On April 18, 1942, then Lt. Colonel Jimmy Doolittle led sixteen B-25s in an attack on Tokyo and other Japanese cities. The unique thing about this raid is that the bombers took off from the deck of an aircraft carrier. "Doolittle and his raiders had accomplished the impossible," wrote James M. Scott in his 2015 book Target Tokyo, "taking off as such a great distance that most knew the chance of survival was slim at best, yet the airmen still managed to bomb Japan and escape. That more were not captured or killed is miraculous, saved only by a tailwind that pilot Harold Watson later described as the 'hand of heaven.'"
Eight of the Doolittle Raiders were captured by the Japanese: Dean Hallmark, Bob Meder, Chase Nielsen (from Hyrum, Utah), Bill Farrow, Bob Hite, George Barr, Harold Spatz, and Jake DeShazer. Three of the raiders, Hallmark, Farrow and Spatz, were executed by the Japanese. Bob Meder would die of starvation during captivity, and George Barr was so close to death when he was liberated that his mental and physical recovery would take two years.
After Meder's death, Hite wrote the governor of the prison protesting the treatment of the prisoners. Hite then asked "will you please give us the Holy Bible to read?" Meder's death must have caused the Japanese some trouble because changes were made, among them that the prisoners were allowed to share a few English books, including the Bible.
"It was the first time that I had ever -- and I think any of us -- the first time any of us had really read the Bible from cover to cover," said Hite. "I was sort of like a man being in the desert and finding a cool pool." Hite went on to say, "Instead of hating the enemy that we had such hate for, we began to feel sorry for them. . . . It was almost a miracle to realize the sort of thing that happened to us . . . we were no longer afraid to the extent that we had been . . . we no longer had the hatred."
"We thought a lot about religion," said Barr. "When you're in tough straits God is the only one you can rely on."
"Faith kept me alive," agreed Nielsen. "Faith in my nation. My religion. My creator."
Jake DeShazer's story would be the most remarkable. One day he was cleaning his cell when a guard looked in and yelled "Hayaku!" (hurry up). DaShazer responded by telling the guard to "Go jump in a lake." The next thing he knew, DeShazer was knocked on the head by the guard's fist. The Raider kicked the guard in the stomach, and the guard hit back with the steel scabbard for his sword. Jake then threw some dirty mop water at the guard, which had the affect of cooling the guard off. Still, DeShazer was surprised that the guard had not cut his head off.
After the incident with the guard, DeShazer, who described himself as an agnostic, turned to the Bible and the experience would end up turning his life upside-down. Jake felt that he needed some sign of God's existence, and as he read the Bible he felt that God was indeed present, reaching out for someone so abandoned, mistreated and hopeless as he was. When he read for a second time Romans 10:9 "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" Jake started praying. "Lord, though I am far from home and though I am in prison, I must have forgiveness."
As he continued to study the Bible and pray his heart was filled with joy. "I wouldn't have traded places with anyone at that time," he would later say. "Oh, what a great joy it was to know that I was saved, that God had forgiven me my sins." DeShazer went on to say that "Hunger, starvation, and a freezing prison cell no longer had horrors for me. They would only be for a passing moment. Even death could hold no threat when I knew that God had saved me. Death is just one more trial that I must go through before I can enjoy the pleasures of eternal life. There will be no pain, no suffering, no loneliness in heaven. Everything will be perfect with joy forever."
The more DeShazer read, the more he knew that he had to change. He especially loved reading 1 Corinthians 13:
"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth. . . ."
DeShazer felt that his sins had been forgiven through Jesus Christ, and that he, too, would have to forgive. He had another run in with a guard one day. The impatient guard slapped Jake on the back, yelling "Hayaku, hayaku!", shoving him into his cell and slamming the door on his bare heel. The guard kicked his foot until DeShazer was able to free himself. "The pain in my foot was severe, and I thought some bones were broken. But as I sat on my stool in great pain, I felt as if God was testing me somehow."
DeShazer was tempted to take revenge the next day when the guard came on duty, but instead he called out "Ohayo gozaimasu!" (good morning). This drew a strange look from the guard. The next day, however, Jake gave the same friendly greeting to the guard. This went on morning after morning until the guard came over and spoke to the Raider. Jake, using what little Japanese he had managed to pick up while a prisoner, asked the guard about his family.
