Finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History. “Like Lauren Hillebrand’s Unbroken…Target Tokyo brings to life an indelible era.” –Ben Cosgrove, The Daily Beast In December 1941, as American forces tallied the dead at Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt gathered with his senior military counselors to plan an ambitious counterstrike against the heart of the Japanese Empire: Tokyo. Four … the heart of the Japanese Empire: Tokyo. Four months later, on April 18, 1942, sixteen U.S. Army bombers under the command of daredevil pilot Jimmy Doolittle lifted off from the deck of the USS Hornet on a one-way mission to pummel the enemy’s factories, refineries, and dockyards and then escape to Free China. For Roosevelt, the raid was a propaganda victory, a potent salve to heal a wounded nation. In Japan, outraged over the deaths of innocent civilians–including children–military leaders launched an ill-fated attempt to seize Midway that would turn the tide of the war. But it was the Chinese who suffered the worst, victims of a retaliatory campaign by the Japanese Army that claimed an estimated 250,000 lives and saw families drowned in wells, entire towns burned, and communities devastated by bacteriological warfare.
At the center of this incredible story is Doolittle, the son of an Alaskan gold prospector, a former boxer, and brilliant engineer who earned his doctorate from MIT. Other fascinating characters populate this gripping narrative, including Chiang Kai-shek, Lieutenant General Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, and the feisty Vice Admiral William “Bull” Halsey Jr. Here, too, are indelible portraits of the young pilots, navigators, and bombardiers, many of them little more than teenagers, who raised their hands to volunteer for a mission from which few expected to return. Most of the bombers ran out of fuel and crashed. Captured raiders suffered torture and starvation in Japan’s notorious POW camps. Others faced a harrowing escape across China–via boat, rickshaw, and foot–with the Japanese Army in pursuit.
Based on scores of never-before-published records drawn from archives across four continents as well as new interviews with survivors, Target Tokyo is World War II history of the highest order: a harrowing adventure story that also serves as a pivotal reexamination of one of America’s most daring military operations.
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Best assembly of information relative to the Doolittle Raid on Japan in April of 1942.
Excellent story of the Doolittle raids on Japan. You are right there. The research is outstanding. The definitive work on the subject.
Loved it! I learned so much about these incredibly brave men on an incredibly dangerous mission.
I love history and knew about the raid, but this book filled in all the blanks.
An entertaining and quite detailed history of the attack everyone’s heard of, but no one knows hardly anything about. IMO unnecessarily detailed and choppy, especially in the post-attack description of the crews’ crashes and search for friendly Chinese to aid and complete their escape from the Japanese that pursued them into China. Jumping back and forth between crews and with the lengthy post attack period, this section dragged somewhat for me. But worth a read for anyone curious about just what Doolittle’s Raiders actually did during their highly secretive attack.
A well written history.
This is so complete because you learn about so much more that was going on around the this time, about the Japanese and the Chinese. This is a book I want to keep.
The Doolittle Raid was a plan that was outrageous to start with. It was pure daring, dare devil action. Despite the great set backs and danger, the raid took place and turned the tide of the war. This is a really good book.
Very informative
Great history of events and people.
This is a very good book on the history of the Doolittle Raiders. I remember when it took place all those years ago. All these men were true hero’s.
Part Flyboys, and part Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, James M. Scott’s Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor, is the story of the 16 B-25 bomber crews who took off from the Hornet in April 1942 inflicting somewhat minor damage on Japan’s infrastructure, but a heavy toll on its psyche.
Doolittle was already famous before he planned and led this daring raid. A stunt pilot and early aviator, he was already a flight instructor in World War I. By the second world war, his reputation was such that men leapt at the chance to serve with him. As such, the Air Corps had no difficulty finding volunteers for a top-secret and highly dangerous mission, the details of which the men themselves would not learn until after the Hornet had put out to sea.
The raid itself was remarkable primarily for being the first time the Japanese home islands had ever come under attack from a foreign enemy, setting the stage for the later attacks that would flatten so many of Japan’s cities – to say nothing of the nuclear bombs that would end the war. It was also remarkable for the scope and scale of retaliation by Japan directed at China, where 15 of the 16 bomber crews landed after the raid. While the final tally will never be known, an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians became victims of the Japanese as a direct result of the raid.
Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor sheds light on one of the early actions against the Japanese, one that has been rather forgotten, consigned to the shadows of such places as Iwo Jima, the Midway, and the Coral Sea. For history enthusiasts, Scott’s work offers an opportunity to learn more about this turning point in the war.
(This review was originally published at: http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2015/12/target-tokyo-jimmy-doolittle-and-raid.html)
A terrific history.