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World War II's Last Surviving Doolittle Raiders Make Their Final Toast
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "As we come up on Veteran's Day, Barrie Barber reports for the Dayton Daily News that the last Doolittle Raiders symbolically said goodbye to a decades-old tradition and to a history that changed the course of the Pacific war in World War II. Gathering from across the country together one last time, three surviving Raiders sipped from silver goblets engraved with their names and filled with 1896 Hennessy cognac in a once-private ceremony webcast to the world at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. Robert E. Cole, 98, led the final toast to the 80 members of 'the Greatest Generation' who took off in 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers April 18, 1942, from the deck of the USS Hornet to bomb Japan four months after a Japanese surprise naval and air attack on Pearl Harbor. 'Gentleman, I propose a toast,' said Cole, as about 700 spectators watched one final time, 'to those we lost on the mission and those that passed away since. Thank you very much and may they rest in peace.' Acting Secretary of the Air Force Eric Fanning said the raid showed the courage and innovation of the World War II airmen flying from a carrier in a bomber that had never seen combat to attack a heavily defended nation and to attempt to land at unseen airfields in China in a country occupied by Japanese troops. More than 70 years after the attack, Edward J. Saylor, 93, remembered ditching at sea once he and his crew dropped their bombs and several close calls with being discovered by the Japanese Army while making his way through China. 'This may be the last time I see them together,' said the 92-year-old raider who has attended Raider reunions since 1962. 'It's a little sad for me because I've known them so long and know the story of what they did in 1942.'"
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Perhaps you should learn the difference between celebration and commemoration.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
On this Veterans Day, I would like to thank all veterans for serving our country for protecting our freedoms and way of life.
Without these brave men and women, we would not be the mightiest, richest, most powerful nation on Earth.
God Bless America.
Such sympathy does not apply to the side that starts a war and loses. Food for thought, when America remembers all the wars it has started and lost.
I don't know why you mention chemical weapons and atom bombs, since the Doolittle Raid involved neither. Nevertheless HE and incendiaries do kill people. They're not celebrating the violence of the mission, but the value of, and the the sacrifices made by, the men who flew that mission. That's what Veteran's Day is about. Considering the idiocy of getting into many of the wars we've gotten into, or started, in recent decades, you may forget that WWII was fought for very good reasons, and that the US was attacked by Japan. The US fight in the Pacific probably saved many lives elsewhere in Asia, the surrounding archipelagos, and Australia. We were allied with just about every other country fighting Japan. The penchant of the Imperial Japanese Forces for mass slaughter was not just propaganda. Good news though: we won, and have been at peace with Japan for 68 years. None of the Doolittle Raiders have complained about that.
Have you ever gone to Pearl Harbor? It's a hotspot for Japanese tourism. Americans also go to Hiroshima when site seeing in Japan.
Remembering historic events does not indicate rubbing it in the face of your former enemy.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
More to the point, what about the Chinese casualties? The often ignored result of the raid was that the Japanese, in reprisals against any family, village or town that they thought might have helped the escaping Doolittle raiders, murdered about 250,000 men, women and children. That number is not a typo. It is not a mistake or an exaggeration. Two hundred and fifty thousand Chinese were slaughtered by the Imperial Japanese Army during the search for Doolittle's men.
Now please remind me again why I should care about the Japanese casualties.
No left turn unstoned.
Dead citizens in Tokyo were for certain not involved in massacring the Chinese. Why should you care about Japanese casualties? For the same reason you care about anyone that dies needlessly in a war.
The short of it is the Doolittle raid led to the battle of Midway which is considered a major turning point of the war.
http://www.angelo.edu/content/news/1466-doolittle-raid-remembered-for-impact
I don't agree. For all that I've no use for people who don't realize that, unlike many recent ventures, the US fought WWII for very good reasons, and probably saved millions of lives by doing so, I'm not completely averse to the Japanese remembering their civilians lost in the war. Personally I have little use for Japanese sanctimony about the use of the A-bombs, but commemorating the dead is another matter. Even remembering, if not commemorating, their rank-and-file war dead, while a touchy subject, doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me. Many of the rank-and-file had little choice but to "serve".
Given some of the reports of the war crimes committed by Japan (yes some of these may be the victor writing the history but I don't see many reports refuting this) I'm not sure things would have been better if we surrendered to them. Some of the crimes I believe were committed when the resistance of an area was effectively eliminated...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes
What Drethon said. The Doolittle raid was a major embarrassment to the Japanese military, and it became clear that any repetition would be followed by rolling heads. As a result, some major naval assets were pulled back into home-waters defense, and that contributed a lot to the outcome at Midway.
Doolittle's raid had little/no actual strategic value.
The price tag was..... I have read estimates that between 300 thousand to 1 million Chinese paid the ultimate price for getting the crews out.
