engineer who went everywhere looking for different minerals. The latter seemed the most attractive.
The engineering courses in junior college were the same for all types of engineers the first two years—mostly mathematics and science. I found that I liked the challenge and surprised myself by getting fairly good grades. To carry out my career goal, I worked in the Comstock Lode in Virginia City, Nevada, in the summers between college semesters and, later, in the January Jones Mine, a cinnabar, or quicksilver, mine.
I really got into the nitty-gritty end of mining by pushing a tram car and digging with a pick and shovel. I learned to use a water liner, which is the drill used to drill holes in which to put the powder to blast the face off the rock. Despite the strenuous nature of the work, I enjoyed it.
After junior college, I entered the University of California’s School of Mines at Berkeley and continued toward a degree in mining engineering. The university had a fine gymnasium and I began working out on the horizontal and parallel bars. I was now 19 and weighed about 130 pounds. I wanted to box again so I talked with Marcus Freed, the boxing coach, and asked to try out for the team. The lightweight and welterweight positions were filled, but they didn’t yet have a good middleweight (165-pound class) team member. There were three contending for the slot. I offered to move up into that class if he’d let me try out.
Reluctantly, Mr. Freed let me go into the ring with one of them. My opponent outweighed me by 30 pounds. Several inches taller and with a longer reach, he eyed me rather like an older brother looks at a much younger sibling. As soon as we touched gloves, I let go with a few quick lefts and rights and he was down. Coach Freed put the gloves on the second contender and he went the way of the first.
Two days later, the third fellow and I went at it, and although it took me longer, I won the match and was designated the university’s middleweight champion who would represent UC against Stanford, our arch rival. Coach Freed gave me some good tips about fighting opponents who would be taller, heavier, and always have a longer reach. I felt sure my speed and my right-from-the-heels punch would equalize the difference.
When I climbed into the ring with the Stanford boxer, he gave me what I interpreted as a condescending smile, and for some reason it made me angry. After we touched gloves and parried a few blows for about a minute, I rushed at him, ducked under his guard and planted a solid blow on his chin. He dropped to the canvas, out cold. My diary shows this match took place on March 26, 1917, and lasted 83 seconds.
When my opponent regained his composure, he got up, came over and introduced himself as Eric Pedley. I was no longer angry and was surprised to have him congratulate me. I replied weakly that it was a lucky punch. He disagreed. Said I had deserved to win the match. Eventually Eric Pedley became a noted polo player. I happened to attend one of his matches with my sons some years later and congratulated him on a fine game. He smiled that sportsmanlike smile again and shook my hand. “Yes, I remember you,” he said. “We met some fifteen years ago rather quickly and informally.”
Since I had now returned to boxing, in order to make extra money I began to box professionally again under the name of Jimmy Pierce. Mr. Freed set up some matches for me, one of which was with Willie Hoppe, a celebrated boxer from San Francisco. My diary shows that I boxed him in May 1917 and won by a knockout in the first round. It also noted that I knocked out a fellow named Oldrick that same month in five seconds of the first round.
As I might have expected, there was an end to my string of successes. I was matched one night against a ringwise veteran named “Spider” Reilly. Within a few seconds after we touched gloves, I knew he was good. As I went after him with my usual fast attack, he danced lightly away and I could land only a few light blows on him. He came back with some jolting right-hand blows that stung and rocked me back on my heels. Tried my best but lost the fight on a unanimous decision.
Thus I learned another lesson: no matter how good you think you are in a sport, eventually someone will come along who proves that he is better. I decided then that getting an education was more important than sports, so I began to apply myself seriously to my studies at UC’s School of Mines. In April 1917, during my junior year, the United States declared war on Germany. Such a momentous event didn’t seem to penetrate my thoughts too deeply at that time. I wanted to make a lot of money that summer, so when the semester ended, Bill Downs, my best friend, and I left on my motorcycle for Virginia City, Nevada, where the famous Comstock Lode was located. Although the rush had been over for several decades by then, a few mining companies were still operating.
