WWII Untold Stories

I received this from the President of the Sarasota Veterans Council.

Don O'

1945 Invasion of Japan Plans

A really great read.........

Deep in the recesses of the National Archives in Washington, D.C.,
hidden for nearly four decades lie thousands of pages of yellowing and
dusty documents stamped "Top Secret".  These documents, now
declassified, are the plans for Operation Downfall, the invasion of
Japan during World War II.  Only a few Americans in 1945 were aware of
the elaborate plans that had been prepared for the Allied Invasion of
the Japanese home islands.  Even fewer today are aware of the defenses
the Japanese had prepared to counter the invasion had it been launched.

Operation Downfall was finalized during the spring and summer of 1945. 
It called for two massive military undertakings to be carried out in
succession and aimed at the heart of the Japanese Empire.

In the first invasion - code named "Operation Olympic"- American combat
troops would land on Japan by amphibious assault during the early
morning hours of November 1, 1945 - 61 years ago.  Fourteen combat
divisions of soldiers and Marines would land on heavily fortified and
defended Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese home islands, after an
unprecedented naval and aerial bombardment.

The second invasion on March 1, 1946 - code named "Operation Coronet"-
would send at least 22 divisions against 1 million Japanese defenders on

the main island of Honshu and the Tokyo Plain. It's goal: the
unconditional surrender of Japan.  With the exception of a part of the
British Pacific Fleet, Operation Downfall was to be a strictly American
operation.  It called for using the entire Marine Corps, the entire
Pacific Navy, elements of the 7th Army Air Force, the 8 Air Force
(recently redeployed from Europe), 10th Air Force and the American Far
Eastern Air Force.  More than 1.5 million combat soldiers, with 3
million more in support or more than 40% of all servicemen still in
uniform in 1945 - would be directly involved in the two amphibious
assaults.  Casualties were expected to be extremely heavy.

Admiral William Leahy estimated that there would be more than 250,000
Americans killed or wounded on Kyushu alone.  General Charles
Willoughby, chief of intelligence for General Douglas MacArthur, the
Supreme Commander of the Southwest Pacific, estimated American
casualties would be one million men by the Fall of 1946. Willoughby's
own intelligence staff considered this to be a conservative estimate.

During the summer of 1945, America had little time to prepare for such
an endeavor, but top military leaders were in almost unanimous agreement
that an invasion was necessary.  While naval blockade and strategic
bombing of Japan was considered to be useful, General MacArthur, for
instance, did not believe a blockade would bring about an unconditional
surrender.  The advocates for invasion agreed that while a naval
blockade chokes, it does not kill; and though strategic bombing might
destroy cities, it leaves whole armies intact.

So on May 25, 1945, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after extensive
deliberation, issued to General MacArthur, Admiral Chester Nimitz, and
Army Air Force General Henry Arnold, the top secret directive to proceed
with the invasion of Kyushu.  The target date was after the typhoon season.

President Truman approved the plans for the invasions July 24.  Two days
later, the United Nations issued the Potsdam Proclamation, which called

upon Japan to surrender unconditionally or face total destruction. 

Three days later, the Japanese governmental news agency broadcast to the
world that Japan would ignore the proclamation and would refuse to
surrender. During this same period it was learned -- via monitoring
Japanese radio broadcasts -- that Japan had closed all schools and
mobilized its school children, was arming its civilian population and
was fortifying caves and building underground defenses.

Operation Olympic called for a four pronged assault on Kyushu.  Its
purpose was to seize and control the southern one-third of that island
and establish naval and air bases, to tighten the naval blockade of the
home islands, to destroy units of the main Japanese army and to support
the later invasion of the Tokyo Plain.  The preliminary invasion would
began October 27 when the 40th Infantry Division would land on a series
of small islands west and southwest of Kyushu.  At the same time, the
158th Regimental Combat Team would invade and occupy a small island 28
miles south of Kyushu.  On these islands, seaplane bases would be
established and radar would be set up to provide advance air warning for
the invasion fleet, to serve as fighter direction centers for the
carrier-based aircraft and to provide an emergency anchorage for the
invasion fleet, should things not go well on the day of the invasion.

As the invasion grew imminent, the massive firepower of the Navy - the
Third and Fifth Fleets -- would approach Japan.  The Third Fleet, under
Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, with its big guns and naval aircraft,
would provide strategic support for the operation against Honshu and
Hokkaido.  Halsey's fleet would be composed of battleships, heavy
cruisers, destroyers, dozens of support ships and three fast carrier
task groups.  From these carriers, hundreds of Navy fighters, dive
bombers and torpedo planes would hit targets all over the island of
Honshu.  The 3,000 ship Fifth Fleet, under Admiral Raymond Spruance,
would carry the invasion troops.

