First Lieutenant Goyo Tashima commanded the firing squad, which consisted of one noncommissioned officer and nine enlisted men. Six of the soldiers were designated as riflemen with two assigned to each raider—one a primary shooter, the other secondary. The other three enlisted men served as security guards.
“Attention,” Tashima demanded. “Face to the target.”
The rifleman turned toward the fliers just twenty meters away.
“Prepare.”
Tashima watched as the firing squad members kneeled and took aim. He raised his arm and then dropped it as he shouted his final order.
“Fire!”
All three guns roared.
Hallmark, Farrow, and Spatz slumped forward.
“The men who fired were all expert marksmen,” Tatsuta testified, “and only fired one shot each.”
Tashima ordered the firing squad to cease fire and about face. He directed them to march forward, stop, and remove the spent cartridges.
The medical examiner checked each raider to make sure he was dead, later telling Tatsuta that he detected a slight pulse, though only briefly before each expired. The doctor certified the deaths and bandaged the wounds before guards laid the bodies in the caskets side by side in front of the dais. The Japanese saluted them.
Tatsuta ordered the bodies of the dead airmen taken to the Japanese Residents Association Crematorium. He planned to hang on to Hallmark’s leather flying jacket, ordering Remedios to have his name removed from the coat and to find a tailor in Shanghai who could cut it down to fit him.
FOUR DAYS AFTER THE execution of Hallmark, Farrow, and Spatz, Radio Tokyo announced the “capture, trial, and severe punishment” of an unspecified number of raiders, claiming the airmen had intentionally attacked nonmilitary targets and civilians. The Japanese listed the names of only four of the captured airmen—Hallmark, Farrow, Spatz, and DeShazer—though it reported that all had confessed to bombing hospitals and shooting children. “I saw school kids playing around a building which looked like a grammar school,” the broadcast quoted Farrow as having said. “I felt I might as well give the Jap kids a taste of bullets while I was at it. So I dived down toward them and machine-gunned them. I felt sorry for them, but hell, ain’t they enemy kids?”
News that any of the raiders had been captured—much less punished—shocked the American press and the nation. Though Doolittle had informed the families of the captured airmen, he had requested in each of his May letters that the news remain a secret. Rumors that at least a few of the raiders had been captured had circulated among reporters, but the nation at large had assumed that all the airmen had safely escaped. The Japanese looked to exploit America’s secrecy, using the fate of the raiders as a wedge to drive between the government and the people. “The American public has a right to know the extent to which they are being treated in the official announcement,” Tokyo broadcast. “Two facts are laid before the public. One is that the United States War Department on October 20 flatly denied that any of their airmen had been made prisoners in Japan. The other is that the United States War Department, in a cablegram dated August 19, inquired of the International Red Cross headquarters in Yokohama requesting that they send the name of the eight missing men. Let the public judge.”
Japan in another particularly cruel broadcast urged any doubters to seek out the families of two of the captured raiders. “For those who are skeptical, these observers suggested that they enquire as to the present whereabouts of 21-year-old Robert Hite and Lieutenant William G. Farrow,” the English-language broadcast announced. “Next of kin of these men, who are but part of the captured crew, should make all efforts to obtain a satisfactory reply from the United States War Department.”
The press initially questioned whether such broadcasts were bogus, but American leaders knew the ruse was up. At an October 22 press conference War Secretary Henry Stimson confirmed that the four names Tokyo broadcast were raiders, but made no mention of any other captive airmen, an omission Japan exploited days later when it dribbled out the names of the others in what the United Press described as a “sly propaganda campaign.” The government’s decision to withhold the fact that Japan had captured some of the raiders drew a sharp rebuke from some in the media, including syndicated columnist Raymond Clapper. “The news is released just now, after Tokyo breaks it,” he wrote. “There was no news in that to be withheld from the enemy. It was withheld only from the American people, who have been as much interested in the Tokio raid as in any one thing we have done in this war. Some of our officials call this a people’s war. It would help if we also considered this an American people’s war.”
Reporters hungered for information about the captured fliers, a void Washington columnist David Lawrence soon filled by offering up a personal testimony from Billy Farrow. One of the pilot’s close friends had held on to a memo Farrow wrote to himself in 1940 when he decided to go into aviation, titled simply “My Future.” The South Carolinian, who had once meticulously logged instructions on the front flap of his algebra notebook, had likewise taken stock of his life. “The time has come to decide what rules I am going to set myself for daily conduct,” Farrow wrote. “First I must enumerate my weaknesses and seek to eliminate them. Then I must seek to develop the qualities I need for this type of work. It’s going to be hard, but it’s the only way. Work with a purpose is the only practical means of achieving an end.”
