Just Discovered, 76 Years Later: The Carrier That Launched the Doolittle Raid

Earlier this month, CBS News announced a riveting discovery. After 76 years on the floor of the South Pacific, The U.S.S. Hornet—the WWII carrier that launched the Doolittle Raid—has been found.

Distinguished Service of the U.S.S. Hornet

There have been several U.S. Navy vessels with the name Hornet. This one, CV-8, served just over a year. Commissioned in October, 1941, just weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor, she steamed her way into history with her first combat mission, the audacious Doolittle Raid of April 18, 1942. I know that story well, as it’s depicted in my new novel, The Plum Blooms in Winter. And HHH readers know it well by now too, as Cindy Stewart and I partnered last year on a series of posts (examples here and here) that explored the adventures of the Doolittle Raiders stranded in enemy territory after the mission.

Jimmy Doolittle pilots his B-25 off the deck of the U.S.S. Hornet, launching the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo. (April18, 1942)

While the physical damage wrought by the Doolittle Raid’s sixteen B-25 bombers was minimal compared to later raids, historians credit the Raid with having a major impact on the course of the war. Prior to the Doolittle Raid, the Japanese harbored a mystical belief that their home islands—and their emperor—were invulnerable to attack. Learning otherwise was one of the factors that led them to commit their forces to what they hoped would be the destruction of the U.S. fleet at the Battle of Midway a few weeks later. The U.S. staged an ambush there which proved to be the turning point in the Pacific War. The Imperial Japanese Navy never recovered from the destruction wrought on its carrier fleet at Midway.

The U.S.S. Hornet saw action at Midway, where her attack on the Japanese heavy cruiser Mogami effectively ended the historic battle. She received four service stars and her Torpedo Squadron 8 received a Presidential Unit Citation for extraordinary valor in that battle.

In late October 1942, the Hornet sailed with the U.S.S. Enterprise to meet a Japanese attack force threatening Guadalcanal. During this operation, the intrepid Hornet was targeted by torpedo planes and dive bombers. She sank, bearing 140 of her complement of 2200 sailors with her.

Extravagant Pursuits of the Super Wealthy

The mission that discovered Hornet was the brain child of the late Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft. Allen was a man of wide-ranging—and extravagant—interests. He retired from Microsoft’s board in 2000, but his other investments and interests no doubt kept him busy. Allen invested in technology companies and real estate ventures and gave more than $2 billion to philanthropy. He was included on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World two years running (2007 and 2008). He funded efforts in brain science, cell science, space exploration, wildlife and conservation, documentary filmmaking, the arts and community services.

Paul Allen poses at the Flying Heritage Collection in Everett, WA

When Allen passed away late last year as a result of his third bout with cancer, he was estimated to be one of the fifty wealthiest people in the world. And one more bit of trivia: as a young man, Allen reportedly achieved a perfect SAT score of 1600. 

Allen also owned two professional sports teams (the Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trailblazers) and—what else—two of the world’s one hundred longest yachts, the Octopus and the Tatoosh. Octopus has been involved in a number of research and rescue operations.

Paul Allen's Octopus. His interest in deep-sea research and exploration began with hosting expeditions from this vessel, one of the world's largest private yachts.

Perhaps those operations helped trigger Allen’s interest in a new venture. In 2015, he purchased a 250’ offshore services vessel and had it extensively retrofitted to serve as a deep-submergence research vessel. The RV Petrel is the world’s only privately-owned vessel equipped to explore up to 6000 meters below surface. Still funded by Allen’s estate, the ship’s mission is to explore historically significant wrecks at challenging depths and conditions.

We've done a number of these explorations to try to find sunken warships. We try to do these both as really exciting examples of underwater archaeology and as tributes to the brave men that went down on these ships.

          – Paul Allen, USS Indianapolis Live from the Deep

The Petrel’s resume to date includes the discoveries of one Italian destroyer, one Australian submarine, four Japanese battleships and nine destroyers, two U.S. destroyers and two light cruisers, the carrier U.S.S. Lexington, and the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis. The Indianapolis’ 1945 demise en route from Guam to the Philippines marked a terrible tragedy, stranding 890 crewmen in shark-infested waters with insufficient life rafts and supplies for a horrifying four days. Only 316 of the men survived this ordeal. It was the most deadly disaster the U.S. Navy has incurred from the loss of a single ship.

“This Is It. This Is Hornet.”

This winter, Petrel set her sights on the WWII carrier U.S.S. Hornet. I haven’t seen an explanation as to why Hornet was chosen, but perhaps the carrier’s distinguished service record accounts for it. Or perhaps it was her status as the last American fleet carrier to sink under enemy fire.