Several days before the invasion, the battleships, heavy cruisers and
destroyers would pour thousands of tons of high explosives into the
target areas.  They would not cease the bombardment until after the land
forces had been launched.  During the early morning hours of November 1,
the invasion would begin.  Thousands of soldiers and Marines would pour
ashore on beaches all along the eastern, southeastern, southern and
western coasts of Kyushu.  Waves of Helldivers, Dauntless dive bombers,

Avengers, Corsairs, and Hellcats from 66 aircraft carriers would bomb,
rocket and strafe enemy defenses, gun emplacements and troop
concentrations along the beaches.

The Eastern Assault Force consisting of the 25th, 33rd, and 41st
Infantry Divisions, would land near Miyaski, at beaches called Austin,
Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, and Ford, and move inland to
attempt to capture the city and its nearby airfield.  The Southern
Assault Force, consisting of the 1st Cavalry Division, the 43rd Division
and America Division would land inside Ariake Bay at beaches labeled
DeSoto, Dusenberg, Essex, Ford, and Franklin and attempt to capture
Shibushi and the city of Kanoya and its airfield.

On the western shore of Kyushu, at beaches Pontiac, Reo, Rolls Royce,
Saxon, Star, Studebaker, Stutz, Winston and Zephyr, the V Amphibious
Corps would land the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Marine Divisions, sending half of
its force inland to Sendai and the other half to the port city of
Kagoshima.

On November 4, the Reserve Force, consisting of the 81st and 98th
Infantry Divisions and the 11th Airborne Division, after feigning an
attack on the island of Shikoku, would be landed -- if not needed
elsewhere -- near Kaimondake, near the southernmost tip of Kagoshima
Bay, at the beaches designated Locomobile, Lincoln, LaSalle, Hupmobile,
Moon, Mercedes, Maxwell, Overland, Oldsmobile, Packard, and Plymouth.

Olympic was not just a plan for invasion, but for conquest and
occupation as well.  It was expected to take four months to achieve its
objective, with the three fresh American divisions per month to be
landed in support of that operation if needed.  If all went well with
Olympic, Coronet would be launched March 1,1946.  Coronet would be twice
the size of Olympic, with as many as 28 divisions landing on Honshu.

All along the coast east of Tokyo, the American 1st Army would land the
5th, 7th, 27th, 44th, 86th, and 96th Infantry Divisions, along with the
4th and 6th Marine Divisions.  At Sagami Bay, just south of Tokyo, the
entire 8th and 10th Armies would strike north and east to clear the long
western shore of Tokyo Bay and attempt to go as far as Yokohama.  The
assault troops landing south of Tokyo would be the 4th, 6th, 8th, 24th,
31st, 37th, 38th, and 8th Infantry Divisions, along with the 13th and
20th Armored Divisions.

Following the initial assault, eight more divisions - the 2nd, 28th,
35th, 91st, 95th, 97th, and 104th Infantry Divisions and the 11th
Airborne Division -- would be landed.  If additional troops were needed,
as expected, other divisions redeployed from Europe and undergoing
training in the United States would be shipped to Japan in what was
hoped to be the final push.

Captured Japanese documents and post war interrogations of Japanese
military leaders disclose that information concerning the number of
Japanese planes available for the defense of the home islands was
dangerously in error.  During the sea battle at Okinawa alone, Japanese
Kamikaze aircraft sank 32 Allied ships and damaged more than 400
others.  But during the summer of 1945, American top brass concluded
that the Japanese had spent their air force since American bombers and
fighters daily flew unmolested over Japan.

What the military leaders did not know was that by the end of July the
Japanese had been saving all aircraft, fuel, and pilots in reserve, and
had been feverishly building new planes for the decisive battle for
their homeland.  As part of Ketsu-Go, the name for the plan to defend
Japan -- the Japanese were building 20 suicide takeoff strips in
southern Kyushu with underground hangars.  They also had 35 camouflaged
airfields and nine seaplane bases.

On the night before the expected invasion, 50 Japanese seaplane bombers,

100 former carrier aircraft and 50 land based army planes were to be

launched in a suicide attack on the fleet.  The Japanese had 58 more airfields

in Korea, western Honshu and Shikoku, which also were to be used for massive

suicide attacks.

Allied intelligence had established that the Japanese had no more than
2,500 aircraft of which they guessed 300 would be deployed in suicide
attacks.  In August 1945, however, unknown to Allied intelligence, the
Japanese still had 5,651 army and 7,074 navy aircraft, for a total of
12,725 planes of all types.  Every village had some type of aircraft
manufacturing activity.  Hidden in mines, railway tunnels, under
viaducts and in basements of department stores, work was being done to
construct new planes.

Additionally, the Japanese were building newer and more effective models
of the Okka, a rocket-propelled bomb much like the German V-1, but flown
by a suicide pilot.  When the invasion became imminent, Ketsu-Go called
for a fourfold aerial plan of attack to destroy up to 800 Allied ships. 
While Allied ships were approaching Japan, but still in the open seas,
an initial force of 2,000 army and navy fighters were to fight to the
death to control the skies over Kyushu. A second force of 330 navy
combat pilots were to attack the main body of the task force to keep it
from using its fire support and air cover to protect the troop carrying
transports. While these two forces were engaged, a third force of 825
suicide planes was to hit the American transports.