I don’t remember what town it was but we were stopped by a police officer for speeding. He took us before a judge who called us “wicked” for going 50 miles an hour and fined us $15. We had only $12 between us so the judge took that and asked the arresting policeman if there was anything attached to the motorcycle that would be worth $3. The officer replied that we had a carbide light worth about 50 cents but it was out of carbide.
The judge gave us a lecture and let us go after taking the $12. We were now flat broke. We had bedrolls and a rifle and planned to live off the land by “borrowing” corn, potatoes, or whatever else we could find at farms along the way. We would worry about gasoline when it ran out.
Fortune smiled on us. As we chugged along the desert roads, we came upon a stalled automobile with an old man seated inside. We stopped and asked if we could help. He said his son was the driver and had walked on ahead to get a tow truck. He said the engine had quit and wouldn’t restart. Bill and I tinkered and got it started. Bill drove the auto and I followed on the motorcycle until we came upon the son, who had been walking for hours without seeing a single soul. The old man was so grateful, he gave us two dollars, which bought enough gas to get us to the mines.
We were hired by the Union Sierra Nevada Mining Co. Two memorable things happened to me during that summer at the mine. A cage—the elevator that took the men down to the 2,900-foot level in the mine—broke. The shift boss and one miner were in the cage when it plummeted to the bottom of the shaft. Since I was the only one who had first-aid training (it was part of the college course in mining engineering), I agreed to be lowered down the shaft on a rope to see if I could get them out. I got down to the 2,700-foot level without difficulty, but that last 200 feet seemed impossible. They began to spray some water down to try to get air circulation in the shaft because by that time the acetylene light on my miner’s cap had gone down to where it was just barely burning. That was always a danger signal. The water put the light out.
I was lowered away in the dark to where I could get on top of the cage. There was a tremendous coil of cable on top of the cage that had unrolled off the winch. I picked blindly through the cable, dropped down into the escape hatch and felt the pulses and hearts of both men, but they were dead.
When I sent word back up that they were gone, another man was lowered. The two of us got the broken cable straightened out and hooked a new cable in its place. Then we got into the cage and were lifted up. We were quite worried because the cage had sprung and it came up in fits and jerks.
When we got to the top, I found that, instead of being just another college kid who was detested by the hard rock miners, I had suddenly become a fair-haired boy. One of them patted me on the back and made a remark, typical of the miners’ backhanded expressions of praise in those days. It was one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received. He said, “Kid, there’s no shit in your neck!” It was his way of saying that there wasn’t any yellow streak down my back.
I had the other memorable experience over the July Fourth holiday when the other miners had the day off. Since it meant overtime pay, I volunteered to remain with an old miner and mind the pump that was used to keep the hot water from the underground hot springs from seeping into the mine. Our job was to keep the water at a certain level so the pump wouldn’t go dry. It was a boring chore and the droning of the pump was monotonous. The old man dozed off and so did I.
The pump suddenly stopped and I awakened with a start. The water level in the mine was rising. The old man awoke, too, and gave me some choice epithets, the mildest of which was to tell me I was one of those no-good, “damned college kids.” He told me that since it was my fault the pump had stopped I had to get it started again.
This meant I had to wade into the nearly scalding water, reach down, and prime the pump with a hand lever. I did it but suffered scald burns for several days afterward. The only thing that eased the pain was that the old man seemed to have a little better respect for me from then on.
After these two incidents, I was treated entirely differently from other college students in the mine. I was considered “one of the boys” while the other kids still had to prove themselves.
All in all, it had been a worthwhile summer and I looked forward to my final year of college. Ever optimistic, I thought I would then get a good job and put my education and experience to work.
1. Klondike Nugget, January 21, 1900.
2. Nome News, October 9, 1899.
3. Nome News, June 23, 1900.
4. One of the best books about the gold rush days in Nome is Nome: City of the Golden Beaches, by Terrence Cole, published by the Alaska Geographic Society in 1984. It was originally published in Alaska Geographic, volume 11, number 1, 1984.
5. See Old Yukon, by Judge James Wickersham, Washington, D.C.: Washington Law Book Co., 1938, pp. 409–411.