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

by Scott, James M.

  ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES

  Air Force Historical Research Agency, Montgomery, Ala.

  American Airpower Heritage Museum, Midland, Tex.

  American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.

  Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Australia

  Charleston County Public Library, Charleston, S.C.

  Daniel Library, The Citadel, Charleston, S.C.

  Darlington County Historical Commission, Darlington, S.C.

  Eugene McDermott Library, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Tex.

  Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Ky.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, N.Y.

  Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

  Hornbake Library, University of Maryland, College Park, Md.

  Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.

  Imperial War Museum, London, England

  J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah

  John T. Richardson Library, DePaul University, Chicago, Ill.

  Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library, College of Charleston, Charleston, S.C.

  National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.

  National Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Tex.

  National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Mo.

  Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, D.C.

  Naval War College Library, Newport, R.I.

  Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Falls Church, Va.

  Navy Department Library, Washington, D.C.

  Nicholas Murray Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.

  Robert F. McDermott Library, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, Colo.

  South Carolina Military Museum, Columbia, S.C.

  South Caroliniana Library, Columbia, S.C.

  Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C.

  United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, Canada

  University of Texas at El Paso Library, El Paso, Tex.

  U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, D.C.

  U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Md.

  Vernon R. Alden Library, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio

  Willis Library, University of North Texas, Denton, Tex.

  NOTES

  ABBREVIATIONS

  AFHRA Air Force Historical Research Agency, Montgomery, Ala.

  DOMPF Doolittle Official Military Personnel File, National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Mo.

  DPLOC James H. Doolittle Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  DPUT James H. Doolittle Papers, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Tex.

  DRMA DeAndreis-Rosati Memorial Archives, Special Collections and Archives Department, DePaul University Library, Chicago, Ill.

  DTRAP Doolittle Tokyo Raiders Association Papers

  FDRL Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, N.Y.

  GPO U.S. Government Printing Office

  GWPP Gordon W. Prange Papers, University of Maryland, College Park, Md.

  HHAP Henry H. Arnold Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  LOC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  NARA National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.

  NDL Navy Department Library, Washington, D.C.

  NHHC Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, D.C.

  OF Official File

  RG Record Group

  USSBS United States Strategic Bombing Survey

  PROLOGUE

  1 “Hawaii is just”: Matome Ugaki diary, Dec. 6, 1941, in Matome Ugaki, Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941–1945, ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, trans. Masataka Chihaya (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), p. 38.

  1 The fifty-four-year-old: Background on Nagumo comes from Gordon W. Prange with Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), pp. 107–8; Hiroyuki Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy, trans. John Bester (New York: Kodansha International, 1979), pp. 130, 253–54.

  1 “I hope he”: Matome Ugaki diary, Oct. 29, 1941, in Ugaki, Fading Victory, p. 17.

  1 Nagumo’s anxiety: Ryunosuke Kusaka interview, March 7, 1949, Box 58, Series 5.2, Gordon W. Prange Papers (GWPP), University of Maryland, College Park, Md.; Mitsuo Fuchida interview, Feb. 25, 1948, Box 15, Series 5.2, GWPP.

  1 He seemed to draw: Details of Japan’s task force are drawn from Prange, At Dawn We Slept, pp. 483–84; Headquarters, Army Forces Far East, “Pearl Harbor Operations: General Outline of Orders and Plans,” Japanese Monograph #97, 1958, p. 9; Ryunosuka Kusaka, “Rengto Kantai (Combined Fleet): Reminiscence of Kusaka ex-Chief of Staff,” April 1952, Box 58, Series 5.2, GWPP, p. 17; Mitsuo Fuchida, “I Led the Air Attack on Pearl Harbor,” in Paul Stillwell, ed., Air Raid: Pearl Harbor! Recollections of a Day of Infamy (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1981), p. 4.

  2 Shore batteries along with battleships: Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 79th Cong., 2nd sess., July 20, 1946 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1946), pp. 67–71.

  2 “The fate of our empire”: Matome Ugaki diary, Dec. 7, 1941, in Ugaki, Fading Victory, p. 38.

  2 wooden torpedo fins: Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, p. 59.