To locate Hornet, the Petrel's project crew combed the ship’s logs of nine other U.S. vessels, and triangulated with ship's logs from Japanese vessels as well. This gave them an approximate location east of the Solomon Islands. But that still left 140 square miles of seabed to explore.

The Petrel sent down a sonar drone for an initial scan. Data retrieved once the drone returned to the surface appeared to show a large, carrier-shaped piece of debris more than 3.5 miles down. It looked promising enough that the project crew deployed the ship’s Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), capable of live-streaming images back up an armored cable from as far down as 6000 meters.

The result is a haunting sequence of footage which identifies the carrier unmistakably as CV-8, the U.S.S. Hornet. The ROV gives us a clear, locked-in-time view of the ship’s rear guns. Richard Nowatzki, a 95-year-old veteran who served at 18 as a gunner on the Hornet, was astonished at the footage.

I used to stand on the right side of that gun. That's where my equipment was.... If you go down to my locker, there's forty bucks in it. You can have it.

Also clearly visible: anti-aircraft guns pointed into the sky. A chunk of airplane fuselage. An intact aircraft tug. A signal horn. Even personal items such as a jacket and a mess kit evoke the tragedy of so many lost lives, so many years ago.

Screen capture from CBS video. Richard Nowatski and the U.S.S. Hornet bearing B-25s to the Doolittle Raid

Click the image above to check out the haunting video. There's also an article with great still images: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uss-hornet-wreckage-world-war-two-warship-discovered/

The Plum Blooms in Winter

My Doolittle Raid novel is finally here! And I'm thrilled (and humbled) by the reviews it's receiving.

“A taut, crisp debut achievement that colorfully evokes the Pacific theater of WWII. Start this one forewarned: it's a stay-up-all-night read."

-Jerry B. Jenkins--21-time NYT bestselling author (Left Behind, et al)

A Prostitute Seeks Her Revenge--In 1942, Miyako Matsuura cradled her little brother as he died on the sidewalk, a victim of the first U.S. bombing raid on Japan. By 1948, the war has reduced her to a street-hardened prostitute consumed by her shame.


A Doolittle Raid Hero Finds His True Mission--Dave Delham makes aviation history piloting a B-25 in the audacious Doolittle Raid. Forced to bail out over occupied China, he and his crew are captured by the Japanese and survive a harrowing P.O.W. ordeal. In 1948, he returns to Japan as a Christian missionary, determined to showcase Christ's forgiveness.

Convinced that Delham was responsible for the bomb that snuffed out her brother's life, Miyako resolves to restore her honor by avenging him--even if it costs her own life. But the huntress soon becomes hunted in Osaka's treacherous underworld. Miyako must outmaneuver a ruthless brothel owner, outwit gangs with competing plans to profit by her, and overcome betrayal by family and friends--only to confront a decision that will change everything.

I stepped away from a marketing career that spanned continents to write what I love: stories of reckless faith that showcase God's hand in history. I'm so excited to work with the all-star team at Mountain Brook Ink to launch my debut novel, The Plum Blooms in Winter, on December 1! Inspired by a remarkable true story from World War II's pivotal Doolittle Raid, The Plum Blooms in Winter is an American Christian Fiction Writers' Genesis Contest winner. The novel follows a captured American pilot and a bereaved Japanese prostitute who targets him for ritual revenge. Please also feel free to check out my blog, Five Stones and a Sling, which hovers in the region where history meets Bible prophecy meets current events. It's rich ground--we live in a day when prophecies are leaping from the Bible's pages into the headlines!

I live outside Phoenix with my husband, a third-generation airline pilot who doubles as my Chief Military Research Officer. We share our home with our daughter, our son and daughter-in-law, a brand new grandson, and a small platoon of housecats. When I'm not writing, you'll find me rollerblading--yes, I know that makes me a throwback 😊--or catching a moonrise, or dreaming of my next trip. Next up: Wales, then Israel.

The LAST Doolittle Raid Post!! (PLUS a Giveaway!)

The Dramatic Rescue of Doolittle's Lost Crews

Cindy K. Stewart and I have been tag-teaming to fill you in on the exciting adventures of the Doolittle Raiders. And it’s been my favorite kind of tag team—the kind where she does the bulk of the work! 😊 (You’ll find her final Doolittle Raid post here). But I have a special claim on Planes Six and Sixteen, “Doolittle’s Lost Crews,” as their story inspired my debut novel, The Plum Blooms in Winter. Since my novel will finally be available for pre-order this coming week—YAAY!—Cindy agreed I could have the last word. 😊

If you've been following this blog, by now you have the background. Just six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, sixteen of the Army's medium-weight B-25 bombers left the deck of the carrier U.S.S. Hornet—a feat never attempted before or since. They deployed their payloads on Tokyo and other key targets on the Japanese main island. 