Not taking away from the valor of the crew. They deserve our undying respect.
But, the price paid for it..... I wonder.
willy
WRONG
The Japanese response to the Doolittle raid was to attempt to seize Midway Island and the ensuing Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway ( Middow Kaisen?) in the Pacific Theater of Operations was one of the most important naval battles of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy decisively defeated an Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) attack on Midway Atoll, inflicting irreparable damage on the Japanese fleet Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare." It was Japan's worst naval defeat in 350 years.
The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Japanese hoped that another demoralizing defeat would force the U.S. to capitulate in the Pacific War and thus ensure Japanese dominance in the Pacific.
The Japanese plan was to lure the United States' aircraft carriers into a trap. The Japanese also intended to occupy Midway as part of an overall plan to extend their defensive perimeter in response to the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo. This operation was also considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii itself. ....
. . . without everyone making a international political fuss about it? War is terrible for all . . . and these lucky few just want to celebrate that they managed to get their hairy asses out of that shit alive.
Leave 'em alone.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
> Doolittle's raid had little/no actual strategic value.
I may be a little older than you, but I'm surprised at the number of people nowadays who don't know what actually happened in WWII. It has been over half a century now, so at most it gets a chapter in the history books, highly condensed. I had the great pleasure of reading (among other things) Admiral Nimitz's history of that war, very detailed, with a look at every decision -- juggling horribly short assets against needs everywhere.
In fact, the Doolittle Raid had a significant strategic impact -- it caused the Japanese to redistribute their forces. In particular, they strongly weakened their carrier forces in the Indian Ocean. It also strengthened Yamamoto's position in favor of the Battle of Midway, which was the turning point of the entire Pacific war. (Some revisionist historians now want to argue with that, but their heads are filled with revisionist cheese. Losing several aircraft carriers in a single battle meant that Japan would never again be able to take the initiative.) :)
I hate war. As Sherman said, "War is hell." But if you attack me, or threaten those I love, I'm a typical American: I gitterdone, the entire time wishing that you'd just kept your mind right and left me alone. I'm not saying that everyone feels that way, but I am typical.
Only those who've seen the suffering can begin to imagine how awful war is. My Veteran's Day story comes from Sandy's grandfather, who was in a foxhole in St. Vith when the Germans kicked off the Battle of the Bulge. In my eyes, he was a freakin' hero, and I begged him to talk about it.
All he would say was, "I lost a lot of friends that day." Nothing more. I felt ashamed for bringing it up, and we changed the topic.
Yes, you can argue about Korea, Vietnam, et. al. But go back and read histories written by Nimitz and others who were there. No, there wasn't a great deal of fear that Germany or Japan could actually occupy the United States, but there was still a very real possibility that Japan and Germany would win. We've gotten cocky nowadays, but back then, what with bad torpedoes, ossified admirals who didn't want to use that "newfangled" radar, planes that couldn't keep up with the Mitsubishi Zero, it was anything but a guaranteed thing.
As for the results of an Axis victory, I suggest a good dose of Turtledove or other alternative history. It wouldn't have been pretty. At all.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
The Japanese government was installed by the United States after WWII
To their benefit, and I don't give a damn about complaints of paternalism. The US occupation of Japan was one of the most beneficent occupations of a vanquished enemy in history, and whether the motivation was genuine beneficence, ensuring that Japan never threatened us again, or a bulwark against the communists, doesn't change the fact.
Furthermore, the Japanese are free to to change their Constitution, but have chosen not to do so. The "under our direct control" may have been true in the 50's, or arguably the 60's, but certainly not in the 40+ years since. Do you think we'd invade Japan if, for example, they told us to close our bases there? We didn't invade the Philippines when they did so, or France, or New Zealand when they broke the ANZUS agreement.
I am quite content to both commemorate and celebrate the victory of the allied powers over:
Imperial Japan
Nazi Germany
Fascist Italy
I am quite happy to welcome the friendship of, and cheer for, democratic Japan, Germany, and Italy.
The world would be a very dark place indeed had the former regimes not been defeated.
Now their peoples and nations are shining examples to the world - long may they live and prosper.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I would be interested in a cite about the number of Chinese killed.
"The First Heroes: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raid—America's First World War II Victory" by Craig NELSON. London: Penguin Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-14-200341-1. See pages 226-228.
No left turn unstoned.
Sure the US has fucked up and is doing so more often than it used to but can you point to specific examples where the government supported war crimes that could not be considered strategic actions (yes that is a massive grey area but can you define any of this in black and white in a way everyone will agree to)?