  2 On the eve: “Japanese Study of the Pearl Harbor Operation,” in Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, eds., The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1993), p. 285; Sadao Chigusa, “Conquer the Pacific Ocean aboard Destroyer Akigumo: War Diary of the Hawaiian Battle,” ibid., p. 173.

  2 To increase: “Japanese Study of the Pearl Harbor Operation,” ibid., p. 285; Minoru Genda, “Analysis No. 2 of the Pearl Harbor Attack,” ibid., p. 38.

  2 Fuel conservation: Genda, “Analysis No. 2 of the Pearl Harbor Attack,” p. 38; Chigusa, “Conquer the Pacific Ocean aboard Destroyer Akigumo,” pp. 180, 205–6.

  3 One by one: John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 169–70.

  3 To throw off: “Japanese Study of the Pearl Harbor Operation,” p. 282.

  3 The chief communications: Walter Lord, Day of Infamy (New York: Henry Holt, 1957), p. 21.

  3 The Japanese flooded: Kusaka, “Rengto Kantai (Combined Fleet),” p. 10; “Japanese Study of the Pearl Harbor Operation,” p. 282.

  3 This charade: Chigusa, “Conquer the Pacific Ocean aboard Destroyer Akigumo,” p. 183.

  3 War planners: Kusaka, “Rengto Kantai (Combined Fleet),” pp. 5–6; Shigeru Fukudome, “Hawaii Operation,” in Stillwell, ed., Air Raid: Pearl Harbor!,” p. 62; Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral, pp. 250–51.

  3 “Sink anything”: Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 171.

  3 refusing to change: Prange, At Dawn We Slept, p. 415.

  3 The graduate of Japan’s: Toland, The Rising Sun, pp. 171–72; Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral, pp. 253–54.

  3 To his chief of staff: Kusaka, “Rengto Kantai (Combined Fleet),” pp. 20–21.

  3 “I wonder if”: Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 171.

  3 “Daijobu”: Ibid.

  4 “This despatch”: CNO to CINCAF, CINPAC, Nov. 27, 1941, in Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, pt. 14, Joint Committee Exhibits Nos. 9 through 43, 79th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1946), p. 1406.

  4 His Army counterpart: Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, p. 70.

  4 “Japanese future”: George Marshall to Walter Short, Nov. 27,
1941, in Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, pt. 14, p. 1328.

  4 That Saturday night: Lord, Day of Infamy, pp. 4–7; Edwin T. Layton, with Roger Pineau and John Costello, “And I Was There”: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (New York: William Morrow, 1985), p. 299.

  4 Off-duty troops: Ibid., pp. 9–10.

  4 The bustling port: “List of Ships Present at Pearl Harbor at the Time of the Japanese Attack, Dec. 7, 1941,” in Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, pt. 12, Joint Committee Exhibits Nos. 1 through 6, 79th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1946), pp. 348–49.

  5 “Isn’t that a beautiful sight”: Lord, Day of Infamy, pp. 6–7.

  5 Pacific Fleet intelligence officer: Layton, “And I Was There,” pp. 299–300.

  5 “Wake up, America!”: Ibid., p. 299.

  5 Earlier that day: Ibid., p. 275.

  5 The Japanese used: Ibid., pp. 226–30, 237–38.

  5 “Unknown—home waters?”: Ibid., pp. 18, 243–44.

  5 “What?”: This exchange is ibid., pp. 18, 243–44.

  6 Now after months: Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral, p. 254.

  6 The gentle Hawaiian: Lord, Day of Infamy, pp. 11, 26.

  6 pilots would go: Thurston Clark, Pearl Harbor Ghosts: The Legacy of December 7, 1941 (New York: Ballantine Books, 2001), p. 92.

  6 Aircrews on the Japanese task force’s: Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 203.

  6 Many had spent: Prange, At Dawn We Slept, pp. 386, 415; Kusaka, “Rengto Kantai (Combined Fleet),” p. 13.

  6 Fighter pilot Yoshi Shiuga: Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 188.

  6 That same fear: Chigusa, “Conquer the Pacific Ocean aboard Destroyer Akigumo,” pp. 188–89.

  6 Many of the airmen: Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 203.

  6 The airmen dressed: Ibid.

  6 The thirty-nine-year-old: Mitsuo Fuchida interview, Dec. 10, 1963.

  6 The aircrews paused: Lord, Day of Infamy, p. 35; Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral, p. 255.

  7 “We await the day”: Matome Ugaki diary, Dec. 6, 1941, in Ugaki, Fading Victory, p. 38.