A B-25 leaves the U.S.S. Hornet's deck

While the mission achieved its military objective, due to a communication breakdown the sortie left seventy-two of the eighty airmen stranded in enemy-occupied China. Eight men—the crew of Plane #16, the Bat Out of Hell, and the three survivors of Plane #6, the Green Hornet—were captured by the Japanese.

Anyone who saw the movie or read the book Unbroken will have a general picture of what these men endured. But where Louis Zamperini was a prisoner for a little more than two years, Doolittle’s “lost crews” remained in Japanese prison camps

… for forty long months, 34 of them in solitary confinement. We were imprisoned and beaten, half-starved, terribly tortured, and denied by solitary confinement even the comfort of association with one another. Three of my buddies were executed by a firing squad about six months after our capture and fourteen months later, another one of them died of slow starvation.… The bitterness of my heart against my captors seemed more than I could bear. 

—Corporal Jacob DeShazer in his tract I Was a Prisoner of Japan

A lurid wartime poster features an image of Doolittle Raider Lieutenant Robert Hite, captive, April, 1942

Sadly, of those eight men, only four came home. I’ve summarized the rest of their story, and how God used that tragedy for His glory, here and here. 

The Empire of Japan Surrenders

On the morning of August 15, 1945, the entire population of Japan… were told that at noon they must stop whatever they were doing and listen to the radio…. What the people of Japan heard that day at noon was not just unexpected, it was unimaginable…. A voice spoke—a voice they’d never heard before…. It spoke an odd form of Japanese, a dialect hundreds of years old that very few could understand clearly. For the first time in the history of the Chrysanthemum Throne, the emperor was speaking directly to his subjects.  

The voice told them: senso owari, the war is over. It said that the emperor was no longer the Son of Heaven, but an ordinary man…. The voice said it was time for the Yamato race to “endure the unendurable, and bear the unbearable.”

—The First Heroes (Craig Nelson, 2002)

In this indirect language, the people of Japan learned of their nation’s surrender. But while jubilation filled the streets of America at the news, it posed a serious question for the more than 80,000 Allied P.O.W.s still in Japanese hands, and for the captured Doolittle Raiders. 

Orders for a Massacre

The Japanese had regularly and publicly announced that, if they lost the war, they would kill every Allied P.O.W. under their control.

—The First Heroes (Craig Nelson, 2002)

The P.O.W.s were well aware of this policy. This so-called “kill-all order” was no joke. It had in fact been enacted on a few occasions when the Japanese surrendered ground: on Wake Island and on Palawan Island in the Philippines. How to ensure the order wasn’t carried out on a massive scale at the Japanese’ final surrender?

This challenge was assumed by the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.), the predecessor to the C.I.A. In the months preceding the surrender, the O.S.S. conducted painstaking research into the locations of Japanese prison camps. Immediately after the surrender, bombers began dropping cartons of supplies into the camps.

On August 17, 1945, just two days after the surrender, seven O.S.S. operatives parachuted onto an airfield in Beijing, China. They were surrounded at once by enemy soldiers brandishing rifles, bayonets leveled.

The Americans’ leader, Major Nichols, told the Japanese commander through his interpreter, “The war is over, and we are here to get the prisoners.”

“The war is not over yet,” the Japanese lieutenant responded, and ordered the Americans onto a truck.

Prisoners Released... Except...

The lieutenant’s stance was echoed by his superiors. Two anxious days passed before Major Nichols’ hard-nosed insistence produced the desired result. Hundreds of P.O.W.s were released from their cells and bussed to hotels in Beijing.

However, one set of prisoners were not released along with the rest. The eight captured Doolittle Raiders had been convicted in a kangaroo-court procedure and given special status as “war criminals.” The Japanese had no intention of releasing them.

The Tincup News Service

But praise God, the veil of secrecy behind which the surviving Raiders were held had its chinks. Starting in early 1944, the Raiders were able to exchange messages with a group of U.S. Marines including Commander Scott Cunningham. The messages traveled etched into the bottom of the tin cups that made their rounds through the prison meal service. Upon his release from the prison in Peiping, Commander Cunningham was quick to spread the news that four of Doolittle’s lost crew members were alive and still in prison.

…Cunningham was sure they would never be released… Major Nichols showed Japanese officials the results of his P.O.W. debriefings. He demanded they confess fully to their crimes of torturing, starving, and killing their captives. After confronting them… he demanded that they release the “war criminals” at once. 

—The First Heroes (Craig Nelson, 2002)

Return to Freedom

And so the remaining four Raiders, malnourished to a point of delirium and close to death, found themselves transported to the five-star Peiping Grand Hotel… and back into a life of freedom. George Barr, Jacob DeShazer, Robert Hite and Chase Nielson returned to the U.S. changed men. Here’s how they expressed it in a joint statement:

We were not what you would call religious men before we were captured.... [But in prison] we were given the Bible to read. We found in its ripped and faded pages a source of courage and faith we never realized existed. The verses we memorized as children suddenly came alive and became as vital to us as food.
We put our trust in the God we had not really accepted before and discovered that faith in His Word could carry us through the greatest peril of our lives. 

