As parents of one of your brave men our eternal gratitude is yours.
—MR. AND MRS. EDMUND MILLER, MAY 20, 1942, TELEGRAM
DOOLITTLE ARRIVED BACK IN the United States on May 18, after a two-week journey that took him through India, North Africa, and even South America. A staff car awaited him at the airport in Washington, whisking him directly to the War Department, where he met with General Arnold. Doolittle debriefed the general about the mission, pointing out his concerns for the captured aircrews and the loss of the bombers. Arnold assured him the loss of the bombers was not a problem. The two men then met with General Marshall, whom Doolittle found in surprisingly good humor.
Afterward Arnold instructed the new brigadier general to go to the uniform store and buy some new clothes and then head home to his apartment at 2500 Q Street, in northwest Washington, and remain out of sight until Arnold called him. Joe Doolittle meanwhile was in Los Angeles, tending to her sick mother. Arnold had secretly phoned her in advance of her husband’s arrival, inviting her to Washington. Joe Doolittle flew all night on a commercial plane to Pittsburgh, landing the morning of May 19; there an Army officer ushered her onto a military transport to Washington.
Arnold rang Doolittle late that morning and told him he would swing by the apartment and retrieve him in a few moments. The general just two weeks earlier had sent a final memo to the president, giving him an ultimate tally of the mission’s outcome and taking a swipe at the Japanese. “With the 15 planes reported located in East China, 1 interned in Siberia, and 1 which the Japanese claim is on exhibition, there is a total of 17 accounted for—which is 1 more than we sent over.”
The car pulled up outside Doolittle’s apartment, and to his surprise both Arnold and General Marshall sat in the back seat. Doolittle saluted and climbed in the front with the driver. The car pulled away from the curb. Doolittle waited for someone to tell him where the men were headed, but neither Arnold nor Marshall spoke. Doolittle finally could not contain his curiosity any longer and asked.
“Jim,” Arnold answered, “we’re going to the White House.”
“Well, I’m not a very smart fellow and I don’t want to embarrass anyone,” Doolittle said. “What are we going to do there?”
“The President is going to give you the Medal of Honor,” Marshall interjected.
The raid had thrilled Marshall, who later wrote that it “was successful far beyond our most optimistic hopes.” He had a week earlier sent a secret memo to Arnold, outlining the details of Doolittle’s honor and his ideas for an elaborate media rollout. He had directed Arnold to prepare a press release and even a proposed statement for Doolittle. “It will be necessary to keep this citation secret for a long time,” Marshall advised. “However, the fact of the award of the Medal of Honor should be made public the day it becomes known that Doolittle is in town. I wish to arrange the affair so that he is kept under cover until received by the President and decorated.”
Doolittle was floored by the honor—and immediately protested. “General, that award should be reserved for those who risk their lives trying to save someone else,” Doolittle argued. “Every man on our mission took the same risk I did. I don’t think I’m entitled to the Medal of Honor.”
Doolittle watched as Arnold’s cheeks turned red with anger and Marshall suddenly scowled. He knew he had just offended them both.
“I happen to think you do,” Marshall shot back.
The car fell silent. “This was the only time Hap ever got mad at me and General Marshall ever spoke sternly to me,” he later wrote. “The highest-ranking man in Army uniform had made his decision. It was neither the time nor the place for me to argue.”
The officers arrived at the White House, where Doolittle was pleasantly surprised to find Joe. He had last seen her forty-seven days earlier in San Francisco. The two had little time to catch up before aides ushered them into the Oval Office at 1 p.m., followed by a gaggle of reporters and photographers.
President Roosevelt, who had pushed his military leaders to develop the raid, perched behind his desk. He greeted Doolittle and shook his hand, telling him that the raid had accomplished everything he had hoped.
The president pinned the Medal of Honor on Doolittle just above the left pocket of his uniform shirt as Marshall read aloud the citation. “Brigadier General James H. Doolittle, United States Army, for conspicuous leadership above and beyond the call of duty, involving personal valor and intrepidity at an extreme hazard to life,” Marshall read. “With the apparent certainty of being forced to land in enemy territory or to perish at sea, General Doolittle personally led a squadron of Army bombers, manned by volunteer crews, in a highly destructive raid on the Japanese mainland.”