Farrow unflinchingly charted his flaws, ranging from a lack of curiosity and sober thought to lapses in self-confidence. He then outlined strengths he hoped to build upon, from his health to his faith. “Stay close to God—do His will and commandments. He is my friend and protector,” he wrote. “Fear nothing—be it insanity, sickness, failure—always be upright—look the world in the eye.” Lawrence’s column listing each of Farrow’s twenty-one bullet points ran in newspapers nationwide just seven days after the Japanese forced him to kneel, tied him to a cross, and shot him in the forehead. The young flier from the tiny town of Darlington represented any one of the millions of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who over the course of the war would fight in every corner of the globe, from the deserts of North Africa to the jungles of Guadalcanal. “He was neither poet nor scholar,” Lawrence wrote, “but just a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Corps.”
Letters of support arrived at Farrow’s mother’s home from as far away as New York, Georgia, and Ohio. Churches across the country seized on the young airman’s inspirational message, publishing it in Sunday bulletins, while businesses such as Minnesota’s Northwestern National Life Insurance Company churned out patriotic pamphlets with headlines like “An American’s Creed for Victory.” Students at Henry Snyder High School in Jersey City gazed up at posters plastered on classroom walls that carried Farrow’s message, and the University of South Carolina’s president, J. Rion McKissick, turned the creed into a speech for the 1943 graduating class at the raider’s alma mater. “No matter what has happened to my boy, I know he has served a wonderful purpose in the war,” Jessie Farrow told reporters. “My son is an average American willing to face life fearlessly and die for ideals of right and freedom.”
The United States meanwhile scrambled to determine what punishments the Japanese had meted out, only to learn the unfortunate news in a note passed through the Swiss on February 23, 1943, accusing the airmen of purposely bombing schools, hospitals, and crowds of civilians. “What may be more stigmatized,” the note stated, “is the fact that they wounded and killed little innocent school children who played in the grounds of their school by machine gunning, deliberately mowing them down although recognizing them as such.” Because the airmen had allegedly confessed to intentionally targeting civilians, the Japanese refused them the protections traditionally afforded to prisoners of war. “The American Government will understand that such persons are unpardonable as enemies of humanity,” the Japanese wrote. “The guilt of such persons having been established by court inquiry, the death penalty was pronounced according to mart
ial law. However, following commutation [of] punishment granted as special measure to larger part condemned, sentence of death was applied only to certain of accused.”
Roosevelt refused to inform the public even as the State Department struggled to decide how best to handle the crisis, a job that initially fell to Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, who drafted a detailed memo of America’s options: “The full texts of the Japanese note concerning the execution of some of the Doolittle fliers now having been received and studied leaves no room for the doubt I hoped would exist that it was not a definite and positive statement that they had been executed.” The first option on Long’s list: “proceed immediately to retaliate by executing a comparable number of Japanese officer prisoners of war in our custody.” He went on to rule out the scenario, doubting it would have any effect on the Japanese government other than to spur it to retaliate, a dangerous proposition since the fall of the Philippines had led to the capture of many Americans. “I am not unmindful of the fact that the Japanese hold 18,000 of our prisoners and we a few handfuls of theirs,” he wrote, though the number of American military and civilian prisoners was actually much higher. “It is true we hold many of their civilians but I am differentiating between civilians and prisoners of war.”
Long proposed that the government could publish the note and inform the American people, though he questioned whether that would only inflame the anxiety of the captured airmen’s families as well as spark a backlash against people of Japanese descent. More importantly, America had only weeks earlier made a request to exchange forty-five hundred prisoners. “Any deterioration in that situation,” he wrote, “would be deplorable if there is a chance for the exchange to be effectuated.” The plan Long advocated was for the United States to make a strong protest and demand that the Swiss determine the names and locations of those alive and the details related to the execution of the others. He added that America could include a “statement to the effect that this is such a barbaric departure from the rules of civilized warfare and such a violation of the definite agreements which Japan undertook in connection with prisoners of war that we reserve the right, though delaying its use until further information is received, to retaliate by the execution of an equal number of officer prisoners of war in our hands.”
Long ordered a draft protest readied by noon of March 22, recommending in the meantime that the United States withhold all information. “Until we know the exact number of prisoners involved in the execution, we are not in a position to announce the names or give publicity to the execution or to retaliate in kind—if retaliation should be decided upon.” Officials inside the State Department prepared a seven-page letter accusing Japan of violating the Geneva Convention and extorting confessions from the airmen through “bestial methods.” “If, as would appear from its communication under reference, the Japanese Government has descended to such acts of barbarity and manifestations of depravity as to murder in cold blood uniformed members of the American armed forces made prisoners as an incident of warfare,” the State Department wrote, “the American government will hold personally and officially responsible for those deliberate crimes all of those officers of the Japanese Government who have participated in their commitment and will in due course bring those officers to justice.”
Secretary of State Cordell Hull presented the protest to Roosevelt for approval on April 7. “Questions of retaliation had been considered and discarded with the consent of the War and Navy Departments,” Hull wrote. “The supporting memorandum and the green telegram raise questions of the highest policy in the conduct of war and I must submit it you for your consideration and approval.” The president read the protest, writing at the end of the last page, “OK, FDR.” Roosevelt sent an accompanying memo back to Hull the next day. “I am deeply stirred and horrified by the execution of American aviators,” he wrote. “In view of the severe tone of this note and especially of the warning in the last paragraph that we propose to retaliate on Japanese prisoners in our hands, I can see no reason for delaying a public announcement on my part. The note to the Japanese Government is so strong that it will not further hurt the persons of Americans now in their custody—civilians and members of the armed forces if I give out the full facts, together with a copy or paraphrase of the note.”