—Four Came Home (Carroll V. Glines, 1995)

Corporal DeShazer, the former bombardier of the Bat Out of Hell, was transformed by what he read in the Bible. Upon his release, Jake rushed to earn a Bible degree from Seattle Pacific College. In 1948, he returned to Japan with his new bride, Florence, as Free Methodist missionaries.

Corporal Jacob DeShazer upon his release from captivity

Colonel Jacob DeShazer, in a postwar publicity shot

The couple ultimately settled in Nagoya, the very city Jake had bombed during the Doolittle Raid. Their thirty-year ministry in Japan bore fruit in twenty-three church plants and in countless changed hearts.

This time I was not going as a bombardier, but I was going as a missionary. How much better it is to go out to conquer evil with the gospel of peace!

—Jacob DeShazer on his return to Japan

I finally get to give away my own book!! The Plum Blooms in Winter, inspired by a true story from the Doolittle Raid, will be available for pre-order this week. I'll randomly select someone who comments below to receive a complementary copy! The order will be fulfilled on 12/1. Thank you!

I stepped away from a marketing career that spanned continents to write what I love: stories of reckless faith that showcase God's hand in history. I'm so excited to work with the all-star team at Mountain Brook Ink to launch my debut novel, The Plum Blooms in Winter, on December 1! Inspired by a remarkable true story from World War II's pivotal Doolittle Raid, The Plum Blooms in Winter is an American Christian Fiction Writers' Genesis Contest winner. The novel follows a captured American pilot and a bereaved Japanese prostitute who targets him for ritual revenge. Please also feel free to check out my blog, Five Stones and a Sling, which hovers in the region where history meets Bible prophecy meets current events. It's rich ground--we live in a day when prophecies are leaping from the Bible's pages into the headlines!

I live outside Phoenix with my husband, a third-generation airline pilot who doubles as my Chief Military Research Officer. We share our home with two mostly-grown-up kids and a small platoon of housecats. When I'm not writing, you'll find me rollerblading--yes, I know that makes me a throwback 😊--or catching a moonrise, or dreaming of my next trip. Next up: Wales, then Israel.

What Happened to the Doolittle Raiders? One Last Plane! (Plus a GIVEAWAY!)

Cindy K. Stewart and I have been tag-teaming our posts on the exciting adventures of the Doolittle Raiders. And it’s been my favorite kind of tag team—the kind where she does the bulk of the work! 😊 As Cindy wraps up her series, she’s letting me cover the final plane: Plane #6, the Green Hornet. It’s one I have a special claim on, since three of its crew members appear in my upcoming debut novel, The Plum Blooms in Winter.

The crew of Doolittle Raid Plane #6, the Green Hornet.
L to R: Chase Nielsen, Dean Hallmark, Donald Fitzmaurice, Robert Meder, William Dieter
By US Air Force [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By now you probably have the background. Just six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, sixteen of the Army's medium-weight B-25 bombers left the deck of the carrier U.S.S. Hornet—a feat never attempted before or since. They deployed their payloads on Tokyo and other key targets on the Japanese main island. While the mission achieved its military objective, due to a communication breakdown the sortie left seventy-two of the eighty airmen stranded in enemy-occupied China.

Cindy has been filling you in on how the Chinese resistance smuggled most of the downed airmen out—at great risk and, ultimately, tremendous cost. One of the most dramatic stories belongs to the crew of the Green Hornet.

Crash Landing

I have a vintage copy of the book Four Came Home by Carroll V. Glines, in which Chase Nielsen, the Green Hornet’s navigator, tells their story in detail. With their fuel exhausted, the Green Hornet attempted a crash landing into the sea off China’s coast. They came down fast and hit the water hard. The enlisted men—Donald Fitzmaurice (gunner) and William Dieter (bombardier)—were both severely injured.

All five of the airmen managed to get free of the bomber and climb on top of the wreckage, but what was left of the B-25 was sinking rapidly. Tragically, the life raft proved inoperable. While the three least injured men tried to get it inflated, poor Dieter slipped into the waves. Co-pilot Robert Meder managed to grab Fitzmaurice just as a huge wave smashed the rest of them into the water.

The waves soon separated the men. They braved more than three hours in the water before reaching shore. Sadly, when Lieutenant Meder finally managed to drag himself and Fitzmaurice onto the beach, he discovered that Donald Fitzmaurice had succumbed to his wounds.