Generals Arnold and Marshall both saluted Doolittle, while Joe rewarded her husband with a kiss.
News photographers shot stills and motion pictures of the historic event. The War Department handed out a three-page press release and a two-page statement attributed to Doolittle, giving the country the first real details of the mission, from hedgehopping across Tokyo to the types of targets bombed. The statement even mentioned the baseball game Jack Hilger’s crew witnessed.
Doolittle then took to the airwaves in a radio talk broadcast the following evening, where he graciously credited the mission’s success to the seventy-nine young pilots, navigators, bombardiers, and gunners who volunteered. “No group of men could have thrown themselves into a task more whole-heartedly,” Doolittle told listeners. “They did not seek the path of glory. They merely volunteered for a hazardous mission, knowing full well what such a phrase implied concerning their chances for personal safety. They followed the finest traditions of American fighting men.”
Reporters lapped it up, peppering Doolittle with questions in a press conference after the Medal of Honor ceremony.
“We flew low enough so that we could see the expressions on the faces of the people,” Doolittle remarked.
“And what was that expression?” someone asked.
“It was one, I should say, of intense surprise,” Doolittle replied with, as one reporter noted, a twinkle in his eye.
He went on to tell reporters that nine Japanese fighters attacked his bomber over Tokyo. “I was able to run away from all of them,” he said, before turning to face the journalists. “Better make that ‘evade all of them.’”
“Are you going back again?” a reporter asked.
“That is in the laps of the gods and the hands of the War Department.”
Doolittle couldn’t resist a little fun—albeit off the record—when asked whether he could have bombed the palace. “Why,” he said. “I could have blown that chrysanthemum-painted bedpot right out from underneath the imperial throne.”
Reporters wanted to know what losses America suffered.
“No planes were left in Japan,” Doolittle said. “Some were damaged, but none was shot down. No plane was damaged to an extent that precluded it from proceeding to its destination.”
He likewise refuted claims that the enemy had the wreckage of one the mission’s bombers on show in Tokyo. “The Japanese do not have one of our planes on display,” he said. “They may have painted up one of their own to look like ours, or they may have gotten an American plane from somewhere else, but not from us.”
Reporters followed up by asking a stunned Joe Doolittle her thoughts. “I’m too thrilled to speak,” she replied.
Absent from all the details released, of course, was any mention of the Hornet or the fact that the bombers had taken off from a carrier. More important—and what would later pose a problem for the War Department and the administration—was Doolittle’s dodge over the fate of the bombers. The press and as a result the American public were left with the deliberately false impression that all of the bombers as well as airmen had made it through the mission safely, even though by then Doolittle and his superiors knew that fifteen of the sixteen bombers had in fact crashed and that two of the crews had been captured. “Doolittle emphasized,” noted a story the next day in the Chicago Daily Tribune, “that all planes and men came thru safely and hooted at Japanese claims that they have one or more of the American planes on display.”
The world had waited in anticipation to learn who had masterminded and executed the stunning assault on the Japanese capital. One month and a day later it had its answer in what would prove a public relations masterpiece, just as Marshall had envisioned. America’s aviation darling Jimmy Doolittle, the newly promoted general and recipient of the nation’s highest award for heroism, was a hero many already knew. The MIT-educated racing and stunt pilot, who had captivated Americans for decades with his aerial feats, was the perfect face to put on America’s war effort.
The photo of the president pinning on the five-pointed star plastered the front pages of newspapers across the nation, accompanied by stories filled with the harrowing details of the raid that Doolittle now shared in his statement and interviews. Long profiles of the famed aviator followed in papers and magazines, reminding readers of his past heroics. Typical was the 1,797-word article in the Washington Post that carried the headline “His Life Story Reads like a Thriller, but with Perfect Timing.”
Articles and editorials alike glowed with praise for America’s new hero. More than a few made a play on Doolittle’s ironic surname.
“Jimmy Doolittle is a man whose exploits utterly belie his name,” declared the Baltimore Sun.
“He should be named Doomuch,” recommended the New York Daily News.
“Jimmy did it,” heralded Time magazine.