  7 Nagumo’s carriers battled: Fuchida, “I Led the Air Attack on Pearl Harbor,” p. 8; Kusaka, “Rengto Kantai (Combined Fleet),” pp. 32–33.

  7 One hundred and eighty-three: “Japanese Study of the Pearl Harbor Operation,” pp. 299–301.

  7 “First bomb”: Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral, p. 254.

  CHAPTER 1

  9 “Air raid on Pearl Harbor”: CINCPAC to CINCLANT, CINCAF, OPNAV, Dec. 7, 1941, Box 36, Map Room Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum (FDRL), Hyde Park, N.Y.

  9 President Franklin Roosevelt: The President’s Appointments, Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, in Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, pt. 15, Joint Committee Exhibits Nos. 44 through 87, 79th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1946), p. 1634. A copy can also be found in Box 1, Official File (OF) 4675, FDRL.

  9 the parlor: details on Roosevelt’s study are drawn from Grace Tully, F.D.R.: My Boss (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), pp. 10, 370–71; Hanson Baldwin, “Our ‘Sailor-President’ Charts a Course,” New York Times, April 3, 1938, p. 117; “The White House in Color,” Life, Sept. 2, 1940, pp. 66–70; “The White House,” ibid., July 5, 1968, p. 9; Steven M. Gillon, Pearl Harbor: FDR Leads the Nation into War (New York: Basic Books, 2011), pp. 2–3.

  10 “He mixed”: Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 214.

  10 Roosevelt’s Sunday lunch: Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949), pp. 232–33; James Roosevelt and Sidney Shalett, Affectionately, F.D.R.: A Son’s Story of a Lonely Man (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), p. 328.

  10 Despite the demands: “Roosevelt’s Stamps on View,” New York Times, Aug. 4, 1935, p. 3; “Roosevelt among His Stamps,” ibid., Sept. 10, 1933, p. SM17; Geoffrey Hellman, “Franklin Roosevelt,” Life, Jan. 20, 1941, pp. 66–73.

  10 “No man”: “Fireside Chat on National Security,” Dec. 29, 1940, in B. D. Zevin, ed., Nothing to Fear: The Selected Addresses of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1932–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946), pp. 252, 257.

  11 The island nation: United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), Transportation Division, The War against Japanese Transportation, 1941–1945 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1947), p. 13.

  11 Japan could produce: USSBS, Oil and Chemical Division, Oil in Japan’s War (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1946), p. 11; Harold Callender, “Oil: Major Factor in Another War,” New York Times, Aug. 13, 1939, p. E4.

  11 “Napoleon’s armies”: Arno Dosch-Fleurot, “Oil to Dominate Next World War,” New York Times, June 19, 1938, p. E5.

  11 The hunger: USSBS, Over-all Economic Effects Division, The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japan’s War Economy (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1946), pp. 6–10.

  11 “unholy alliance”: Turner Catledge, “Roosevelt Calls for Greater Aid to Britain,” New York Times, Dec. 30, 1940, p. 1.

  11 Japan invaded: USSBS, The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japan’s War Economy, p. 9.

  11 He ordered: Ibid.; “British Empire Joins Our Action; Canada and Netherlands in Move,” New York Times, July 26, 1941, p. 1; “Batavia Risks War,” ibid., July 29, 1941, p. 1; “Japanese Trade with U.S. to End,” ibid., July 26, 1941, p. 5; “Japan to Allow Americans to Go; Tokyo Trade Hit,” ibid., Aug. 23, 1941, p. 1; “Oil Policy Changes,” ibid., Aug. 2, 1941, p. 1; “U.S. Solidifies Far East Policy,” ibid., Aug. 17, 1941, p. E5; “Vast Trade Curbed,” ibid., July 26, 1941, p. 1; “Washington Retaliates,” ibid., Aug. 3, 1941, p. E1.

  11 Japan had stockpiled: USSBS, The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japan’s War Economy, pp. 13, 29, 52.