Nielsen stumbled into a trench in the dark and lost consciousness. He came to the next morning and crawled to a vantage point. He found himself overlooking a cove and a Chinese fishing village. He soon also found himself at the business end of what he described as “a real antiquated buffalo gun.” The young Chinese soldier aiming it at him ordered him to “Stand up or me shoot.”

The soldier directed Nielsen at gunpoint to walk up a path away from the beach. But he seemed wary, often glancing over his shoulder. After a few minutes, Nielsen heard a boat motor in the distance. “Run fast!” his captor commanded. “Japs come. Kill me, you!”

Once they reached thick cover, the soldier stopped and slung his rifle over his shoulder. “We fight Japanese. You no worry now. Go fast. follow me.” He brought Lieutenant Nielsen to a Chinese Nationalist army garrison. The Green Hornet’s other two survivors, Lieutenant Meder and the plane’s pilot Dean Hallmark, soon turned up there too.

The garrison commander, Captain Ling, promised to do his best to get them to Free China. But he emphasized the risks. If the Japanese caught them at it, Americans and Chinese would all be summarily shot.

Several Near Misses

When dawn broke, the Chinese smuggled the three airmen back to the cove and put them aboard "a sampan." They experienced their first near miss when the vessel was searched by a Japanese patrol. They sailed for two days upriver until they reached the sizable walled city of Wenzhou. Captain Ling announced he could take them no further, but would set them up with others they could trust.

At dark, they passed through a gate in the city’s ancient wall and were handed off to an older gentleman named Mr. Wong. They enjoyed a pleasant dinner with Sage Wong, an articulate former Buddhist monk who had studied in England. 

A boy rushed in to alert Mr. Wong that Japanese soldiers were searching the city. Mr. Wong hurried the three airmen down an alley in an effort to escape through the city gate, but Japanese were setting up a machine-gun station there. He tried leading them toward another gate, but peering around a corner they saw machine guns there too. 

Ancient gate of Linhai, a city in China's Zhejiang Province near Wenzhou.
By Marcus Hsu  talk [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

What happened next was like a scene from a movie. Mr. Wong called a group of Chinese in flowing robes over and they surrounded the three big Americans. The airmen crouched and hid in the middle of the group and they all shuffled along together across the twelve-foot main road and into another building, right in front of a Japanese detachment.

Mr. Wong determined the Japanese were conducting a methodical search and the Americans had no choice but to hide where they were. There was very little to work with. Hallmark dove into a corner and Nielsen and Meder covered him with everything they could grab—grass mats, sacks, old blankets. They shoved a rickety bench in front of the pile, then climbed up into the open rafters and pushed into the darkest spots in the corners.

After some time, a Japanese soldier entered. His eyes rested for a moment on the pile where Dean was hiding, but he turned and left.

Betrayed

The men breathed a deep sigh of relief but remained hidden. A few more minutes passed. Another group of soldiers entered. The airmen were astonished to see the Chinese National garrison commander, Captain Ling, followed by a Japanese officer with a couple of his men. One of the soldiers lowered his rifle. The other strode up to the corner where Dean was hiding. He kicked the bench out of the way. 

The officer addressed Dean in clear English. “Where are the other two Americans?” When Dean wouldn’t answer, he pistol-whipped Mr. Wong until he fell to the floor moaning--directly beneath Nielsen’s hiding place in the rafters. As the officer stepped back, he lifted his head. He looked straight into Nielsen’s eyes.

The three survivors from the Green Hornet joined the five men who bailed from Plane #16, the Bat Out of Hell, ultimately enduring forty long months of Japanese prison "hospitality." Sadly, of those eight men, only four came home. I’ve summarized the rest of their story, and how God used that tragedy for His glory, here and here. And I hope you’ll consider reading my novel when it launches in December!

I'm hosting a drawing for a copy of Kristy Cambron's split-time historical novel, The Lost Castle, for new subscribers to my newsletter. You'll also receive updates on my novel, including an opportunity to gain complementary pre-launch access. To enter, please REGISTER HERE by Saturday, June 30. (I'm also giving away a second copy to a current subscriber, so those of you who registered in previous months will have another chance to win. :) )

I stepped away from a marketing career that spanned continents to write what I love: stories of reckless faith that showcase God's hand in history. I'm so excited to work with the all-star team at Mountain Brook Ink to launch my debut novel, The Plum Blooms in Winter, this December! Inspired by a remarkable true story from World War II's pivotal Doolittle Raid, The Plum Blooms in Winter is an American Christian Fiction Writers' Genesis Contest winner. The novel follows a captured American pilot and a bereaved Japanese prostitute who targets him for ritual revenge. Please also feel free to check out my blog, Five Stones and a Sling, which hovers in the region where history meets Bible prophecy meets current events. It's rich ground--we live in a day when prophecies are leaping from the Bible's pages into the headlines!