Other newspapers argued that only someone of Doolittle’s caliber could have been trusted to organize and lead such a dangerous mission. “This was a test of skill and courage,” wrote the New York Times. “It took a splendid flier like Doolittle, resolute, intrepid and resourceful, to carry it through.”
The Chicago Daily Tribune echoed that sentiment. “The bombing of Tokio may seem compounded of magic and the spirits of evil to a Japanese, but the American people will know that to Jimmy Doolittle it was a job,” the paper argued. “It was a job of planning, of organization, of navigation, of flying, of finding the target and releasing the bomb loads—and all of this has been Jimmy Doolittle’s life.”
Doolittle’s family beamed.
“I’m pretty cocky about my old man!” James Doolittle Jr., a second lieutenant in training in Dayton, told a reporter.
Doolittle’s youngest son, John, who was about to begin his studies at West Point, was even more succinct: “Yippee!”
Even Roosevelt scored political points off the mission’s success. “I think you should have gone a little farther by giving him the privilege of having his name changed to Doobig,” Mrs. T. J. Dykema of Pittsburgh cabled the president. “I hope my two boys in the Army have a similar opportunity.”
“Give us more Doolittles,” added James Jordan of Portland, “we will take our chances in the west.”
Personal congratulations poured in to both Jimmy and Joe Doolittle from friends, colleagues, and even strangers from around the country.
“We only know that if ever any one could do it—it would be you,” Marty Moore wrote from Florida. “God-bless you.”
“It is glorious news for the whole nation,” cabled Herb Maxson from New York. “He will always be tops in any league.”
“So your Jimmie performed the miraculous feat!!” wrote Maude Howell from Los Angeles. “It is too marvelous to believe.”
Hank Potter’s mother wrote from South Dakota. “Among the scores of congratulatory messages that you are receiving there will be none any more sincere than ours; especially so since our son Henry was navigator for your husband on his flight to Japan,” she wrote. “I rejoice that all came back safely; and feel very proud—and humble—that the boys not only had the courage to volunteer but that they had the ability to do their job—and to your husband is due credit & praise.”
One of the letters Doolittle would treasure most came from none other than Admiral Halsey, written April 24 as the task force neared Pearl Harbor. “I hated to dump you off at that distance, but because of discovery there was nothing else to do,” Halsey wrote. “I stated to my Staff, that on landing you should have had two stars pinned on each shoulder, and the Medal of Honor put around your neck.” Halsey added that he knew of no other deed in history more heroic than the raid Doolittle led. “You have struck the hardest blow of the war directly at the enemy’s heart. You have made history,” he concluded. “Keep on knocking over those yellow bastards.”
Even old aviation rivals couldn’t help congratulating Doolittle, including famed racer Roscoe Turner. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Turner had suggested to Doolittle that the veteran aviators recruit some younger fliers and bomb Tokyo. Doolittle had brushed him off, arguing the former racers were too old to serve as combat pilots. “Congratulations, you dog!” Turner now cabled. “Guess you have shown the world we old boys can still be of service as combat pilots.”
Turner went so far as to fire off a letter to Joe. “The day the bombs fell on Tokyo I told all of my friends that that could be no one but Jimmy Doolittle’s work,” he wrote. “He is the greatest guy that ever climbed in an airplane.”
DOOLITTLE SAT DOWN WITHIN days of his return to write letters to the families of all seventy-nine raiders, an exercise that made him take stock of the mission’s outcome, of what happened to each young man who had raised his hand and volunteered. The raid had claimed the lives of twenty-year-old gunner Leland Faktor, twenty-three year-old engineer Donald Fitzmaurice, and twenty-nine-year-old bombardier Bill Dieter, though Faktor’s death was the only one so far confirmed. The Japanese had captured eight other airmen from Dean Hallmark’s and Billy Farrow’s crews, and the Russians had interned Ski York and his men. Several others had been injured, a few seriously.
Many of the letters were easy, and a form letter would suffice, echoing the May 20 note Doolittle sent to copilot Dick Cole’s mother in Dayton:
“I am pleased to report that Dick is well and happy although a bit homesick. I left him in Chungking, China, a couple of weeks ago. He had recently completed a very hazardous, extremely important and most interesting flight—the air raid on Japan. He comported himself with conspicuous bravery and distinction. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for gallantry in action, and also was decorated by the Chinese Government.
