THERE’S A STORM A BREWING

By Mary Davis

"Even in the middle of a hurricane, the bottom of the sea is calm. As the storm rages and the winds howl, the deep waters sway in gentle rhythm, a light movement of fish and plant life. Below there is no storm." - Wayne Muller

Hurricanes are violent and devastating to anything in their paths. Unless of course, you are tucked safely under the ocean.

Hurricanes haven’t always been given names. For a long time, they were given a number and a type, like hurricane or tropical storm if they weren’t as strong. Even lesser storms were marked as tropical depressions.

The hurricane season of 1944 was the last year—for the most part—that hurricanes weren’t “named”. The practice of identifying storms with a name does go back centuries (1526) but is spotty. Although, places where they occurred and things that were hit were used, as well as people (like saints).

But credit for giving personal names to these storms is bestowed upon Clement Wragge, a Queensland Government meteorologist, who used this practice from 1887-1907. He started labeling storms over Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica using the Greek alphabet, Greek and Roman mythology, and female names. Wragge petitioned for the Australian Government to develop a federal weather bureau and name him as director. When they failed to do either, he responded by identifying these storms with political figures in his current meteorological position. The practice fell out of use for several years after he retired. However, people remembered this way of distinguishing storms. Launceston Examiner newspaper published an editorial on October 5, 1935 calling for this designation system to return. Not until late in WWII would this method see a revival.

In 1944 fourteen tropical storms and hurricanes were recorded as well as seven tropical depressions that didn’t reach tropical storm strength. This was a time before they started naming storms or had the category scale to measure how big or strong they were, which came later in the 1970s.

Forecasters in the US Army Air Force began informally naming storms after their wives and girlfriends in 1944. In the United States Airforce and Navy, this became popular with the meteorologists because it reduced confusion while discussing the storms on the map. By 1945 the US Armed Services officially selected a list of names—all women—for storms in the Pacific. 

However, the US Weather Bureau—seeing themself as a more serious organization—refused to adopt this method of identifying storms in the Atlantic. They deemed it inappropriate to do something frivolous like using women’s names in official communications and would make them look silly. Two years later in Miami, the Air Force Hurricane Office commenced using the military phonetic alphabet to designate significant storms in the North Atlantic. They were used for several years internally between weather centers and aircraft but weren’t utilized in public reports. 

In 1950, when three tropical cyclones occurred at nearly the same time, this led to confusion in the media and public. So, the next storm got a name that was used in public statements and in the seasonal summary.

Partway through writing Mrs. Witherspoon Goes To War, a stray thought skipped into this west coast gal’s head. Hmm? What about hurricane season? So, I researched the 1944 Atlantic hurricane season. Did I want to move my story’s timeline or location to avoid hurricane season? At first, I wanted to avoid hurricane season at all cost. I didn’t want to research hurricanes. But then…I found the perfect hurricane that fit beautifully into my story to make the difficult stuff my heroine was already going through even harder. Enter the Cuba/Florida Hurricane (October 9-24), one of two that received place names that year.

I also had to make sure that any other hurricanes during my timeline which might affect my story setting at least had a mention. Enter the Great Atlantic Hurricane (September 9-15). 

Hurricanes come and go as they please, paying no attention to what the world is doing, like a global war.

"The hurricane does not uproot grasses, which are pliant and bow low before it on every side. It is only the lofty trees that it attacks." - Panchatantra

***NEW RELEASE!***

MRS. WITHERSPOON GOES TO WAR (Heroines of WWII series)

A WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) flies a secret mission to rescue three soldiers held captive in Cuba.

Margaret “Peggy” Witherspoon is a thirty-four-year-old widow, mother of two daughters, an excellent pilot, and very patriotic. She joins the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots). As she performs various tasks like ferry aircraft, transporting cargo, and being an airplane mechanic, she meets and develops feelings for her supervisor Army Air Corp Major Howie Berg. When Peggy learns of U.S. soldiers being held captive in Cuba, she, Major Berg, and two fellow WASPs devise an unsanctioned mission to rescue them. With Cuba being an ally in the war, they must be careful not to ignite an international incident.

Order HERE!

 

MARY DAVIS, bestselling, award-winning novelist, has over thirty titles in both historical and contemporary themes. Her latest release is THE DÉBUTANTE'S SECRET (Quilting Circle  4) THE DAMSEL’S INTENT (The Quilting Circle  3) is a Selah Award Winner. Some of her other recent titles include; The Widow’s Plight, The Daughter's Predicament, “Zola’s Cross-Country Adventure” in The MISSAdventure Brides Collection , Prodigal Daughters Amish series, "Holly and Ivy" in A Bouquet of Brides Collection, and "Bygones" in Thimbles and Threads. She's an ACFW member and active in critique groups.

Mary lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband of thirty-seven years and one cat. She has three adult children and three incredibly adorable grandchildren.

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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.

"On Wings of Eagles": How Alaska Airlines Prevented a Holocaust in Yemen (with Giveaway!)