I live outside Phoenix with my husband, a third-generation airline pilot who doubles as my Chief Military Research Officer. We share our home with two mostly-grown-up kids and a small platoon of housecats.

The "Lost Crews" of the Doolittle Raid: After Infamy, Forgiveness Wins (With GIVEAWAY!)

Tomorrow marks the Doolittle Raid's seventy-sixth anniversary. Cindy K. Stewart is doing a marvelous job of filling you in on the exciting adventures of the Doolittle Raiders. But I have a special claim on Plane Sixteen, since it inspired my upcoming debut novel, The Plum Blooms in Winter. In honor of the occasion, Cara Grandle was kind enough to swap slots with me so I could tell you its story. (Thank you, Cara!)

Here's the background in a nutshell. Just six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, eighty volunteers took flight on a bold and unprecedented mission. Sixteen medium-weight B-25 bombers left the deck of the carrier U.S.S. Hornet—a feat never attempted before or since. They deployed their payloads on Tokyo and other key targets on the Japanese main island. 

The bombers were too big to land on the carrier, so the plan called for them to fly on to China. But while the mission achieved its military objective, due to unforeseen circumstances the sortie left most of the airmen stranded in enemy-occupied China. 

Captured

Detail from a wartime poster featuring a photo of
Lieutenant Robert Hite, copilot of the Bat Out of Hell. Tokyo, April 1942.

Eight men—the crew of Plane #16, the Bat Out of Hell, and the three survivors of the crash of Plane #6, the Green Hornet—were captured by the Japanese. Anyone who saw the movie or read the book Unbroken will have a general picture of what these men endured. But where Louis Zamperini was a prisoner for a little more than two years, Doolittle’s “lost crews” remained in Japanese prison camps

… for forty long months, 34 of them in solitary confinement. We were imprisoned and beaten, half-starved, terribly tortured, and denied by solitary confinement even the comfort of association with one another. Three of my buddies were executed by a firing squad about six months after our capture and fourteen months later, another one of them died of slow starvation.… The bitterness of my heart against my captors seemed more than I could bear. 

- Corporal Jacob DeShazer in his tract I Was a Prisoner of Japan 

Of the eight Raiders captured, only four survived that ordeal. George Barr, Jacob DeShazer, Robert Hite and Chase Nielson returned to the U.S. different men. Here’s how they expressed it in a joint statement:

We were not what you would call religious men before we were captured. We went to Sunday school and church when we were kids… We memorized Bible verses and listened to sermons and said grace at meals…. But we never really understood the meaning behind those words and the source of strength they represented in our lives.…

We were given the Bible to read. We found in its ripped and faded pages a source of courage and faith we never realized existed. The verses we memorized as children suddenly came alive and became as vital to us as food.

We put our trust in the God we had not really accepted before and discovered that faith in His Word could carry us through the greatest peril of our lives. 

—Four Came Home (Carroll V. Glines, 1995) 

The crew of the Bat Out of Hell, captive.
Back row, l-r: William Farrow, George Barr, Robert Hite.
Front row, l-r: Jacob DeShazer, Harold Spatz.
Lieutenant Farrow and Sergeant Spatz were executed.

Forgiveness Wins: The Raider Returns

Corporal DeShazer, the former bombardier of the Bat Out of Hell, was transformed by what he read in the Bible. The Lord revealed to him during those miserable hours alone in his cell that He wanted to give the Japanese people an illustration of the meaning of forgiveness. Jake was to become that walking object lesson.

Upon his release, Jake rushed home to earn a Bible degree from Seattle Pacific College. In 1948, he returned to Japan with his new bride, Florence, as a Free Methodist missionary.

This time I was not going as a bombardier, but I was going as a missionary. How much better it is to go out to conquer evil with the gospel of peace! 

—Jacob DeShazer on his return to Japan 

Japanese people flocked to hear him and peppered him with questions. The idea that one could hold anything other than implacable hatred for one’s enemies was foreign to the Confucianist ideas that drove their culture at that time. 

Sergeant Jacob DeShazer after the war.

From Hatred to Love

There are a number of remarkable stories from Jake and Florence’s sojourn in Japan. My favorite is the one that inspired my novel. At an evangelistic meeting, Jake noticed an attractive young woman who “watched me so constantly that she began to make me self-conscious.” He asked if he could help her. She didn't reply, but the open hostility in her eyes was unmistakable.

She returned for the next meeting, and the next. Eventually, she made her confession. A bomb DeShazer deployed during the raid had snuffed out the life of a young man she loved. She attended the first meetings with a knife in her purse, determined to exact her revenge--even if it cost her everything. 