“Transportation and communication facilities are extremely bad in the Far East and so it may be sometime before you hear again from Dick directly. I assure you, however, that everything is going smoothly with him and although plans for the future are uncertain he will probably be returning home sometime in the not too distant future.
“I am proud to have served with Dick, who was my co-pilot on the flight, and hope that I may have an opportunity to serve with him again.”
Doolittle sent similar letters to the families of navigator Hank Potter, bombardier Fred Braemer, and his loyal crew chief, Paul Leonard, as well as the wives and parents of the members of the eleven other crews who had safely escaped. He mentioned Charles Ozuk’s leg wound and Harold Watson’s injured arm. To the wife of his second-in-command, Doolittle wrote that he was requesting orders that day for Jack Hilger to return to the United States. “Under separate cover, I am sending one of several scrolls that were presented to the outfit in China,” he added. “Jack particularly liked this one and I am sure the Smithsonian Institute, where we planned to send it, will not miss the one.”
The remainder of the letters Doolittle wrote over a two-day period proved far more painful, none more so than the one to Faktor’s uncle in Iowa. The gunner had been killed bailing out over China. Had his chute failed or had he failed to pull the rip cord in time? No one would ever know. The only fact was that he had died. “It is with the deepest regret that I am obliged to inform you that your nephew, Corporal Leland D. Faktor, was killed in action in the raid on Japan. He was buried with military honors in a field specially set aside at Chuchow in China,” Doolittle wrote. “He was a fine boy and is mourned by the entire group. I am proud to have served with him.”
Information on the two captured crews was spotty—and incorrect. Reports indicated that two of Farrow’s crew were missing, when in fact the Japanese had captured all five. “The latest news we are able to get is that the plane piloted by your son landed near Japanese occupied territory and that two of the crew members are missing and three have been taken prisoner by the Japanese,” Doolittle wrote to Farrow’s mother. “We are unable to definitely authenticate this report, and are also unable to determine which of the crew members are missing and which captured. An attempt is being made today, through the American Red Cross, to obtain more definite information. As fast as we obtain any additional information you may depend on my passing it on to you. I am sincerely sorry that I am obliged to give you such an unfortunate report.”
That misinformation likewise led Doolittle to pen far more upbeat reports to Hallmark’s father in Dallas and to relatives of the other crew members of the Green Hornet, including the families of Dieter and Fitzmaurice, who had died in the surf and been buried on a sandy knoll along the Chinese coast. “I am extremely sorry to have to bring you bad news. However, it is not as bad as it might be,” Doolittle began. “Your son, according to the most reliable information that we are able to obtain, landed in Japanese occupied territory in China and has been taken prisoner. Every effort was and still is being made to extricate him from Japanese hands but to date we have not been successful. You may depend on everything possible being done in this direction.”
Doolittle advised the families of Ski York’s crew that American diplomats were now working to secure the airmen’s release, though he was vague about the extent of injuries suffered by Ted Lawson and others on board the Ruptured Duck, no doubt hoping to spare them worry. He was far more candid about the gravity of the crash in his letter to Dave Thatcher’s parents, praising the twenty-year-old gunner for having rescued Lawson and the others. “All of the plane’s crew were saved from either capture or death as the result of his initiative and courage in assuming responsibility and in tending the wounded himself day and night,” Doolittle wrote, noting that Thatcher had already received the Distinguished Flying Cross. “I have today recommended that he also be awarded the coveted Distinguished Service Cross for outstanding heroism.”
Doolittle’s personal letters cheered the families and elevated the already high opinion most held of the general, a sentiment captured in a letter from Harold Watson’s father. “I doubt if the rules and regulations of the Army require a Commanding General, after completion of a mission, to write a personal letter to the parents of each participating member,” he wrote. “However, because in addition to being an able officer, General Doolittle is a father and a gentleman, he chose to do just that.”
Many of the mothers, fathers, and wives responded with glowing telegrams and letters, congratulating Doolittle on the raid. “I can’t express in words how thrilled and proud I am to be the wife of one of the men who participated in the bombing of Tokyo,” wrote Thelma Bourgeois, wife of bombardier Robert Bourgeois. “Congratulations to you and your volunteers for achieving a completely victorious mission.”