As the invasion convoys approached their anchorages, another 2,000
suicide planes were to be launched in waves of 200 to 300 , to be used
in hour by hour attacks.  By mid-morning of the first day of the
invasion, most of the American land-based aircraft would be forced to
return to their bases, leaving the defense against the suicide planes to
the carrier pilots and the shipboard gunners.

Carrier pilots crippled by fatigue would have to land time and time
again to rearm and refuel.  Guns would malfunction from the heat of
continuous firing and ammunition would become scarce.  Gun crews would
be exhausted by nightfall, but still the waves of kamikaze would
continue.  With the fleet hovering off the beaches, all remaining
Japanese aircraft would be committed to nonstop suicide attacks,

which the Japanese hoped could be sustained for 10 days.  The

Japanese planned to coordinate their air strikes with attacks from the

40 remaining submarines from the Imperial Navy -- some armed with

Long Lance torpedoes with a range of 20 miles -- when the invasion fleet

was 180 miles off Kyus hu.

The Imperial Navy had 23 destroyers and two cruisers which were
operational.  These ships were to be used to counterattack the American
invasion.  A number of the destroyers were to be beached at the last
minute to be used as anti-invasion gun platforms.  Once offshore, the
invasion fleet would be forced to defend not only against the attacks
from the air, but would also be confronted with suicide attacks from
sea.  Japan had established a suicide naval attack unit of midget
submarines, human torpedoes and exploding motorboats.

The goal of the Japanese was to shatter the invasion before the
landing.  The Japanese were convinced the Americans would back off or
become so demoralized that they would then accept a
less-than-unconditional surrender and a more honorable and face-saving
end for the Japanese.  But as horrible as the battle of Japan would be
off the beaches, it would be on Japanese soil that the American forces
would face the most rugged and fanatical defense encountered during the
war.

Throughout the island-hopping Pacific campaign, Allied troops had always
out numbered the Japanese by 2 to 1 and sometimes 3 to 1.  In Japan it
would be different.  By virtue of a combination of cunning, guesswork,
and brilliant military reasoning, a number of Japan's top military
leaders were able to deduce, not only when, but where, the United States
would land its first invasion forces.

Facing the 14 American divisions landing at Kyushu would be 14 Japanese
divisions, 7 independent mixed brigades, 3 tank brigades and thousands
of naval troops.  On Kyushu the odds would be 3 to 2 in favor of the
Japanese, with 790,000 enemy defenders against 550,000 Americans.

This time the bulk of the Japanese defenders would not be the poorly trained
and ill-equipped labor battalions that the Americans had faced in the
earlier campaigns.

The Japanese defenders would be the hard core of the home army. These
troops were well-fed and well equipped.  They were familiar with the
terrain, had stockpiles of arms and ammunition, and had developed an
effective system of transportation and supply almost invisible from the
air. Many of these Japanese troops were the elite of the army, and they
were swollen with a fanatical fighting spirit.  Japan's network of beach
defenses consisted of offshore mines, thousands of suicide scuba divers
attacking landing craft, and mines planted on the beaches. Coming
ashore, the American Eastern amphibious assault forces at Miyazaki would
face three Japanese divisions, and two others poised for counter
attack.  Awaiting the Southeastern attack force at Ariake Bay was an
entire division and at least one mixed infantry brigade.

On the western shores of Kyushu, the Marines would face the most brutal
opposition.  Along the invasion beaches would be the three Japanese
divisions, a tank brigade, a mixed infantry brigade and an artillery
command.  Components of two divisions would also be poised to launch
counterattacks.  If not needed to reinforce the primary landing beaches,
the American Reserve Force would be landed at the base of Kagoshima Bay
November 4, where they would be confronted by two mixed infantry
brigades, parts of two infantry divisions and thousands of naval troops.

All along the invasion beaches, American troops would face coastal
batteries, anti-landing obstacles and a network of heavily fortified
pillboxes, bunkers, and underground fortresses.  As Americans waded
ashore, they would face intense artillery and mortar fire as they worked
their way through concrete rubble and barbed-wire entanglements arranged
to funnel them into the muzzles of these Japanese guns.

On the beaches and beyond would be hundreds of Japanese machine gun
positions, beach mines, booby traps, trip-wire mines and sniper units. 
Suicide units concealed in "spider holes" would engage the troops as
they passed nearby.  In the heat of battle, Japanese infiltration units
would be sent to reap havoc in the American lines by cutting phone and
communication lines.  Some of the Japanese troops would be in American
uniform, English-speaking Japanese officers were assigned to break in on
American radio traffic to call off artillery fire, to order retreats and
to further confuse troops.