But she was so moved by Jake's example of forgiveness that she decided to follow Jesus instead. As one of Jake’s fellow missionaries wrote, “She confessed that she had first come to the meetings with the avowed purpose of killing DeShazer... But that night DeShazer had spoken of his own hatred having been changed to love. That message of God’s love worked the same change inside her...”

When I read that account, it haunted me. The young woman's name and the rest of her story are lost to history. Which was a gift, in a way. I was left to research the time period—fascinating and harrowing—and create the fictional tale of a heroine I see as deeply wounded, but committed and courageous. 

From Enemies to Fellow Evangelists

The most famous episode from DeShazer's ministry is that of Mitsuo Fuchida, who commanded the air attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, a tract DeShazer authored was instrumental in bringing Fuchida to Christ. A few months later, the two were preaching to crowds together—the Doolittle Raider and the Japanese captain who gave the infamous “Tora-tora-tora” signal that launched the Pearl Harbor attack. They brought to thousands the message of God’s sacrificial love for all people and the power of forgiveness through Jesus Christ. (I covered Fuchida's story in more detail in my December post.)

Jake and Flo ultimately settled in Nagoya, the very city Jake had bombed. Their thirty-year ministry in Japan bore fruit in twenty-three church plants and in many changed hearts.

I'm hosting a drawing for a copy of Sarah Sundin's latest WWII novel, The Sea Before Us, for new subscribers to my newsletter. You'll also receive updates on my novel, including an opportunity to gain pre-launch access. To enter, please REGISTER HERE by Thursday, April 19. 

I stepped away from a marketing career that spanned continents to write what I love: stories of reckless faith that showcase God's hand in history. I'm so excited to work with the all-star team at Mountain Brook Ink to launch my debut novel, The Plum Blooms in Winter, this December! Inspired by a remarkable true story from World War II's pivotal Doolittle Raid, The Plum Blooms in Winter is an American Christian Fiction Writers' Genesis Contest winner. The novel follows a captured American pilot and a bereaved Japanese prostitute who targets him for ritual revenge. Please also feel free to check out my blog, Five Stones and a Sling, which hovers in the region where history meets Bible prophecy meets current events. It's rich ground--we live in a day when prophecies are leaping from the Bible's pages into the headlines!

I live outside Phoenix with my husband, a third-generation airline pilot who doubles as my Chief Military Research Officer. We share our home with two mostly-grown-up kids and a small platoon of housecats.

1942-1943: Terror in the Tropics (PLUS a Giveaway!)

Missionaries versus the Imperial Japanese Army

April, 1942. Panay Island, Central Philippines.

About four months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Americans on Panay faced a gut-wrenching decision. At that point it wasn’t if the Japanese would invade, it was when. Americans would be ordered to surrender and take their chances in a Japanese internment camp. Or they could hide and hope to wait out the occupation.

The horrors of the Japanese occupation of China weighed on everyone's minds. Eleven families of American Baptist missionaries—and many other Americans—opted for the hide-and-hope option.

As they debated, defenses on Luzon, the Philippines’ largest island, were crumbling. On April 9, the infamous 65-mile Bataan Death March began, resulting in the brutal deaths of thousands of Filipino and American prisoners of war.

And of course no one knew this, but somewhere to the northeast, Task Force 18 was steaming across the Pacific, carrying Jimmy Doolittle and his B-25 Mitchell bombers to their appointment with destiny: the Doolittle Raid. (See Cindy K. Stewart’s posts on this subject... and my upcoming novel, The Plum Blooms in Winter!)

A Filipino Baptist pastor, Reverend Dianala, offered a group of missionary families refuge. He proposed hiding them in a hamlet in the island’s interior. From that point, they could flee further into the rugged Cordillera mountains if needed.

Many other Americans developed a similar strategy and settled nearby. These included staff members from the former Iloilo Mission Hospital and from Central Philippine College, as well as some Americans involved in the mining industry.

James and Charma Covell

Among the Central Philippine College staff were Prof. James and Charma Covell. Jimmy, a graduate of Brown University, taught Bible and English for twenty years at Kanto Gakuin University in Yokohama, Japan. When a dangerous militarism began to crest there in the 1930s, Jimmy felt strongly that the Christian church in Japan was too willing to acquiesce. 

The Covell family in Yokohama. Peggy is the oldest girl.

Jimmy's antiwar activism became too noticeable to the wrong people. The Covells’ mission board concluded it would be safest to reassign them. Jimmy and Charma made the move to Panay in 1939, then in 1940 sent their three children back to the U.S. to school.

On the Run

The Americans' first hiding places lasted less than ten days. The Japanese aerial surveillance was unrelenting. They needed a spot with better cover.