Others wrote to ask favors. Fred Braemer’s wife inquired whether Doolittle could expedite the return of her husband, who had been deployed to India. So did Melvin Gardner’s fiancée. “I am hoping to get married as soon as he comes back and wanted some idea so I would know whether to go ahead with some wedding plans.”
Gardner would sadly never walk down the aisle; three days after his fiancée wrote her May 30 letter, he died in a plane crash after a raid over Burma.
Pilot Richard Joyce’s father questioned whether publishing the names of the raiders, particularly those still fighting in Burma, only put them at greater risk if later captured. Douglas Radney’s father wanted to know whether Doolittle might help him find his son’s 1940 Chevrolet, which he had left parked back in Pendleton, Oregon.
Pilot Robert Gray’s parents, like many others, shared their son’s admiration of Doolittle. “Robert is mighty proud to serve under you, you are his ideal as a soldier, a flyer and a man,” the couple wrote. “We too are mighty proud that our son is with you and that you feel he is worthy of the place. May God bless you and keep you and our son and all his brave companions for the glory and honor of our great, free America.” Thomas White’s mother echoed that in a telegram. “Your leadership inspired all of your men,” she cabled. “Our Bob’s part is a glory to us all. He would follow you anywhere.”
The letters Doolittle received from the parents of the captured airmen proved much more difficult to reconcile. Families were desperate for information, and many would continue to write to Doolittle as spring turned into summer. Chase Nielsen’s mother went so far as to write President Roosevelt, asking what treatment her son would likely suffer at the hands of the Japanese. “My heart grieves, and my burden seems almost unbearable without mentioning what he must be enduring,” she wrote. “I would be so very grateful for any information I might receive about my boy.”
Bobby Hite’s mother wrote that her husband’s death in July 1941 coupled now with the capture of her son proved more than she could handle. “I just pray God,” she wrote, “that he still lives.” Bill Dieter’s mother, despite her own worries, still found the strength to applaud the mission’s success, a grace that amazed Doolittle. “Your kindness in congratulating us on the raid touched me deeply,” the general responded. “Congratulations should go to you, the mother of a gallant boy who served his country heroically and effectively in time of great national peril.”
Billy Farrow’s mother wrote that she depended on her faith in God. “If it is His purpose to have my son give his life, I am very proud to say that he was ready and glad to give his life in the noble defense of his own land,” she wrote. “He felt it a very high privilege to serve with you, and to be chosen as one who was capable of doing the job.” She shared her son’s final letter, encouraging her despite her woes in Washington to remain strong, signing the note simply: “Chin up!” “He knew then he was going on a hazardous mission, probably never to return,” she wrote Doolittle. “Such courage as that makes me able to carry on just now. I would be a very unworthy mother who could not manifest some of that same spirit and keep her chin up and hopes high.”
THE ARMY BRASS, which had promised the raiders the Distinguished Flying Cross in Chungking, prepared to deliver. Doolittle fired off a cryptic letter on June 15, addressed “To All Officers and Men with me at Shangri-La.” He instructed them to come to Washington and report to Major Sherman Altick in room 4414 in the Munitions Building. “You will grant no interviews with the press nor pose for photos and in your communications to your homes will advise them simply that you are back in the United States. Use the utmost caution until such time as you have been given a directive by Major Altick on what you can say and do,” he wrote. “In others words, be most cautious with everyone except authorized Intelligence officers of the United States Army.”
The returning raiders promised another public relations victory for the military, just as the announcement the month before of Doolittle’s Medal of Honor. Army Air Forces officials initially had hoped for a reception with the president at the White House—followed by a noontime parade in New York City from the Battery to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel—but in the end had to settle for a scaled-back ceremony at Washington’s Bolling Field on June 27. More than two dozen raiders had returned to the United States, but just twenty officers and three enlisted men could be on hand for the ceremony, including Jack Hilger, Ross Greening, David Jones, and Thomas White, the mission doctor. In place of the president stood Hap Arnold, displaying his trademark grin.
“These officers and enlisted men are cited for extraordinary achievement while participating in a highly destructive raid on the Japanese mainland on April 18, 1942,” announced Colonel Leslie Holcomb, reading the citation. “They volunteered for this mission, knowing full well that the chances of survival were extremely remote, and executed their parts in it with great skill and daring. Their achievement reflects high credit on them and on the military service.”