Other infiltration with demolition charges strapped on their chests or
backs would attempt to blow up American tanks, artillery pieces and
ammunition stores as they were unloaded ashore.

Beyond the beaches were large artillery pieces situated to bring down a
curtain of fire on the beach.  Some of these large guns were mounted on
railroad tracks running in and out of caves protected by concrete and
steel.  The battle for Japan would be won by what Simon Bolivar Buckner,
a lieutenant general in the Confederate army during the Civil War, had
called "Prairie Dog Warfare." This type of fighting was almost unknown
to the ground troops in Europe and the Mediterranean. It was peculiar
only to the soldiers and Marines who fought the Japanese on islands all
over the Pacific -- at Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Prairie Dog Warfare was a battle for yards, feet and sometimes inches.
It was brutal, deadly and dangerous form of combat aimed at an
underground, heavily fortified, non-retreating enemy.  In the mountains
behind the Japanese beaches were underground networks of caves, bunkers,
command posts and hospitals connected by miles of tunnels with dozens of
entrances and exits.  Some of these complexes could hold up to 1,000
troops.  In addition to the use of poison gas and bacteriological
warfare (which the Japanese had experimented with), Japan mobilized its
citizenry.

Had Olympic come about, the Japanese civilian population, inflamed by a
national slogan - "One Hundred Million Will Die for the Emperor and
Nation" - were prepared to fight to the death.  Twenty Eight Million
Japanese had become a part of the National Volunteer Combat Force. They
were armed with ancient rifles, lunge mines, satchel charges, Molotov
cocktails and one-shot black powder mortars.  Others were armed with
swords, long bows, axes and bamboo spears.  The civilian units were to
be used in nighttime attacks, hit and run maneuvers, delaying actions
and massive suicide charges at the weaker American positions.  At the
early stage of the invasion, 1,000 Japanese and American soldiers would
be dying every hour.

The invasion of Japan never became a reality because on August 6, 1945,
an atomic bomb was exploded over Hiroshima.  Three days later, a second
bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

Within days the war with Japan was at a close.  Had these bombs not been
dropped and ha d the invasion been launched as scheduled, combat
casualties in Japan would have been at a minimum of the tens of
thousands.  Every foot of Japanese soil would have been paid for by
Japanese and American lives.

One can only guess at how many civilians would have committed suicide in
their homes or in futile mass military attacks.  In retrospect, the 1
million American men who were to be the casualties of the invasion, were
instead lucky enough to survive the war. Intelligence studies and
military estimates made 50 years ago, and not latter-day speculation,
clearly indicate that the battle for Japan might well have resulted in
the biggest blood-bath in the history of modern warfare.

Far worse would be what might have happened to Japan as a nation and as
a culture.  When the invasion came, it would have come after several
months of fire bombing all of the remaining Japanese cities. The cost in
human life that resulted from the two atomic blasts would be small in
comparison to the total number of Japanese lives that would have been
lost by this aerial devastation.

With American forces locked in combat in the south of Japan, little
could have prevented the Soviet Union from marching into the northern

half of the Japanese home islands.  Japan today could be divided much

like Korea and Germany.  The world was spared the cost of Operation

Downfall, however, because Japan formally surrendered to the United Nations

September 2, 1945, and World War II was over. The aircraft carriers, cruisers

and transport ships scheduled to carry the invasion troops to Japan, ferried

home American troops in a gigantic operation called Magic Carpet.

In the fall of 1945, in the aftermath of the war, few people concerned
themselves with the invasion plans.  Following the surrender, the
classified documents, maps, diagrams and appendices for Operation
Downfall were packed away in boxes and eventually stored at the National
Archives.  These plans that called for the invasion of Japan paint a
vivid description of what might have been one of the most horrible
campaigns in the history of man.  The fact that the story of the
invasion of Japan is locked up in the National Archives, and is not told
in our history books is something for which all Americans can be thankful.


I had the distinct privilege of being assigned as later commander of the
8090th PACUSA detach, 20th AAF, and one of the personal pilots of then
Brig General Fred Irving USMA17 when he was commanding general of
Western Pacific Base Command.  We had a brand new C-46F tail number
8546.  It was different from the rest of the C-46 line in that it was
equipped with Hamilton Hydromatic props whereas the others had Curtis
electrics.  On one of the many flights we had 14 Generals and Admirals
aboard on an inspection trip to Saipan and Tinian.  Notable aboard was
General Thomas C. Handy, who had signed the operational order to drop
the atomic bombs on Japan.

A WWII airman heads out with secret orders

Sunday, April 15, 2007

KATY MULDOON

The Oregonian

When the USS Hornet slipped under the Golden Gate Bridge and headed west with 16 B-25 bombers squeezed onto its deck, Jake DeShazer still didn't know the aircraft carrier's destination or what his crew's top-secret mission would entail. But 10 miles out to sea, the public-address system crackled to life and spilled the secret:

With Lt. Col. James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle leading the way, Jake and more than six dozen other Army Air Forces airmen would bomb Japan. Their daring strike would lift American morale when the nation needed it most -- four months after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor.

