Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor

by Scott, James M.

  “Today, April 18, at about 12:30 p.m., enemy planes from several directions raided the Tokyo-Yokohama district. Countered by the air and land defense corps of the Imperial forces, the enemy raiders are being repulsed.

  “Thus far nine enemy planes are known to have been shot down, while damage inflicted by the enemy appears to be slight.

  “The Imperial Household is in no way affected, it has been learned.”

  That was followed by a similar bulletin at 3 p.m. from the Central District Army headquarters, stating that two bombers had raided Nagoya, but caused only slight damage, while another had targeted Kobe with incendiary bombs, again without causing any real destruction. “The time has come,” the bulletin declared, “for the people to rise to the occasion by defending the sky courageously and with absolute confidence in victory.” Authorities with the Central Nippon Army headquarters put out more details an hour later, again deemphasizing the raid’s damage. “Incendiary bombs were dropped by the enemy at six different places in the vicinity of Nagoya, but they are practically extinguished by now,” the bulletin stated. “In Kobe one incendiary bomb each was dropped at three different places. They were, however, extinguished.”

  Bulletins proved quick to congratulate the air defense forces, which not only were slow to sound the alarm but failed to shoot down any of the invaders. “The corps guarding the air was very prompt to locate the enemy planes, with the result that the air raid alarm could be sounded in time,” stated a 4:30 p.m. bulletin from the Eastern District Army headquarters. “Thanks to the efforts of the air and land defense units and the presence of mind and quick action of the people, the damage inflicted by the invading planes could be limited to the minimum.” The deceptive alerts stunned senior naval officers. “The Army announced that nine enemy planes were shot down, which was entirely untrue. In fact, even one enemy plane was not shot down,” Miwa wrote in his diary. “What for, I wonder, did the army make such a false announcement?”

  At the same time the government sought to reassure the public, leaders looked to spin the raid for the rest of the world, as evidenced by a message from Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo to Berlin that America intercepted: “In connection with the recent air attack by enemy planes, in order to circumvent enemy propaganda we had Domei and the radio broadcast the facts immediately to the outside world.” Japan’s version of the attack, playing up the civilian loss of life, went out over the airwaves in eight different languages. “This afternoon a few spots in Tokyo had some bombs dropped by enemy planes,” Japanese broadcasts declared. “The cowardly raiders purposely avoided the industrial centers and important military establishments, and blindly dumped their incendiaries in a few suburban districts, especially on schools and hospitals. The shameless raiders, however, were almost all downed by our surface guns and bombing planes, to the open view of the Tokyo residents who shouted Banzai at the sight.”

  Newspaper headlines in the days after the attack parroted those themes, championing Japan’s alleged success in destroying nine American bombers, while others sought to assure the public that the nation’s air defense network was impenetrable. One of the more comical write-ups appeared in an April 22 editorial in the Japan Times & Advertiser, which boasted that of the hundreds of planes American flattops carry, only ten could penetrate Japan’s protected airspace. “The few enemy planes that did manage to slip through the defense cordon failed to get near any of the establishments of military importance which were too well guarded,” the paper boasted. “Hence the planes were forced to fly around aimlessly over the suburbs of Tokyo, dropping incendiary bombs on schools and hospitals, machine-gunning innocent civilians and hitting at least one elementary school pupil, before being brought down or driven away.”

  The schizophrenic press, when not decrying the slaughter of civilians, portrayed the raid as so inconsequential that it had no effect on daily life. Even Emperor Hirohito could not be bothered to seek shelter, opting instead to listen to a 2 p.m. report on other matters from Home Minister Michio Yuzawa. Others noted that motion picture and stage theaters refused to cancel shows; the only exceptions were the Kabukiza and the Imperial Theater, which chose simply to postpone afternoon performances. Financial markets likewise took no hit; the press even bragged that the stock market opened stronger on Monday on news of the nation’s great defense. Public officials spoke out often in the media, describing the raid if anything as a “valuable experience.” “Air raids are nothing to be feared,” stated Mamoru Shigemitsu, the ambassador to China, who was in England during the German blitz. “Compared with German raids on London, today’s air attacks cannot be called an air raid in any sense of the word.”

