Doolittle’s Tokyo Raid, at a glance 70 years later, pivotal in turning tide of World War II
THE TIME: Still reeling from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Americans in early spring 1942 were seeing Japanese forces rolling through the Pacific, taking thousands of prisoners in April 1942 for the beginning of the infamous Bataan death march. “Japan and Germany are winning the world war pretty handily,” explains historian Hugh Ambrose. “America has suffered a number of defeats in the Pacific Rim in rather startling fashion. There is a great deal of fear on the part of the American public.”
THE PLAN: Commanded by Lt. Col. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, 16 land-based B-25 bombers with crews of five men each launch from an aircraft carrier. Modified to maximize fuel capacity, the planes would drop their payloads on a variety of strategic targets on Japan’s mainland, then head to friendly air bases in China. But they were spotted and launched earlier and farther out than planned; all but one crash-landed or was ditched off China’s coast.
THE IMPACT: Historians say the raid, while doing relatively little military damage in comparison to the assault on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor, boosted American morale while stunning the Japanese and stemming their tide. A major U.S. victory two months later at the Battle of Midway signaled the war was beginning to shift.
THE FOOTNOTE: Raiders Maj. Thomas Griffin and Gen. David Jones were shot down in later missions, were reunited in the German prison Stalag Luft III, site of “The Great Escape” depicted in the 1963 movie. A 2002 documentary short narrated by actor James Coburn features Jones, who died in 2008, as a model for the character played by Steve McQueen.
LEARNING MORE: Surviving Raiders recommend “The Doolittle Raid,” a 1991 book by Carroll V. Glines, as a definitive recounting of their story, and “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” a 1944 movie based on pilot Ted Lawson’s story, with Spencer Tracy playing Doolittle. The movie will be shown during their reunion this week.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
2007
我暫時找不到另外一執著的日本人
他出版一系列 "核爆"等慘史的詞條
底下的這說的是日本戰前活著的人
佔現在人口四分之一
所寫的"戰爭之害"系列
前幾天日本友人川瀨先生要強著記錄的
是台灣人日據時代的看電影記憶
People's war stories weave a mosaic of history
08/03/2007
Each August, a book is sent to me from Osaka. "Magotachi eno Shogen" (Testimonies for our grandchildren) is an anthology of personal accounts of World War II written by ordinary people. The volume I received this month, just off the presses, is the 20th in the series.
Among the 74 writers is a woman who miraculously survived in Saipan, the island where many Japanese committed mass suicide in the final months of the war. Another man recalls the horrific experience of hauling the body of his classmate out of an air raid shelter. And there is the story of how a mother fled Korea in the dead of winter with her six children.
Told falteringly in simple language, these stories are a compelling reminder of the evils of war.
The editor and publisher of the series is Takuma Fukuyama, 73, who runs his own publishing company. For this series, he solicits manuscripts from the public every year. He screens them himself and contacts the authors by telephone or letter to get additional information as the copies are edited.
The work consumes a great deal of time and energy, but all this is a labor of love for Fukuyama, who has consistently focused on the sufferings of the common folk.
One cannot really visualize war simply by observing history from a lofty vantage point.
It is only after reviewing varied personal recollections of wartime that one can eventually begin to perceive the wide mosaic of experiences that emerges.
This conviction has kept Fukuyama going for 20 years. He has received more than 13,000 manuscripts over the last two decades, and he has printed 1,599 of them. That number is impressive enough to give Fukuyama's volumes the title of the "people's chronicles of war."
This year, for the first time, he included an account submitted by a centenarian. Attached to a draft prepared by the person's nursing caregiver was a manuscript in the spidery handwriting of the 100-year-old.
Fukuyama was awed by the centenarian's determination to speak out. The wartime generation is aging. Three in four Japanese today were born after the war.
Fukuyama's mission is to keep scooping water from the dwindling fountain of war memories to record for posterity. He is resolved to keep publishing his series for as long as the manuscripts keep arriving.
--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 2(IHT/Asahi: August 3,2007)
Among the 74 writers is a woman who miraculously survived in Saipan, the island where many Japanese committed mass suicide in the final months of the war. Another man recalls the horrific experience of hauling the body of his classmate out of an air raid shelter. And there is the story of how a mother fled Korea in the dead of winter with her six children.
Told falteringly in simple language, these stories are a compelling reminder of the evils of war.
The editor and publisher of the series is Takuma Fukuyama, 73, who runs his own publishing company. For this series, he solicits manuscripts from the public every year. He screens them himself and contacts the authors by telephone or letter to get additional information as the copies are edited.
The work consumes a great deal of time and energy, but all this is a labor of love for Fukuyama, who has consistently focused on the sufferings of the common folk.
One cannot really visualize war simply by observing history from a lofty vantage point.
It is only after reviewing varied personal recollections of wartime that one can eventually begin to perceive the wide mosaic of experiences that emerges.
This conviction has kept Fukuyama going for 20 years. He has received more than 13,000 manuscripts over the last two decades, and he has printed 1,599 of them. That number is impressive enough to give Fukuyama's volumes the title of the "people's chronicles of war."
This year, for the first time, he included an account submitted by a centenarian. Attached to a draft prepared by the person's nursing caregiver was a manuscript in the spidery handwriting of the 100-year-old.
Fukuyama was awed by the centenarian's determination to speak out. The wartime generation is aging. Three in four Japanese today were born after the war.
Fukuyama's mission is to keep scooping water from the dwindling fountain of war memories to record for posterity. He is resolved to keep publishing his series for as long as the manuscripts keep arriving.
--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 2(IHT/Asahi: August 3,2007)
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