In time, the Doolittle Raid would become the stuff of Hollywood movies, inspire books and even fuel a lucrative collectibles niche on eBay. But Jake couldn't have guessed the shift it would inspire in his own life. He never suspected that his lust for revenge against the enemy would evolve into something entirely different.

Surely on that day, April 2, 1942, it must have made Jake, a bombardier, wonder what he'd gotten himself into.

The 29-year-old son of Oregon wheat farmers was an average guy who had joined the service two years earlier for an average reason: He needed the money.

His folks couldn't afford to send him to college during the Great Depression. So in 1931, the year Jake graduated from Madras High School, his only option was to find work.

He took jobs where he could: sewing gunnysacks; cutting trees; as a ranch hand making $1 a day, plus board. For two years he carried supplies by mule train to sheepherders tending flocks in the furthest corners of southern Oregon and Northern California and Nevada. The bonus: Out there in the desolate Great Basin, all Jake could do with his earnings was save them.

He squirreled away $1,000 -- enough to start his own turkey-growing operation in Butte Falls, south of Crater Lake. When it came time to sell the birds, though, the bottom dropped out of the turkey market. With only a couple of hundred dollars left, he had a decision to make.

The Army Air Corps, which was about to change its name to the Army Air Forces, offered good pay. Jake enlisted and studied to be an aircraft mechanic and bombardier.

Two years later, on Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes, led by flight commander Mitsuo Fuchida, stunned the United States and the world when they attacked Pearl Harbor, killing more than 2,000 people, sinking American ships and wiping out nearly 200 planes.

The United States was at war.

At a South Carolina air base a month later, Jake and 15 to 20 other men reported to their captain's office. The captain needed volunteers for a mission so dangerous it was likely that some men wouldn't make it back alive.

Who was willing?

Jake, as the story goes in the DeShazer family, was at the end of the line -- and none too hot on the idea.

"But everybody else said yes," recalled his wife, Florence, "so he did, too."

Jake and the other men -- pilots and co-pilots, navigators, bombardiers and gunners from the 89th Reconnaissance Squadron and 17th Bombardment Group -- got to work training in the B-25s at Eglin Field in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., for a mission that, to them, was still a mystery.

It became clear that their task would require quick takeoffs, low flying and bombing. When they got orders to travel to Alameda, Calif., in March 1942, the crews used the trip as practice, flying the bulky twin-engine bombers low much of the way across the country.

On April 1, the planes were loaded onto the aircraft carrier's flight deck. Jake's plane, No. 16, took the rear position, its tail jutting off the USS Hornet's stern.

The next day, with Jake and 79 other Army airmen aboard, the Hornet pushed away from Alameda, crossed San Francisco Bay and sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge about noon. Ten miles out to sea, when the announcement cleared up the mission's mystery, the men aboard the Hornet burst into cheers.

Retaliation for Pearl Harbor would be in their hands.

If they succeeded, Americans would know that Japan was not invulnerable.

If they succeeded, Jake and the others would have stories to tell for decades to come -- or as long as their memories held out.

At least, they would if they survived.

Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, Cpl. Jake DeShazer and the other airmen were 200 miles shy of their planned launch site when lookouts spotted trouble: a picket boat. If it radioed Japan, the surprise attack would be discovered.

The order came: Launch.

The Hornet sailed out of San Francisco Bay 16 days earlier, on April 2, 1942. The carrier was 10 miles out to sea before Army Air Forces pilots and their crews learned the nature of the secret mission they'd volunteered for: With Lt. Col. James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle leading the way, Jake and the other airmen would bomb Japan.

After the carnage the Japanese visited on Pearl Harbor four months earlier, thrusting the United States into World War II, Jake would say later that he felt as the other men did: They were hungry for payback. The whole country was.

Raised on a farm in Madras, Jake enlisted as an Army airman two years earlier after wandering from job to job and wondering what to do with his life. The 29-year-old bombardier hadn't been keen on volunteering for Doolittle's secret mission -- particularly after his captain informed Jake and other prospective volunteers that it would be so dangerous, it was unlikely they'd all survive. But when the others in his 17th Bombardment Group raised their hands, Jake did, too.

Aboard the Hornet, he had time to think about what he'd gotten himself into.

Those were busy days. Retired Maj. Gen. David M. Jones, another native Oregonian and pilot for one of the 16 Doolittle planes, recalled recently that with 80 airmen and their accompanying maintenance crews, plus the 16 B-25 bombers lined up on deck, even that mammoth aircraft carrier felt crowded.

Some of Doolittle's men slept on cots in the admiral's quarters while others bunked with their Navy counterparts. The Navy men stood watch and were up at daybreak, Jones said, but Doolittle's men had the luxury of sleeping in.