  “The truth is that the American raiders were easily repulsed by the iron-wall air defense of our country,” asserted Tomokazu Hori, a spokesman for the board of information.

  “Air raids alone, no matter how intensive, have not ruined any nation,” declared Lieutenant General Asasaburo Kobayashi, chief of staff of the Defense General Headquarters.

  To bolster the reports of so many planes shot down—and no doubt to help obscure the fact that Japan in the short term could produce no wreckage—the press published colorful accounts of two pilots who claimed to have blasted enemy bombers, though neither could confirm seeing the enemy planes actually crash.

  “I pursued this plane, showering machinegun shots. The enemy plane strove to flee south,” reported Lieutenant Ryosaburi Umekawa, who in fact had pursued Ross Greening’s bomber. “I caused her to burst into flames.”

  “We saw her right engine in flames,” added the other pilot. “There can be no doubt that the enemy plane crashed into the sea.”

  Editorial pages meanwhile helped peddle the government’s spin, applauding the valiant Japanese forces and ridiculing America.

  “The enemy’s daring enterprise failed to achieve any results worth mentioning,” argued the Nichi Nichi newspaper.

  “The manner in which the invading planes were driven back conclusively showed that air defenses in Japan Proper are perfect,” added the Miyako.

  “Their weak attacking strength was a sort of comic play,” declared the Mochi newspaper.

  Others sought to remind the public how the government expected them to behave in the event of a future attack. “The most important thing is that the people at large should remain calm and collected under all circumstances,” advised the Chugai Shogyo. “The sense of alarm and consternation which the public may betray would be most deplorable, as it will then be only playing into the hands of the enemy.”

  Not all editorials were so laughable. Some precisely outlined America’s true motivation behind the surprise attack. “It was a mere gesture made for its psychological effect on the American public,” argued the Japan Times & Advertiser. “The harassed and embarrassed leaders at Washington had to do something to quiet the mounting tide of criticism from their own people. Something dramatic, even if desperate, had to be done. The air attack on Japan was the answer.”

  Despite the bravado and efforts to belittle the raid, Japan could not suppress all the news. Some practical information had to be released. Reports revealed that the Industrial Bank of Japan and the Hypothec Bank of Japan would take over claims of financial institutions that were creditors to air-raid victims and that life insurance companies would pay unconditionally the entire insured amount to anyone killed in the attack. Other reports noted that prefectural governors would dole out aid to victims under the Wartime Sufferers Protection Law. “The law provides that family members of those killed and injured as a result of wartime disaster such as air-raids will be given temporary or continuous protection for a fixed period of time from the viewpoint of stabilizing the people’s living,” the news stated. “Besides being housed, the afflicted will be supplied with food, clothes, bedding, and other daily necessities.”

  Americans and other captive Allies pored over the papers, looking for clues that might provide a sense of the attack’s success. Under house arrest inside the America
n embassy, Ambassador Joseph Grew had long since grown accustomed to the government’s propaganda. “It is sometimes so poor that it is surprising that they can even fool themselves,” he later quipped. “After the fall of Bataan they published in all the vernacular newspapers a photograph of an arch with a lot of Japanese soldiers around it waving helmets and shouting. On the arch was painted, ‘United States Naval Vase’ with a base spelled with a v. Our Navy is able to spell at least. The next day the same picture was published in the Japan Advertiser, an English language paper owned by the Japanese government. The v was scratched out and a b was substituted.”