Roosevelt misinterpreted the final paragraph of the protest, which stated only that the United States would “visit upon the officers of the Japanese Government responsible for such uncivilized and inhumane acts the punishment they deserve.” An unsigned April 9 memo on White House stationery pointed out his error: “Our note to Japan did not threaten retaliation—but punishment of Jap officers guilty of executing U.S. prisoners of war.” The president suggested going public with the news of the execution of the raiders the following Tuesday, though he found the State Department’s proposed public announcement insufficiently strong or comprehensive. “Please let me have a redraft of it which will be less official and more human.”
The Japanese once again looked to scoop the American government as the raid’s anniversary neared. Elmer Davis, the Office of War Information director, announced at an April 14 press conference plans to release the full story of the raid within days.
“Will we be told where Shangri La really is?” a reporter pressed.
Davis confirmed with a smile.
Two days later he had to reverse himself. “After consultation with the War Department this office finds that clearance of the Tokyo raid story has not been completed,” the director of war information announced. “It is impossible to predict at present a date when this story will be released.”
Many in the media howled over the government’s continued secrecy, including the New York Times. “The Japanese captured some of the American fliers,” the paper wrote. “It is altogether probable that the Japanese Government now knows much more about the details of the Tokyo bombing than the American public has been permitted to know. In justice to the magnificent exploit of the men who participated, as well as in justice to our own public, which is always entitled to know at least as much as the enemy knows, the full story of that daring raid ought now to be told.”
The Japanese seized on the opening, releasing a detailed and largely accurate report of the raid’s planning, execution, and conclusion, down to the precise number of airmen and bombers involved. “I take pleasure,” Major General Nakao Yahagi, chief of the Japanese Imperial Headquarters Army press section, told reporters, “in telling the people of the United States the full story.” The Japanese not only revealed the Hornet as Shangri-La, but even singled out Stephen Jurika’s intelligence briefings en route to Tokyo. The Japanese did mix some fact with fiction, claiming to have shot down many of the planes and accusing Doolittle of being so scared that he fled to China without ever dropping his bombs. “We have the pleasure of conferring upon him the title ‘Did Little,’” Yahagi’s report stated. “We may expect the next commander which Roosevelt is likely to appoint as his successor will be Colonel ‘Do Nothing.’”
America had no choice but to counter with its own version, an eleven-page press release that many newspapers printed verbatim and that the Japanese ridiculed as a hurried and “patched-up production” designed to camouflage a “flop raid.” The way both countries fought to control the narrative reflected the major effect the raid had for leaders in Japan and in America, a surprise given how truly insignificant the attack was compared with the raids that would dominate the war’s final months. Japan’s humiliated leaders still smarted over the audacity of the attack and hoped to deflate American enthusiasm for what had proven an early victory in the war, particularly now that Japan had suffered a reversal of fortunes in losses in the Coral Sea, Midway, and the Solomon Islands. American leaders, by contrast, had built up a mythology about the raid, exaggerating its success, which Japan’s continued challenges only undermined.
The release of the information placed American leaders once again in a tough spot. The military had told the public when
Doolittle received the Medal of Honor that all of the planes had escaped safely, but later had to admit that at least eight of the pilots had landed in Japanese captivity. Now American leaders confessed that, with the exception of the one aircrew that diverted to Russia, the United States had lost all fifteen of the other bombers. Few disputed the need for secrecy in war, but the government’s carefully crafted releases designed to deceive infuriated many. “The American people will never forget that Tokyo was raided, but at the same time they will never forget that they were fooled,” argued the News, the daily paper in Lynchburg, Virginia. “Not uninformed of what happened, but intentionally and with purpose fooled.” Even some members of Congress protested. “I believe that any government is playing with dynamite when it tricks its own people,” argued Representative Walter Judd of Minnesota. “We do not want soothing syrup; we want to be treated as grown-up free men and women.”
The battered White House struggled to regain the public relations advantage over Japan—and rally the nation. Hours after the release of the raid’s details, Roosevelt issued a statement while on a tour of military posts in Texas. He admitted that the United States had learned weeks earlier that Japan had executed several of the captured raiders and ordered the State Department to release its April protest. “It is with a feeling of deepest horror, which I know will be shared with all civilized peoples, that I have to announce the barbarous execution by the Japanese Government of some of the members of this country’s armed forces who fell into Japanese hands as an incident of warfare,” the president said. “This recourse by our enemies to frightfulness is barbarous. The effort of the Japanese warlords to intimidate us will utterly fail. It will make the American people more determined than ever to blot out the shameless militarism of Japan.”
Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor Page 50