Arnold walked down the line and pinned the medals, which had come packed in three green wooden boxes, above the left shirt pocket of each of the raiders, as Doolittle beamed. A half dozen of the airmen’s wives watched the fifteen-minute ceremony, but navigator Bill Pound’s spouse arrived too late, having gotten got lost en route and then stopped in an air-raid traffic test. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Don’t cry, honey,” Pound urged his wife.
“When I heard they used B-25’s I had an idea my husband was there,” she told reporters once she recovered. “Then when I heard of Doolittle’s promotion I was certain of it.”
The press, of course, soaked it up, begging the raiders to describe the historic flight. “Something like a picnic,” joked bombardier Denver Truelove. “They waved at us until we dropped the bombs.”
Though the military designed the ceremony to shine a light on the young heroes—allowing the airmen to tell personal stories of the raid—officials once again adhered to strict limits on what details could be released to the public. The military was keen on preserving the secret of Shangri-La—and the loss of all the planes. “No information should be made public which indicates the starting point of this raid or the ultimate destination after the raid was accomplished, or the ultimate disposition of the aircraft used in the raid,” a briefing memo warned. “Information such as the distances flown or the time in the air or the amount of fuel consumed and all other related matters should not be made public as they furnish a key to the prohibitions mentioned above.” Part of the secrecy stemmed from the reality that America had not ruled out future attacks on Japan; in fact, Arnold had challenged his staff to devise just such a scenario. “You fellows use your imagination and see what ideas on this subject you can present me.”
Doolittle meanwhile worked behind the scenes to secure additional awards for some of the raiders. He recommended that Hilger, Greening, Jones, and Hoover—the senior officers who had overseen aspects of the mission such as gunnery and intelligence—each receive the Distinguished Service Cross or the Distinguished Service Medal. The Army ultimately denied Doolittle’s requests, but did award Silver Stars to Thomas White and the Ruptured Duck’s Dean Davenport and David Thatcher; the latter’s story particularly wowed debriefing officer Merian Cooper in Chungking, as evidenced by a report he sent to Doolittle. “Beyond the limits of human exertion, beyond the call of friendship, beyond the call of duty, he—a corporal—brought his four wounded officers to safety,” Cooper wrote. “Medal of Honor? Pin it on him. He earned it.”
Doolittle likewise recommended all officers and enlisted men for promotion with one exception—Ski York’s crew. After his many warnings not to fly to Russia, York had done just that, and a clearly irritated Doolittle wanted answers. He also held back on recommending York for the Distinguished Service Cross or the Distinguished Service Medal. “The crew of the airplane that went to Siberia has not been recommended for promotion,” the general wrote in a memo, “and will not be until such time as it is possible to ascertain why they were in apparent direct violation of orders.”
The plane carrying Ted Lawson meanwhile touched down in Washington on the afternoon of June 16. Walter Reed Army Hospital sent an ambulance to collect the injured pilot along with Ruptured Duck navigator Charles McClure.
The men landed in ward five in a room with raider Harold Watson, who had just undergone surgery to repair his broken arm. The fliers traded stories that evening until Doolittle arrived. “I tried to stand up when he came in,” Lawson recalled, “but he put his hands on my shoulders and wouldn’t let me.”
Doolittle apologized that he was not at Bolling Field to greet them, but no one had told him of the airmen’s arrival. “How about the family situation?” he asked.
Lawson stalled. He said he wanted a good night’s sleep before he figured out how to proceed.
“Do you know about your mother?” Doolittle pressed. “She’s had a stroke. She’s pretty bad off. I’m sorry.”
Lawson fell silent.
“What do you want to do about your wife?”
Lawson wasn’t ready for his wife to see him. Not yet. He asked Doolittle to tell her he was still out of the country.
“I’ve already written your wife and told her you were injured and on the way back, but that I didn’t know the extent of your injuries,” Doolittle advised. “You’d better do something about it.”
The general decided to intervene, phoning Lawson’s wife in Los Angeles, where she had gone to be closer to her family. Though Doolittle did not go into details about Lawson’s injuries, he told her he was going to send her an airmail letter.