Once up, pilots and navigators studied maps of Japan and China, while bombardiers and gunners went through their planes with a fine-toothed comb, ensuring everything was in order. They sat through lectures on Japanese culture, in case they ended up in enemy hands. And they had their photos taken. In the shot of Jake's crew, the men look chilled in their leather bomber jackets, with flight caps barely covering close-cropped hair.

And, of course, there were the games.

Poker.

Craps.

"It went on pretty heavy," Jones said by phone from his Tucson, Ariz., home. When the Navy sailors weren't working, "they were playing with us or against us."

Doolittle's plan called for the Hornet to sail to a point about 400 miles off Japan. Late on the night of April 18, the 16 bombers, each loaded with four 500-pound bombs, machine guns and extra fuel tanks, would take off from the Hornet's deck. They'd bomb Tokyo and other sites in the early-morning hours, then fly to Free China -- portions of that country not held by the Japanese -- landing before dark.

The night of the 17th, many of Doolittle's men slept in their clothes.

At dawn, lookouts aboard the Hornet and its escort ships saw a Japanese picket boat and, on the horizon, two ships that appeared to be Japanese destroyers. They'd been spotted.

If Doolittle's men took off nearly a full day and 200 miles shy of their intended launch site, chances were slim they'd have enough fuel to make it to Free China. If they waited, they'd lose the element of surprise.

Doolittle and the Hornet's skipper gave the launch order.

Crews packed quickly and scurried to their stations, swinging through the ship's exchange and nearly emptying it, Jones remembered, of cigarettes and candy.

None of the pilots had taken off from the deck of a carrier, though they'd practiced plenty of short takeoffs. That morning, they'd have about 350 feet of runway, maybe a little more. They'd have rain and howling wind, too. A storm sprayed water across the Hornet's deck and as the planes warmed up, Jones said, exhaust choked the air.

Doolittle moved his plane into position. When the Hornet's bow rose with a swell, the flagman gave him the signal. He released the brakes, hit the throttle and was up. He circled the Hornet once and headed toward Japan.

One by one, 15 planes followed.

As he waited for takeoff, Jake discovered a 1-foot hole in No. 16's plastic nose. He knew they were short on gas; the breach would make them even less efficient.

He shoved a jacket into the hole.

The engine roared, and the bomber dubbed "The Bat Out of Hell" shook. Jake fastened his seat belt and at 9:20 a.m., they took off.

In a 1950 book describing his story, Jake recounted looking back after takeoff. The Hornet and its escort ships had already turned around. They were headed home.

Doolittle's Raiders were on their own.

About 1 p.m., Jake's plane reached Japan. Flying just over the treetops, they could see people below, waving. Maybe they thought the bombers were Japanese.

While other raiders bombed military targets in Tokyo and other cities, Jake and his crew headed for Nagoya, about 300 miles south. They dropped their bombs on an oil refinery, then continued south along the Japanese coast, heading for China.

Night fell and the fog thickened. They'd been in the air 13 hours, and the fuel gauge revealed bad news. Lt. William G. Farrow, Jake's pilot, told the crew it was time. He didn't know whether they were over Japanese-held territory or into the safety of Free China. Regardless, they'd have to bail out.

Jake inched his feet out the bomber's door and dropped into darkness.

Jake DeShazer yanked the rip cord. Darkness and thick fog folded around him like damp wool, and as he drifted toward the Earth, a lonely quiet did, too.

Jake had never jumped from a plane before, and the sound of the B-25 bomber's engines faded as he fell. He had no idea whether he'd land in friendly territory or in enemy hands, but he had 3,000 feet to think about it -- to wonder what a guy from Central Oregon sagebrush country was doing bailing out of a plane into Chinese rice-paddy territory.

He landed in the mud, hitting hard enough to break a couple of ribs, but that was the least of Jake's worries.

Jake and his crew had flown for 13 hours, but had they made it as far as China? If so, was he in free China or in Chinese territory occupied by the Japanese? Had his fellow airmen survived the jump? Where were they?

The 29-year-old bombardier, an Army Air Forces corporal, had been up since dawn. With the rest of the men -- 80 in all -- Jake had followed Lt. Col. James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle's lead and taken off from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet 600 miles off Japan's coast. They knew their planes might not have enough fuel to make it to safety.

On April 18, 1942, the crews of five aboard 16 bombers had dropped payloads onto targets in Tokyo and elsewhere. The raid didn't inflict much physical damage, but it would be hailed back home as a great morale boost -- the first good news since Japan bombed Pearl Harbor four months earlier.

Jake picked himself up, removed his pistol from its holster and fired a few shots into the air. No one fired a reply.

He'd landed in a cemetery and found a shed -- a shrine from the look of it -- barely big enough to shelter him. He pushed aside candles and icons, settled in and slept until the sun woke him.

A 1950 book about his experiences described how Jake walked through the countryside that day. He encountered slightly built people with weathered skin. None spoke English.