  11 To stretch supplies: USSBS, Oil in Japan’s War, p. 1.

  11 Workers punched: USSBS, The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japan’s War Economy, p. 13; USSBS (Pacific), Military Analysis Division, Japanese Air Power (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1946), pp. 4–5, 28–29; USSBS, Chairman’s Office, Summary Report (Pacific War) (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1946), p. 9.

  12 Aggressive recruitment: USSBS, Summary Report (Pacific War), p. 10–12; David M. Kennedy, ed., Library of Congress World War II Companion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), p. 257.

  12 The Japanese Navy not only: Samuel Eliot Morison, The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press Book/Little, Brown, 1963), p. 39.

  12 “I cannot guarantee”: John Morton Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries, vol. 2, Years of Urgency, 1938–1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 391.

  12 “Only in situations”: “The President Sends a Personal Appeal to Emperor Hirohito to Avoid War in the Pacific, December 6, 1941,” in Samuel I. Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1941 vol., The Call to Battle Stations (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), pp. 511–13.

  12 Roosevelt’s closet adviser: Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, pp. 1–3; Charles Hurd, “Hopkins: Right-Hand Man,” New York Times, Aug. 11, 1940, p. 85.

  12 “a strange, gnomelike creature”: Joseph Stilwell diary, Feb. 9, 1942, in Joseph W. Stilwell, ed., The Stilwell Papers, ed. Theodore H. White (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1948), p. 36.

  12 “a cadaver”: Grace Tully interview, Dec. 15, 1970, Box 78, Series 5.2, GWPP.

  12 Dressed in an old gray sweater: Roosevelt, Affectionately, F.D.R., p. 327.

  12 “Mr. President”: Forrest Davis and Ernest K. Lindley, How War Came: An American White Paper: From the Fall of France to Pearl Harbor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), p. 5.

  13 “It was just the kind”: Harry Hopkins memo, Dec. 7, 1941, in Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, p. 431.

  13 The seventy-four-year-old New York native: “Henry L. Stimson Dies at 83 in His Home on Long Island,” New York Times, Oct. 21, 1950, p. 1.

 
13 “Have you heard the news?”: This exchange comes from Henry Stimson diary, Dec. 7, 1941, in Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, pt. 11, April 9 and 11, and May 23 and 31, 1946, 79th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1946), p. 5438.

  13 “Claude”: This exchange comes from John L. McCrea, “War Plans under My Mattress,” in Stillwell, ed., Air Raid: Pearl Harbor!, p. 104.

  14 Though the precise details: Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, pp. 64–65.

  14 Casualties among soldiers: Shigeru Fukudome, “Hawaii Operation,” in Stillwell, ed., Air Raid: Pearl Harbor!, p. 69.

  14 The president hung up the phone: Linda Levin, The Making of FDR: The Story of Stephen T. Early, America’s First Modern Press Secretary (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2008), pp. 251–52.

  14 “I think the President”: This exchange comes from Mr. Early’s Press Conference, Dec. 6, 1941, transcript, Box 41, Stephen T. Early Papers, FDRL.

  14 “Have you got a pencil handy?”: This exchange comes from Levin, The Making of FDR, p. 251.

  14 Within minutes Early placed: Press Statement, Dec. 7, 1941, 2:25 p.m., Box 41, Stephen T. Early Papers, FDRL.

  15 “All on?”: Lyle C. Wilson, “World War II,” in Cabell Phillips, ed., Dateline: Washington: The Story of National Affairs Journalism in the Life and Times of the National Press Club (New York: Green Press, 1968), p. 184; Correspondents of Time, Life, and Fortune, December 7: The First Thirty Hours (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942), p. 10.

  15 Secret Service agent Mike Reilly: Michael F. Reilly as told to William J. Slocum, Reilly of the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947), pp. 3–7.

  15 “Start calling in”: Ibid., p. 4.

  15 “Why don’t they”: This exchange comes from Frank J. Wilson and Beth Day, Special Agent: Twenty-Five Years with the U.S. Treasury Department and Secret Service (London: Frederick Muller, 1965), pp. 141–42.

  15 Reilly phoned Washington police chief: Reilly, Reilly of the White House, p. 4.

  15 His trusted personal secretary: Grace Tully interview, Dec. 15, 1970.