Posted on 04/18/2021 3:56:13 PM PDT by Retain Mike
Incredible men. Great story.
I had a petroleum engineering professor who was a navigator on a B-24. He interned twice in Sweden.
Were any of them able to refuel in China?
Outstanding
FDR was insistent, strictly for propaganda purposes.
The Japanese killed 250,000 Chinese in retaliation.
FDR was way out of his league in WWII. Fortunately, he depended on his generals a fair amount.
Still, a lot of his decisions were disastrous.
Sgt Jacob DeShazer was the bombadier on #16 “Bat”. He is one of the 8 men that were captured by the Japanese and condemned to death. Hirohito commuted his sentence. DeShazer was held for 40 months. DeShazer became a Christian while a prisoner in China. After the war, he returned to Japan as a missionary and led Captain Mitsuo Fuchida to Christ in 1950. Fuchida spent the rest of his life as a missionary in Asia
From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_DeShazer
After bombing Nagoya, Japan, the “Bat” attempted to reach safe haven in China. DeShazer and the rest of the B-25 crew were forced to parachute into enemy territory over Ningpo, China when their B-25 ran out of fuel because of the extra distance it was forced to fly by early launch of the raid. DeShazer was injured in his fall into a cemetery and along with the rest of his crew, he was captured the very next day by the Japanese. During his captivity, DeShazer was sent to Tokyo with the survivors of another Doolittle crew including Robert Hite, and was held in a series of POW camps both in Japan and China for 40 months – 34 of them in solitary confinement. He was severely beaten and malnourished while three of the crew were executed by a firing squad, and another died of slow starvation. DeShazer’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Emperor Hirohito. As the war came to an end, on 20 August 1945, DeShazer and the others in the camp at Beijing (Peiping), China were finally released when American soldiers parachuted into the camp.
Missionary in Japan
During his captivity, DeShazer persuaded one of his guards to loan him a copy of the Bible. Although he only had possession of the Bible for three weeks, he saw its messages as the reason for his survival and resolved to become a devout Christian. His conversion included learning a few words of Japanese and treating his captors with respect, which resulted in the guards reacting in a similar fashion.[2] After his release, DeShazer entered Seattle Pacific College, a Christian college associated with the Free Methodist denomination, and then Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, where he began studies to become a missionary, eventually to return to Japan with his wife, Florence, in 1948.
DeShazer, the Doolittle Raider who bombed Nagoya, met Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, becoming close friends. (For That One Day: The Memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, Commander of the Attack on Pearl Harbor, translated by Douglas T. Shinsato and Tadanori Urabe. Fuchida became a Christian in 1950 after reading a tract written about DeShazer titled, I Was a Prisoner of Japan, and spent the rest of his life as a missionary in Asia and the United States. On occasion, DeShazer and Fuchida preached together as Christian missionaries in Japan. In 1959, DeShazer moved to Nagoya to establish a Christian church in the city he had bombed.
Good Job nicely done. Had a cousin who was shot down during a bombing run in a 24 over Germany made it to France linked up with the resistance made it back to the UK
Eight crew members were captured, and all were condemned to death. Premier Hideki Tojo asked Emperor Hirohito to commute all the sentences,
Thanks for posting. As this generation has almost completely passed, we need to keep the memories of their extraordinary achievements alive.
My maternal grandfather was on the Hornet when the Raiders launched. I went through his Navy steamer trunk and found several items associated with the raid. Very interesting stuff. I kick myself for not discussing his time in the USN in greater detail before his passing.
Ditto my uncle. A marine storming the shores at Iwo Jima.
A year later, on April 18, 1943, Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku was killed over Bougainville when his plane was shot down by US P-38’s.
The Greatest Generation is an understatement.
As a 9-year old at the time, I can clearly remember the elation in our neighborhood and my Mother believing it meant my Dad would be home soon... He had enlisted in the Marine Corps in February 1942 and was still in basic training...
However, in August he began the first in a series of island-hopping visits across the South Pacific with the First Marine Division, eventually, with time out for wounds, ending up with the Sixth Marine Division on Okinawa and, after the slant-eyed bastards surrendered, in China...
The only thing, about the war, he ever talked about (until I was leaving for P.I. in the summer of 1951) was that he joined the Marines primarily because he hated boats and open water... Of course, for 3.5 years, he ended up spending a lot of time on boats and open water...
During the depression my dad was in the Army, after he got out, he want back the the recruitment station and at the last minute decided to join the Navy. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor in 1940 and then attached to the USS Yorktown as part of the torpedo crew. When the second wave of planes attached he was in the crows nest of the ship. A gun mounted there and they were trying to shoot down the attacking planes. He said one of the Japanese planes flew close by and the man in the rear seat stood up and was shaking his fit at them. The men near him were doing the same back. Moments later that plane was shot down.
Some of my uncles and older men I worked with and new were veterans in both theaters and never spoke of their experiences. My dad only spoke of the lighter side and I had to pry any info out of him. After Midway the returned to the south Pacific on a destroyer starting at Guadalcanal as the Marines were driving the enemy off. Then up through the Solomon's, Philippines Mariana's and Saipan.
Real American heroes!
I do remember the movie PEARL HARBOR...
The movie did cover Doolittle Raid...Alec Baldwin played General Doolittle...
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