It started, perhaps, with a bit of opportunism. In 1947, James A. Wooten, an experienced air cargo executive, got hired to turn around scrappy Alaska Airlines. The airline was $350,000 in debt, but it counted among its assets a newly acquired fleet of war-surplus aircraft (Douglas C-47s, a.k.a. DC-3s, and C-54s, a.k.a. DC-4s). These planes had been de-commissioned after WWII and the War Assets Administration was selling them for a song. Wooten added more aircraft to this fleet and went in search of profitable business with which to keep it busy. He proved successful in snagging contracts for the airline to carry freight and operate charters around the world.

Perhaps it also started with a sincere desire to “do the right thing”—one of Wooten’s catchphrases. Wooten was a lifelong Baptist. During his tenure, Alaska charters participated in the Berlin Airlift of 1948, running critical supplies into blockaded West Berlin—and, reportedly, ferrying German brides of U.S. soldiers out. The airline also helped extract thousands of Holocaust refugees from Shanghai’s Jewish Ghetto as the Communists took over the city—where 20,000 Jews had taken refuge from Hitler, the most of any single city—and carried them to Israel.

Enter an organization called the American Joint Distribution Committee with a pressing need. It was late 1948. In the wake of the formation of the Nation of Israel, anti-Jewish fervor ran rampant through the Arab world. 55,000 Jewish residents of Yemen were threatened by pogroms which had already claimed 80 lives.

Nomadic Jews had lived in Yemen for centuries as dhimmis, despised non-Muslims subject to heavy fines, contempt and persecution. In the decades following World War I, religious persecution increased. Yemeni Jews were not allowed to walk on pavements. They could not testify against a Muslim in court. Jewish orphans were forcibly converted to Islam. Despite all this, for centuries they had continued to observe the faith of their fathers. 

The Israeli government was seeking a contractor who could airlift them to safety in Israel. Thousands of Yemeni Jewish refugees left the nomadic life they knew and walked hundreds of miles through the desert in order to reach the point of embarkation--a transit camp the JDC had set up in the neighboring British Protectorate of Aden. By the time they got there, they were in desperate straits.

A very young Yeminite Jewish mother with her children, at the transit camp in Aden. Source: Wikimedia.

The Alaska flight crews received this charge:

They’re sick and we don’t have the people to take care of them. They are hungry, but we don’t have food to feed them. They need clothes, but we have none to give them. We can’t protect them; we don’t have the people to protect them. They are fair game for the local Arabs. The pogrom had been going on; over 80 have been killed already. Get them out of here as quickly as you can… 

Retired Captain Elgen Long, who flew in the operation, recalls,

They had no luggage. Most of them didn’t even have shoes.... They walked barefoot through the desert to get here. Some came from Sana’a, [235] miles away,” Long said. 

At the transit camp many of these nomads had their first experiences with electricity, medicines, running water and toilets. 

A Yemenite Jewish family crosses open desert to reach the transit camp at Aden. Source: Wikimedia.

It was clear the situation was dire. The Yeminis needed to be moved without delay. Resourceful flight crews stripped the planes of their seats and installed benches to increase their capacity from 60 to 150 passengers per flight—no seatbelts. Extra fuel was carried in fuel tanks installed in the aisle between the benches. 

But then came the next challenge—getting nomads who had never seen an airplane to board one. Their rabbis reminded them of Biblical promises:

“Although I have cast them far off among the Gentiles, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet I will be a little sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone…. I will gather you from the peoples, assemble you from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.” (Ez 11:16-17)

"Behold, I will lift My hand in an oath to the nations,
And set up My standard for the peoples;
They shall bring your sons in their arms,
And your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders…." (Is 49:22)

But those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint. (Is 40:31)

...and many other Biblical prophecies that the Lord would someday regather the Jewish people to their land. The rabbis assured the people the gentiles from America were there to carry them to Israel on eagle's wings, just as the Lord had promised. “This,” the rabbis told the people, “is your eagle.” The airline painted an eagle with outstretched wings above the doors of the aircraft to reinforce the message.

Yemeni Jews wait to board a plane at the airstrip at Aden.

The work was arduous. The flight crews toiled twenty hours a day. The daily route began in Asmara, Eritrea, where Alaska was able to purchase fuel from the British. Then to Aden to pick up the passengers. Then up the Red Sea and the Golf of Aqaba to Tel Aviv.  The journey from Aden to Israel was 1400 miles long, mostly over hostile territory. They couldn’t leave the planes in Tel Aviv overnight for fear of enemy bombing, so they would fly on to Cyprus to catch a few hours’ rest before repeating the route the next day. 

The work was also dangerous. Alaska’s planes were targeted by Egyptian anti-aircraft fire. The desert sand was hard on the equipment, yet pilots were warned in strictest terms that an emergency landing in enemy territory was likely to cost the lives of all aboard. 

Chief Pilot Robert F. Maguire Jr. once had to make an emergency landing in Port Sudan, Egypt. The quick-witted Maguire requested that ambulances be brought immediately. “I have smallpox on board,” he told the Egyptians. The ruse worked. The Egyptians declined to board the plane and were quick to supply the needed fuel so the “infected” plane could be on its way.

In a little more than a year, 380 flights evacuated 40,000 to 50,000 Yemenite Jews to new lives in Israel. While some aspects of the operation have engendered significant controversy, the role Alaska Airlines and its determined flight crews played has garnered nothing but praise. David Ben-Gurion nicknamed Robert Maguire the “Irish Moses” for his role in bringing Jewish refugees to the promised land.

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 Monday, July 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.