  The veteran diplomat scanned the papers for telltale signs of bomber wreckage. If Japan had indeed shot down nine bombers, he knew the government would display the burned wreckage as a trophy of its airmen’s great success. Not until April 26—eight days after the attack—did the Japan Times & Advertiser finally run such a photo, accompanied by the colorful headline “Miserable Remains of Wrecked Enemy Raider.” To maintain the charade Japanese authorities had gone so far as to hunt down bomber wreckage—the Chinese army would later report that it was Farrow’s plane—and import it to Tokyo, putting it on display for the crowds to see at the Yasukuni Shrine. To verify the wreckage’s authenticity, the press highlighted a stamp on a gasoline tank that read, “North American Aviation Company.” Authorities included a parachute, again noting the tag “Made by Switlik Company, Inglewood, California.”

  Grew wasn’t the only diplomat on the lookout for wreckage. “We expected photographs of the planes to appear in the papers. We waited and waited and waited,” recalled Frank Moysey, the cipher officer at the British embassy. “Finally, a week later, the papers published an explanation for the lack of photographs—all the planes had been shot into the sea. We finally concluded that all the planes shot down were Japanese fighters.” Moysey added that the raid led servants who had long been friendly with the diplomats to suddenly cool toward them. “For two weeks after the raid the Japs were jumpy as cats,” he recalled. “Trips to do necessary shopping and to hospitals for treatment were immediately abolished. We were not permitted out of the compound, so it was impossible to determine the amount of damage.”

  Other Westerners likewise noted a psychological change, including Ramón Muñiz Lavalle, the commercial attaché at the Argentine embassy. “The raid by Doolittle was one of the greatest psychological tricks ever used. It caught the Japs by surprise. Their unbounded confidence began to crack,” the diplomat would tell reporters after his arrival in the United States in April 1943. “The results of Doolittle’s raid are still evident in Japan. They are stamped into the daily living habits of the Japanese people. Where before they imagined themselves safe from aerial aggression, they now search the skies each morning and each night. Japanese newspapers carry pictures of American planes and say these planes are practicing in Texas on how to bomb Tokyo. Fire brigades have been organized. Fire drills are practiced. Fearlessness has turned to fear.”

  French journalist Robert Guillain concluded that the flat-footed response of both the military and the civilian population served as an important lesson for the Japanese, who redoubled efforts to prepare for the possibility of future attacks. “The raid did the Japanese more good than harm,” Guillain later wrote. “Air defenses were reinforced; in Tokyo, rooftops in the business and ministerial districts sprouted spotters and heavy machine guns. Parks were dug up for antiaircraft batteries. Barrage balloons soon encircled the capital and new bases were built for fighter squadrons. Air-raid drills were frequent and for a full day, sometimes two, every month, normal activity was suspended in an entire quarter, occasionally in the whole city, by firefighting drills in which hundreds of thousands of men and women took part.”

  Interviews with repatriated Americans aboard the Swedish vessel Gripsholm in the summer of 1942 echoed those themes. “The Doolittle raid produced noticeable results in the attitude of the Japanese,” stated a report by the Office of Strategic Services. “One man from Kobe saw a plane above his house, heard the explosion of bombs, and observed four fires, one of which was in a lumber yard and burned for more than a day. The air raid is reported to have shaken the Japanese because many of the common people were firmly convinced that, after all, Japan could not be successfully attacked. The raid is, therefore, to be regarded from the point of view of its psychological effect as well as from the point of view of its material consequences. We found no one who could make any estimate of the extent of the damage. At the same time we found no one who thought it unimportant in its effect upon the attitude of the people.”

  Senior Japanese leaders privately agreed. “It could hardly be called a real raid,” Yamamoto complained in an April 29 letter, “but I feel it was just enough of a taste of the real thing to warn the people of Tokyo against their present outlook.” Shigenori Togo, Japan’s foreign minister, was more blunt. “The bombing of Tokyo,” the diplomat later wrote, “produced a serious shock in Japan, as it proved the falsity of the military assurances of the inviolability of the Imperial capital.” Mitsuo Fuchida, the pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, agreed. “In point of physical damage inflicted, it was true enough that the raid did not accomplish a great deal,” he later wrote. “But the same could not be said of its impact on the minds of Japan’s naval leaders and its consequent influence on the course of the war at sea. From this standpoint, neither ‘do-nothing’ nor ‘do-little’ were accurate descriptions. On the contrary, it must be regarded as a ‘do-much’ raid.”