Dianala suggested a new refuge--an unimproved forest canyon in a deep ravine accessible only by a precipitous footpath. The American families hired locals to build traditional grass huts, engineered a system of running water, organized a stunning space under a canopy of trees for worship, and named the place “Hopevale.” 

Hopevale would be their home for eighteen long months.

If it sounds idyllic, it wasn't. Supplies dwindled. Shoes wore out. And the enemy closed in. There were many days and nights when the Americans left their rustic huts to cower in claustrophobic dugouts hidden beneath the forest floor. 

Attack

On December 19, 1943, the Japanese staged an attack. The Americans got just minutes’ warning. A few escaped, slogging along streams and crawling through dense forest undergrowth. But the Japanese rounded up seventeen—five couples, three single women, a single man, and three young children.

The details of the martyrs' last hours aren’t known. Prof. Covell spoke at length with the Japanese commander. Whatever he said was compelling enough that the captain radioed his superiors for direction. But the response was resolute. The Americans would be executed. Man, woman and child.

Death was inevitable. The team made a small request—which turned out to be the note that resonated through history. They asked for a time of prayer together. 

What happened after that was awful. The three children—Terry Clardy, five; John Clardy, seven; and Douglas Rounds, nine—were taken away and bayoneted to death. The adults—men and women who’d served so selflessly as pastors, educators and medical missionaries, along with one family from the mining industry—were directed, one by one, into a grass hut where their executioner waited.

For the adults, the end was probably mercifully swift. Japanese soldiers were adept at severing a head with a single clean swipe of a katana sword. 

Tragically, an unknown number of Filipino hostages unfortunate enough to be grabbed by the Japanese on their way in to Hopevale were also murdered. 

Peggy Covell

"Missionary Kid" Peggy Covell had a profound impact
on P.O.W.s she served--and ultimately, on
thousands back in Japan.

The Covells' oldest daughter, Peggy, learned of her parents’ wanton execution in the spring of 1944. She was a senior at Keuka Collage in Keuka Park, New York. As she worked through her grief and considered her future, she felt the Lord’s leading to do the thing that would stress her forgiveness the most—use her fluent Japanese to serve the soldiers of the very nation that had martyred her parents.

She took a position as a counselor at a hospital near Fort Collins, Colorado, treating Japanese prisoners of war. When asked why she was so kind to the prisoners, Peggy stunned the men. 

“Because my parents were killed by the Japanese Army.” She explained that it was Jesus who'd washed away her hatred and given her love for all men—even enemies.

Mitsuo Fuchida

A navy pilot was deeply moved by Peggy's spirit of service. When he eventually returned to Japan, he told her story to his friend, Mitsuo Fuchida, the man who led the airstrike on Pearl Harbor. (I featured Fuchida’s story in my last post.)

Peggy’s stance mystified Fuchida, who 

“...could not understand such enemy-forgiving love. I had never heard of people returning good for evil. I desired all the more to discover the source of this power…” 

He determined to test the truth of her story. He researched her parents and their death. One detail especially intrigued him. 

When Peggy's parents asked for that time to pray, what did they pray?

Then he encountered Jesus’ words in Luke 23:24. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

“Suddenly, I could understand the story of the American girl whose parents had been slain. Their prayer must have been the prayer of Christ.… The young girl’s love for the Japanese must be the answer to the prayer of her parents.”

Fuchida gave his life to Christ and became a powerful evangelist, bringing the message of God’s forgiveness through Christ to thousands of Japanese--but that was a tale for another post. :) 

I've seen Peggy Covell called an "ordinary person," but nothing about the Covell family and their self-sacrificing commitment to the Lord strikes me as ordinary. Not Peggy's determination to obey God even when it was difficult. Not the Hopevale Martyrs' willingness to live out their lives as "sojourners in a strange land" for the spread of the Gospel.

To me the moral of the tale is this. If you follow hard after God, you never know what detail of your story He might make use of.

Giveaway: Back by Popular Demand!

Would you like to read Mitsuo Fuchida's own words about the impact Peggy Covell had on his life? Last month I gave away three copies of Fuchida's book-length personal testimony, From Pearl Harbor to Calvary. (Kindle edition.) The giveaway was popular enough that I'm going to repeat it! Register for the drawing HERE by Wednesday, January 31. You'll also receive updates on The Plum Blooms in Winter, my debut novel inspired by the story of the Doolittle Raid's "lost crews."

The Plum Blooms in Winter is an American Christian Fiction Writers' Genesis winner. Inspired by a remarkable true story from World War II's pivotal Doolittle Raid, the novel follows a captured American pilot and a bereaved Japanese woman who targets him for ritual revenge. It launches from Mountain Brook Ink this October! :)

I live just outside Phoenix with my husband, a third-generation airline pilot who doubles as my Chief Military Research Officer. We share our home with two all-grown-up kids and a small platoon of housecats.