Not saying all of this is 100% true and unbiased but given I was born 30 years after WW2 its the best I have to go on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_war_crimes_during_World_War_II
Death rates of POWs in WW2:
Chinese POWs held by Japan: 56 reported survivors at the end of the war (meaning nearly 100% were killed)
U.S. and British Commonwealth POWs held by Germany: ~4%
Soviet POWs held by Germany: 57.5%
Western Allied POWs held by Japan: 27%
German POWs in British hands 0.03%
German POWs in American hands 0.15%
German POWs in French hands 2.58%
Japanese POWs held by U.S.: relatively low, mainly suicides according to James D. Morrow
Japanese POWs in Chinese hands: 24% (though it seems like they have reason to be pissed off)
"However, Japanese civilians "were often surprised at the comparatively humane treatment they received from the American enemy." According to Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power by Mark Selden, the Americans "did not pursue a policy of torture, rape, and murder of civilians as Japanese military officials had warned.""
In some cases the US in fact court martialed American soldiers due to war crimes (even though many were ignored). As best as I can tell the US as a whole did not support war crimes even if a number of people in power did, whereas both the Nazis and Japan Empire at the highest levels supported and encouraged atrocities. If you have indications to the contrary, please show me the reports.
RE:
"The entire attack would not have happened except for a delay by some US political figure whose name I forget at the moment to see the Japanese Ambassador."
You are totally wrong - the attack was absolutely going to happen when it did. The planes were already in the air.
The sole purpose of the ambassador's visit was to present the declaration of war immediately before the attack so that Japan could not be accused of a "sneak attack". It planned to be timed so that there would be only a moments delay between the declaration and the actual attack so that there would not be time to warn the American bases.
Given how easy it is to get normally good people to do terrible things with a surprisingly small amount of peer pressure, I am comfortable extending sympathies even to those who one might call 'brainwashed'. While we like to think of ourselves as strong, it has been shown a disturbing number of times just how easy it is tweak someone into such behavior.
You make an excellent point. Reminds me of the experiments where a person was made to think they were executing someone in the name of science. While a part of me keeps saying the brainwashed are weak, I need to remember I'm probably not any stronger and am deluding myself to think otherwise.
Yes, those damn civilians who started a war by going about their daily business! It's great that they died painfully by being burned to death!
The Doolittle Raid was not like the fire bombings that would come in 1945. The attacking bombers were small in number, carrying rather small loads and attacking at a low altitude where they had decent accuracy for the day. They were conducting pinpoint attacks on specific military targets, they were not carpet bombing a city. The raid was largely symbolic for the US and psychological for the Japanese, it did very little damage.
If you are a civilian working on a military base or working at a war munitions factory you legitimately *are* part of the war.
The imperial government of Japan bears full responsibility for the pacific war, no question about it.
Having said that, I do take exception to part about it being a "cowardly attack." It's was a brave, gutsy move, and it could have succeeded (although even if it had succeeded it probably would only have delayed the inevitable). The US blockade on Japanese shipping and imports had caused intolerable problems so something had to change. Disastrously, what changed was an expansion, rather than reduction, of the war.
Please do not interpret this as any defense of the Japanese. Both of my parents faced Japanese invasion -- and not all of my relatives survived the occupation. I would not have been born had the Americans not been willing to enter the war and completely finish the job. But even with all of that I cannot consider the attack on Perl Harbor to be in any way "cowardly" -- unless you can take the position that violence is always the coward's way out (a position I do respect, though perhaps cannot share).
Pop quiz: Who sold the Nazis fuel and metal so that they could run around killing
Pop quiz: were all 150 millions Americans of a like mind and did they act in perfect concert during WWII?
As for for FDR's cynical, but perhaps justified, treatment of such actions during the war, perhaps you'd like to read the descriptions of the very people whose research uncovered this treason. You can start here. Should the "business people" responsible been tried for treason after the war? Hell yes.
We fueled the war deliberately
You mean by things like the Lend Lease Act? Ask the British if they objected to US aid prior to our entry into the war.
then entered the war
You mean an America with a strong isolationist sentiment, and a desire not to get hundreds of thousands of her own people killed, didn't enter the war until after we were attacked by Japan, and then a few days later, Nazi Germany declared war on us? That's true.
It permitted us to reduce a bunch of our excess population
You mean the population that people were concerned had a declining birth rate, due to the Great Depression? At any rate, it wasn't a very effective policy for reducing our population. As horrific as our losses of over 400,000 Americans were, it reduced the population by only 0.27%. Then the whole thing was undone by the millions born in the post-war baby boom. A seriously failed policy.
One other minor problem: there is absolutely no evidence for the absurd notion that we wanted to "reduce a bunch of our excess population".
You always have a choice.
Technically that's true. If somebody puts a gun to your head and tells you to either join the military or be shot now, and you choose the bullet now, your heirs will be free to praise you morality. Until and unless that happens to you, shove your sanctimony.