“Well, what do you think I look like,” Ellen Lawson told Doolittle on the phone. “I’m eight months pregnant!”
Doolittle wrote that he had spoken at length with Lawson. “He is in good health but quite depressed. The depression results from the fact that a deep cut in his left leg became infected and it was necessary that the leg be amputated. He also lost some teeth and received a cut on his face,” Doolittle wrote. “He is receiving the best medical attention that is possible to obtain, here at Walter Reed Hospital, but I feel that his recovery is being retarded by a fear of how his misfortune is going to affect you and his mother. Ted will probably be hospitalized here for some time and it is my personal belief that his recovery would be expedited through your presence.”
Ellen Lawson sat down and fired off an airmail letter of her own, assuring her husband of her love. “I’m glad to know the truth. My imagination has been running away with me,” she wrote. “Darling, it could be so much worse. I’ve had so many nightmarish dreams that you didn’t come back at all, and others in which you completely lost your memory and refused to believe I was your wife. Those were horrible. There is no reason in the world why we can’t lead a perfectly normal life and do the things we’ve planned. When I do see you I’ll do my best to control my tears. But, should there be any, please don’t misinterpret them. Because they’ll be tears of happiness and joy. ”
Lawson was overjoyed to receive the letter and even more so when she appeared in his hospital doorway days later after Doolittle arranged a flight. “I jumped up to go to the door, forgetting everything. Forgetting the crutches,” Lawson later wrote. “And when I took a step toward her I fell on my face in front of her.”
Lawson would have to endure a second amputation on his left leg followed by oral surgery to reshape his mouth as well as remove the broken nubs of his teeth, including one that had gone up through his gums into his sinus.
“He’s still got some of that beach sand in there!” Lawson heard one of the doctors comment during the surgery.
McClure likewise faced two surgeries to repair his battered shoulders, though his stay in the hospital proved personally beneficial. He fell in love with the occupational therapist Jean Buchanan and would marry her the following January.
The chief of the Army air staff, Major General Millard Harmon, and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau visited on July 6 to present the three raiders along with Howard Sessler and James Parker with the Distinguished Flying Cross. Press accounts either made no mention of how the fliers were injured or noted that the airmen “were injured in an airplane crash some time after the raid on Japan.”
Since the injured raiders had bypassed Chungking, Major General Chu Shih-ming, the military attaché for the Chinese embassy, stopped by on July 25 to present them with the Military Order of China. Doolittle was, as always, on hand for the ceremony. “You have exploded the myth of Japanese invincibility,” the Chinese general told them, “and set up a fine example for other military men of the United Nations to emulate.”
DOOLITTLE WRAPPED UP THE mission’s postmortem, finalizing his thirty-one-page report and shipping a box of cigars to the Sacramento worker who packed the parachute that had saved his life. He requested that the raiders suggest for possible awards any Chinese individuals who had helped them. Recommendations soon flooded his in-box. Harold Watson suggested Father Wendelin Dunker, who had aided the crew of the Whirling Dervish, while Dave Thatcher recommended guerrilla leader Jai Foo Chang, better known to most of the crew simply as Charlie. Thomas White nominated Chen and his father. The two physicians had graciously opened up their hospital to the crew of the Ruptured Duck, whose badly injured men drained the hospital of much of its precious medicines. “Neither man would take a penny for their services or their supplies saying that they felt it was their part in the fight against Japan,” White wrote. “I feel that Lawson and possibly Davenport owe their lives to Dr. Chen’s prompt and skillful treatment, and we all owe him a lot for his help and our comfort while at Linhai.”
The military planned to cash in on the success of the raid, asking the stateside airmen to volunteer to travel the country to sell war bonds and deliver morale speeches to factory workers eager for stories from the front. Most of the raiders jumped at the chance—a far safer volunteer assignment than their previous one. Pilot Bill Bower chatted up workers at the B. F. Goodrich Company in Ohio, while navigator Tom Griffin mingled with employees at the Dumore Company in Wisconsin. Pilots Griffith Williams and Ken Reddy spoke at a Birmingham luncheon attended by more than four hundred people, and the Army bragged that engineer Jacob Eierman on his tour of New England factories was seen by as many as twenty-five thousand. “Even though Ross was embarrassed to tears,” a Pierce County War Bond staff official wrote of Greening’s visit to Tacoma, “he helped us sell thousands and thousands of dollars worth of bonds and stamps.”
