An amazing chapter in our country's history. Yes, I agree that it is being forgotten. It is so easy for those of this and future generations to assume that the outcome of WWII was a foregone conclusion.
Many of us were not there, we cannot understand those dark days of 1941, 1942 and 1943 when the outcome of the struggle was NOT a foregone conclusion. We were getting our collective butts kicked on a nearly constant basis...In August 1942, we got clobbered...just annihalated in the Battle of Savo Island. In 1943, one bomber raid over Germany (Schweinfurt) cost us 65 bombers in one single day, each with 10 men on them who were either killed or lost for the war.
These men who did the Doolittle Raid came as close to a one way ticket as we ever gave any of our men in WWII, and for some of them, it turned out to actually be a one way ticket. Those were desperate times for our country, and the world, teetering on the edge of fascist rule worldwide. And those men stepped up to the plate.
So sad. Now, it is ancient history. You say "Doolittle Raid" to a high school or even a college age kid, and you will almost certainly get a blank stare.
I was in the USN when I was 19, but I was carrying on and being a 19 year old. When my dad was 19, he was an Ensign in the USNR, one of the youngest ever. (He turned 20 four months after he was commissioned) When he was 21, he became the head of our local VFW post, and was raising money each year for crippled vets.
My father gave a speech every year on Veterans Day in his hometown of Hudson, MA. In 1995, the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs, my father had the temerity in his speech to say what we did was not only the logical thing to do, it was the right thing to do. He was lambasted in the local papers for saying that, by people who had NO IDEA of what the atmosphere or time was like then.