Raised in Madras, Jake had scarcely traveled outside the Pacific Northwest. He couldn't tell if the peasants he passed were Chinese or Japanese, friends or enemies.

Before he mustered the courage to enter a house where two soldiers played with children, he slid a bullet into his pistol's chamber and drew back the hammer.

"China or Japan?" Jake recalled asking the soldiers.

China, they replied.

"They were lying," Jake's wife, Florence DeShazer, said in a recent interview.

Ten Japanese soldiers surrounded him. One held a bayonet to Jake's back. Others drew their guns. One took Jake's pistol.

The next morning, he saw familiar faces: the rest of the crew from his plane. Soldiers flew them to Nanking, where they got their first taste of a Chinese prison.

"I was still blindfolded, as I had been most of the time for over 12 hours, and hadn't eaten all day," Jake later told C. Hoyt Watson, who wrote "The Amazing Story of Sergeant Jacob DeShazer," which was published in 1950 by Light and Life Press. "I had been asked questions at every opportunity, but I would always tell them that I wouldn't talk."

Guards led Jake into a room and removed his blindfold. Standing before him was a Japanese judge, who queried him about the USS Hornet and the raid.

Jake refused to talk.

The judge looked the airman in the eye and said, "Tomorrow morning at sunrise I'm going to have the honor of cutting your head off."

"I lay in the cell all night, blindfolded, handcuffed, without blankets," Watson quoted Jake as saying. "The next morning at sunrise I was led out of my cell. I had no breakfast. The blindfold was taken off, the handcuffs were removed. I looked around for the judge with his weapon of execution, but I saw a fellow with a camera, and everyone was smiling."

The camera clicked. Soldiers loaded Jake and the others onto a plane bound for Tokyo.

Jake had despised the Japanese since the December day they'd killed more than 2,000 Americans at Pearl Harbor. His hate festered, and it's no wonder. Jake shared cells with rats, lice and bedbugs. He was rarely allowed to speak to his comrades. When he refused to answer questions, soldiers knocked him to his knees and beat him.

He and the others were moved to Nagasaki, where they shared a cell for one night with three raiders from the sixth plane to leave the Hornet. It had crashed into the ocean, and the five-man crew tried to swim ashore. The three who made it had no idea what happened to those aboard the other 14 bombers. They didn't know that most had made it to safety.

Sleep-deprived, hungry and suffering from dysentery, the prisoners were moved to Shanghai, where frequent rumors said they'd all be executed. A trial of sorts commenced, but the Americans had no defense attorney and no chance to declare their innocence. When it was over, all were condemned to die.

A firing squad killed three of the raiders.

Robert L. Hite, George Barr, Chase J. Nielsen Robert J. Meder and Jake learned their sentences had been commuted to life in prison.

In a recent telephone interview from his Arkansas home, Hite said the men figured that if Japan won the war, then they'd live their lives as slave laborers. If the Japan lost, the airmen expected to die by firing squad.

Spring melted into sweltering summer, and the cells felt like ovens. Fall turned to winter, and the men froze.

On Dec. 1, 1943, after 11/2 years in prison, Meder died of malnutrition and disease.

Guards increased the remaining prisoners' rations and, for the first time, brought them a few books, including a Bible.

While Jake had been raised in a Christian home, he had never embraced the faith, his wife, Florence, said. The Bible was new territory. The guards passed it to Jake in May 1944 and gave him three weeks to read it. In his cell's dim light, he plowed through the entire book several times, memorizing some passages.

He'd later swear that he knew the precise moment his life changed. It was June 8, as he read Romans 10:9: "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."

"Hunger, starvation and a freezing cold prison cell no longer had horrors for me," Jake told his biographer. "Even death could hold no threat when I knew that God had saved me."

From that day, Jake vowed, he'd live the words he'd read. If he ever was freed, he'd find a way to share his newfound personal peace with the people he believed needed it most.

Jake DeShazer awoke on a summer morning and sensed he should pray for peace.

In his cramped Chinese prison cell, guarded by occupying Japanese troops, the Army Air Forces corporal from Oregon had no clue that the United States effectively ended World War II that morning, Aug. 6, 1945, when it dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Jake prayed.

Ten days later, his cell opened. Guards handed Jake and his three fellow airmen their old U.S. Army Air Forces uniforms, loaded them in a truck and dropped them at an English hotel in Peking, now Beijing.

Nearly 31/2 years after they'd joined Lt. Col. James "Jimmy" Doolittle in a daring raid on Japan, 65 years ago today, they were free. Their 40 months of solitary confinement, interrogation, torture, hunger, disease, loneliness and repeated threats of execution were over at last.

Jake could get on with the surprising life he'd mapped out for himself in prison.

Although raised in a Christian home, he wasn't a believer until his Japanese captors handed him a Bible. Jake devoured it. The words, he'd later tell his biographer, overwhelmed him with joy he wanted to share. He vowed to spend his life evangelizing to those who had imprisoned him -- his former enemies, the Japanese.