Doolittle himself jumped into the action, posing alongside enlistment posters that read, “Fly to Tokyo: All Expenses Paid.” He sent a congratulatory telegram to workers at the Wright Aeronautical Corporation in Paterson, New Jersey, the maker of the B-25’s twin engines. “Jap planes couldn’t do a thing to stop us,” he cabled. “They will never stop us if you keep up your great work.” He fired off another telegram to employees at the Western Electric Company in the nearby town of Kearny, who helped build the radios that aided the raiders. “Through those radios we issued commands between ships that sent our bombers on their marks,” Doolittle wired. “Through those radios we cheered each other on as our bombs crashed into vital Japanese naval and military installations. And, perhaps best of all, through those radios, we heard the hysterical Japanese broadcasters, too excited to lie, screaming about the damage we had done.”
Doolittle stopped by the California factory of North American Aviation—the manufacturer of all sixteen B-25s used in the raid—congratulating workers in a noontime speech on June 1. “Don’t tell a soul, but Shangri-La is right here in this North American plant. This is where our B-25 bombers came from,” he told the twelve thousand attendees at the Inglewood plant. “Our bombers—your bombers—functioned magnificently.” Company president James Kindelberger was so impressed with the speech that he sent a personal letter to Doolittle’s wife. “He not only made a fine talk, but his going around the plant chatting with people caused more goodwill than anything that has ever happened here,” he wrote. “I have taken many people of fame and prominence through the plant, but this is the first time that anyone has actually stopped the show.”
Doolittle was no stranger to celebrity, but the raid catapulted his fame to a new level. He was now a hero not just to the aviation community but to a grateful nation, the leader of a mission so dramatic that both Universal Pictures and Warner Brothers begged for the rights to tell it. In the eyes of the public, Doolittle personified bravery—the hero, as the Chicago Daily Tribune noted, with “the plain, honest American face.” Accolades, tributes, and even gifts soon flowed. The Rotary Club of Saint Louis elected Doolittle an honorary life member, as did the San Diego Consistory of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. The Dayton district commissioner wrote that teens aged fifteen to eighteen wanted to form an air scout squadron named in Doolittle’s honor. Fan mail arrived by the bundle as people asked for autographs, photos, and even old envelopes the general had used, anything he had touched. An Oklahoma woman sent him a flag she crocheted with 3,620 stitches. Total strangers wrote songs—a few went so far as to set such tunes to music and publish them—and poems about Doolittle, including Patsy Browning of New Jersey:
There is a man in this world
As proud as he can be,
For he fights for just one thing,
And that is “Victory.”
This man’s power and strength
Is not just a riddle,
For this is the great—
Jimmy Doolittle.
Tony Mele of Brooklyn sent this poem:
Doolittle did plenty when he let the Japs know
That American pilots could bomb Tokyo
His calling card said, “I’ll be back some day
And when I do there’ll be hell to pay.”
Long forgotten friends from Doolittle’s past surfaced, including Everett Hastings, a schoolmate from his youth in Alaska. Hastings confessed in a letter that his mother had referred to Nome’s scrappy young brawler by the diminutive nickname Dooless. Much had changed since those days. “My son gets in a fight every now and then. When he happens to tell some kid that his Dad went to school with you, they give him a laugh and tell him he is a liar,” Hastings wrote. “You and your ‘Gang’ are the idol of all the sprouting fliers to come.”
Doolittle’s fame grew so much that an autographed war bond poster for the Cleveland Athletic Club would fetch a staggering four million dollars. A newly incorporated Missouri town of 220 residents in the Ozarks even decided to name itself in the general’s honor. “We may not be big,” Mayor Alfred Cook boasted, “but we have a good name and enthusiasm.” Not until after the war did Doolittle’s schedule permit a visit, but when it did city leaders unveiled a bronze plaque of his likeness. As always he attributed his success to others. “I deeply appreciate the honor you have done me,” he said. “However, I should like always to believe that the tribute you have paid me you also intended for the men of vision who made aviation as we know it today possible—and also for the gallant people with whom it was my pleasure and privilege to serve.”