  The effects of the raid rippled through the military’s and public’s mindset, both in Japan and beyond, as was noted by Saburo Sakai, one of Japan’s top fighter pilots down in New Guinea. “The attack unnerved almost every pilot at Lae,” he wrote. “The knowledge that the enemy was strong enough to smash at our homeland, even in what might be a punitive raid, was cause for serious apprehension of future and heavier attacks.” His cousin Hatsuyo had witnessed the attack. “The bombing of Tokyo and several other cities has brought about a tremendous change in the attitude of our people toward the war,” she wrote. “Now things are different; the bombs have dropped here on our homes. It does not seem any more that there is such a great difference between the battlefront and the home front. I know that I, as well as the other girls, will work all the harder to do our share at home to support you and the other pilots who are so far away from Japan.”

  The biggest effect of the raid was on the proposed plan to capture Midway. Even though Yamamoto had strong-armed approval of the operation within his service, the Navy had since encountered complications with the Army. Just six days before Doolittle’s bombers appeared in the skies over Tokyo, Captain Sadatoshi Tomioka had presented the plan to Lieutenant General Shinichi Tanaka, chief of the operations section of the Army general staff. The general saw the Midway operation as a stepping-stone for the Navy’s desired capture of Hawaii, a move Tanaka warned risked a dangerous overextension of Japan’s defensive perimeter and could ultimately undermine the nation’s entire war effort. The Army refused to cooperate. Tomioka soldiered on, preparing a report on the proposed operation that Navy chief of staff Admiral Osami Nagano presented to Emperor Hirohito on April 16.

  No final decision had been made when American bombers thundered over the capital, ending all debate. “It was just as if a shiver had passed over Japan,” recalled Kameto Kuroshima, one of Yamamoto’s senior staff officers. “The Doolittle raid had a pronounced effect on the Midway operation,” added Yasuji Watanabe, another senior aide. “With the Doolittle raid the Japanese Army changed its strategy and not only agreed to the Midway plan of the Navy but agreed to furnish the troops to occupy the islands.” Mitsuo Fuchida concurred. “Even the most vociferous opponents of the Midway plan were now hard put to deny that the threat from the east, if not greater than the potential threat from Australia, was at least more pressing and immediate,” Fuchida wrote. “The Midway operation was now definitely decided. Combined Fleet had gained its way, thanks to the unwitting as
sistance of Colonel Doolittle and his fliers.”

  BACK IN WASHINGTON, General Hap Arnold anxiously awaited word from Doolittle regarding the outcome of the raid. There was little doubt that at least some of the bombers had hit Tokyo. American newspapers had all but screamed the news in bold headlines that ran across the top of papers nationwide—all of it picked up from Japanese radio broadcasts. But Arnold was unable to balance out the Japanese propaganda with the actual results. Did the raiders really blast schools and hospitals? Had the Japanese in fact shot down nine of Doolittle’s bombers? Arnold had no way of knowing.

  Absent any real information, American leaders remained quiet, much to the frustration of the press. “Why, everybody wants to know, does Washington keep silent as to the bombing attacks on Japan?” asked the Boston Globe. “For the best news of the war—the sensational American air attack on Japan—the United States yesterday had to depend entirely on enemy radio broadcasts,” noted the Washington Post. “Our own Army and Navy were silent. No communiqués on the raid were issued, and none were promised: indeed, there was no confirmation of any kind here in Washington.”

  Washington’s silence baffled even the Japanese, who had expected the U.S. government to celebrate the attack. “I wonder why the publicity-minded Americans did not make a fuss out of this air raid,” Captain Yoshitake Miwa wrote in his diary on April 22. “Is it that all of the attacking bombers made a forced landing, thus making it difficult for them to assess the result of the air raid? Is it because most of them failed to return to the designated base with too much damage sustained to announce it? Or, is it that they are thinking of more contemplated plans?”