Jake returned to Oregon and considered his future. His folks hadn't been able to afford to send him to college during the Depression. He'd tackled odd jobs, then, with the promise of steady pay, joined the military two years before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Jake was promoted to sergeant for his role in the legendary Doolittle Raid. He collected more than three years' military back pay and, at 32, finally had his shot at school.

His sister worked for C. Hoyt Watson, president of Seattle Pacific College, now Seattle Pacific University, a Christian school. Watson, who wrote "The Amazing Story of Sergeant Jacob DeShazer," first published in 1950 by Light and Life Press, invited him to enroll and prepare for the missionary life.

Jake's college portrait shows a smartly dressed man with a luxurious crop of wavy, dark hair. His gentle, deep-set eyes appear older than the rest of his face.

Jake had seen a lot. And though he was a quiet sort, particularly after years in solitary confinement, once surrounded by students in school and church audiences keen to hear his story, he began to speak a lot, too.

On May 1, 1946, he took an Iowa girl with a bright smile and warm manner to a Youth for Christ meeting. Her name was Florence Matheny.

"I think he was attracted to me," she said recently, "because he knew I wanted to go into missionary work. Not everybody wanted to go to Japan with him."

They married that August in Gresham.

By the time Jake and Florence finished school in June 1948, they'd started a family. They visited churches across the nation whose members were eager to hear the tale of the war prisoner who found salvation and forgave his captors.

Jake's dream, though, was to share the story with a different audience.

In a 1948 photo, Jake and Florence are bundled up against December's chill, leaning on the rail of the USS General Meigs, a former troop carrier. Jake wore a fedora, and Florence, a fancy corsage. They were about to set sail from San Francisco Bay to Japan, just as Jake had done six years earlier aboard the USS Hornet, on his way to bomb the enemy.

Jake wrote a pamphlet titled "I Was a Prisoner of Japan," and a religious publisher distributed 1 million copies of it in Japan before the couple arrived. It recounted the torture and starvation Jake had endured, and described how he had replaced hatred for his enemies with the love he discovered in the Bible.

When the General Meigs pulled into Yokohama on Dec. 28, dozens of reporters swarmed the dock, curious to meet the former war prisoner returning to their country voluntarily.

"They asked him why he came back to Japan," Florence remembered. "He told them what happened to him, and he wanted them to know about Jesus. He wanted them to be ready, so that when the time came for them to die, they'd go to heaven."

The news stories sparked scores of speaking invitations.

Florence set up a home base, while Jake toured the country in a donated 1948 Chevrolet coupe, outfitted with megaphones on the roof, to advertise his talks. With the aid of a Japanese interpreter, Jake told his story in churches, schools, hospitals, factories, mines and city streets, evangelizing sometimes three and four times a day.

In 1950, those pamphlets Jake had written still circulated. One landed in the hands of Mitsuo Fuchida, who had commanded the Japanese force that attacked Pearl Harbor nine years earlier. He'd later write that Jake's words inspired him to read the Bible, which led him to convert to Christianity.

The two old enemies met that year, and later they'd preach together to large crowds in Japan and the United States.

As Jake's family grew -- the DeShazers eventually had five children -- his followers did, too. With Florence, he started three Free Methodist churches in Japan, including one in Nagoya, the city his plane had bombed during the Doolittle Raid. The couple helped the Japanese start about 20 more churches.

In Japan and the states, Jake tried to branch out and deliver sermons on varied topics. But those who came to listen insisted that he tell the story he'd told thousands of times -- his story of hatred turned to love, of fighting transformed to forgiveness, of finding faith.

"Even people who had heard him many times . . . they wanted to hear his story again," said his youngest child, Ruth Kutrakun, a Seattle schoolteacher.

"When he told his story," she said, "he experienced it all over again. . . . It was so much a part of who he was."

Jake and Florence retired from missionary work in 1978, a year after they'd moved to the Willamette Valley, where Jake was born 94 years ago. He continued to preach his story until he was 90.

Citations, plaques and photographs line the walls and sit atop a desk in the small apartment that Jake and Florence share in a Salem assisted-living center. Colorful prints depict those bulky B-25 bombers taking off from the USS Hornet's deck on a windswept day 65 years ago. One frame holds more than a half-dozen of Jake's medals, including a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded for his service in the Doolittle Raid.

Even those, however, aren't enough to jog Jake's memory, which began to slip about four years ago into the dark recesses of dementia. He'll look at a photo of a handsome young airman with deep-set eyes and a soft smile and ask, "Who's that?"

He doesn't recall volunteering for a dangerous mission, jumping from a bomber on a pitch-black night into enemy territory or 40 months of hunger and torture in prison.

He doesn't know that he is the oldest of the 14 Doolittle Raiders still living.

"It's sad," Florence said. "But maybe it's good, in a way."

Katy Muldoon: 503-221-8526; katymuldoon@news.oregonian.com