Not long after this conversation, Jake saw the guard pacing with his head bowed and hands folded in prayer. The guard explained that he was talking to his mother, who had died when he was a little boy. From that moment on the guard treated DeShazer well, never shouting at him and never beating him. "One morning he opened the slot [in the cell door] and handed in a boiled sweet potato," said Jake. "I was surprised, and thanked him profusely. Later he gave me some batter-fried fish and candy. I knew then that God's way will work if we really try, no matter what the circumstances." He concluded, "How easy it was to make a friend out of an enemy because I had just tried."
"I lived on hate for the first year," recalled Hite. "I think we were able to kind of keep ourselves together living on hate, instead of laying down and giving up." Reading the Bible, however, made a big difference. "We decided that we had no hatred for the guards, vicious as they were," said Hite. "They were ignorant and mean, but perhaps -- we thought -- there was some good in them. The only way to develop goodness would be by understanding and education -- not by brutally mistreating them as they were doing to us."
Hite's health started to decline in the summer of 1944. One day the pilot overheard Nielsen and DeShazer talking outside his cell. "Hite won't be here tomorrow," said Nielsen. "I don't think he can make it."
Hite was startled. "I thought I was going to die," he would say later. "I prayed to the Lord, told him I was willing to die if that's what he wanted, that mother was a widow and she might need me, but that I wasn't afraid to die and I was trusting in him. It was the most amazing thing. I started getting well right there."
The examples of DeShazer, Hite and Nielsen stand out to those who have suffered far less than they but who still struggle to forgive.
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"America's maritime offensive had reached a climax in the summer of 1944 with the capture of the Marianas, the ultimate prize of the Pacific," James Scott wrote. The islands of Saipan, Tinian and Guam would be used as platforms for the bombardment of Japan. "Day after day, week after week, B-29 Superfortresses darkened the skies over Japan by the hundreds," continued Scott. "Bombers pounded Japan's major cities night after night in raids Doolittle could only have dreamed of years earlier when he throttled up his B-25s that rainy morning on the deck of the Hornet."
With more than 28,500 sorties, Superfortresses would drop almost 160,000 tons of bombs on more than 60 cities. The results were devastating, with almost 158 square miles razed, including more than 50 square miles of Tokyo, 15 of Osaka, and 11 of Nagoya, while as many as 330,000 Japanese civilians were killed, 475,000 wounded and 8.5 million left homeless. By the summer of 1945, Doolittle was moving his present command, the mighty U.S. Eighth Air Force, from England to the Pacific, and he predicted that "Japan eventually will be a nation without cities."
Then, on the morning of August 6, 1945, a lone B-29 took off from North Field on the island of Tinian. Hours later, the Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, would drop the atomic bomb known as "Little Boy" over the city of Hiroshima. After the war, American investigators would estimate that the bomb, which leveled more than 4 square miles, had killed approximately 80,000 people, and injured another 100,000. Three days later a second bomb, "Fat Man", would be dropped on Nagasaki, killing some 45,000 more people and injuring some 60,000.
On the morning of August 9, Jake DeShazer awoke in his prison cell in Peking, China. Inside himself he heard a voice which urged him to pray. "What shall I pray about," he asked. The answer he received was to pray for peace.
Not knowing what was happening on that same day in Japan, or what had happened in the preceding days, DeShazer began to pray. From seven in the morning until two in the afternoon, the young airman prayed that Japanese leaders would welcome peace and that the public would not be demoralized or taken advantage of in postwar Japan. Then he heard the voice again, "You don't need to pray anymore," it said. "Victory is won."
Within days, Japan would surrender unconditionally. Emperor Hirohito decided that it was time to stop the suffering of his people. Despite a coup attempt by hard-line Japanese army officers, the Emperor would give a radio announcement of the decision to surrender, and to bear the unbearable. Within a matter of days, DeShazer and his fellow prisoners of war would be free.
Sources:
Nelson, C. (2002). The First Heroes: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raid -- America's First World War II Victory. New York: The Viking Press
Scott, J. M. (2015). Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid the Avenged Pearl Harbor. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
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