Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor (63 page)

The Doolittle Raid provided Ishii with another chance to target Chekiang and surrounding provinces. After returning from Tokyo in May, Ishii summoned his senior chiefs, informing them that the general staff had ordered the unit to prepare for a large expedition in China. The plan was to target the areas around Yushan, Kinhwa, and Futsin to coincide with the withdrawal of Japanese forces. In what was known as land bacterial sabotage, troops would contaminate wells, rivers, and fields, hoping to sicken local villagers as well as the Chinese forces, which would no doubt move back in and reoccupy the border region as soon as the Japanese departed. Over the course of several conferences, Ishii and his divisional chiefs debated the best bacteria to use, settling on plague, anthrax, cholera, typhoid, and paratyphoid, all of which would be spread via spray, fleas, and direct contamination of water sources. For the operation Ishii ordered almost three hundred pounds of paratyphoid and anthrax germs.

In late June and early July 1942 about 120 officers and civilian employees left Pingfan for Nanking by rail and air. The mission was initially slated for the end of July, but the slow progress of the Japanese operation in the region pushed it back into August. Technicians filled peptone bottles with bacteria, packaged them in boxes labeled “Water Supply,” and flew them to Nanking. Once in Nanking, workers transferred the bacteria to metal flasks—like those used for drinking water—and flew them into the target areas. Troops then tossed the flasks into wells, marshes, and homes. The Japanese also prepared three thousand rolls, contaminating them with typhoid and paratyphoid. Guards handed out the rolls to hungry Chinese prisoners of war, who were then released to go home and spread disease. Soldiers likewise left another four hundred biscuits infected with typhoid near fences, under trees, and around bivouac areas to make it appear as though retreating forces had left them behind, knowing that hungry locals would devour them.

The region’s devastation made it difficult to tally who got sick and why, particularly since the Japanese had looted
and burned hospitals and clinics, cutting off means for many to seek treatment. The thousands of rotting hogs, cows, and humans that clogged wells and littered the rubble only contaminated the drinking water and increased the risk of diseases. Furthermore, the impoverished region, where villagers often defecated in holes outdoors, had been prone to such outbreaks and epidemics before the invasion. Anecdotal evidence gathered from missionaries and journalists shows that many Chinese fell sick from malaria, dysentery, and cholera even before the Japanese reportedly began the operation. Chinese journalist Yang Kang, who traveled the region for the
Takung Pao
newspaper, visited the village of Peipo in late July. “Those who returned to the village after the enemy had evacuated fell sick with no one spared,” she wrote. “This was the situation which took place not only in Peipo but everywhere.”

Kang recounted how a pallid and clearly ill woman answered the knock on the door of her home. “Everybody is sick,” the woman told Kang. “All are sick people.” “She was perfectly right,” Kang wrote. “She herself was sick. Her daughter was having malaria. Her elder grandson was having dysentery and the younger one’s face was pallid and swollen.” In Tsungjen, Kang asked a child on the street what ailed him. “Belly ache,” the boy responded. “Belly seems burning.” “His eyes and nose were so swollen that they seemed to have disappeared altogether,” she wrote. “He was about eleven and there are bigger and smaller ones as sick as he all along the road.” Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett accompanied Kang on her travels, finding that outbreaks of disease had left entire cities off limits. “We avoided staying in towns overnight, because cholera had broken out and was spreading rapidly,” Burchett wrote. “The magistrate assured us that every inhabited house in the city was stricken with some disease.”

In December 1942 Tokyo radio reported massive outbreaks of cholera, and Chinese reports the following spring revealed that a plague epidemic forced the government to quarantine the Chekiang town of Luangshuan. “As a note of some interest,” an American intelligence report stated, “previous to the Sino-Japanese war, bubonic plague had never been known to appear south of the Yangtze River.” Chinese authorities knew better. “The losses suffered by our people,” one later wrote, “were inestimable.” Some of Unit 731’s victims included Japanese soldiers. A lance corporal captured in 1944
told American interrogators that upward of ten thousand troops were infected during the Chekiang campaign. “Diseases were particularly cholera, but also dysentery and pest,” the report stated. “Victims were usually rushed to hospitals in rear, particularly the Hangchow Army Hospital, but cholera victims, usually being treated too late, mostly died.” The prisoner saw a report that listed seventeen hundred dead, most of cholera. Actual deaths likely were much higher, he said, “it being common practice to pare down unpleasant figures.”

The three-month campaign of terror across Chekiang and Kiangsi Provinces infuriated many in the Chinese military, who understood that local farmers and villagers were raped, murdered, and poisoned as a consequence of America’s raid, one designed to lift the spirits of people thousands of miles away in the United States. None of Japan’s reprisals were unexpected by officials in either Chungking or Washington, who had purposely withheld details of the raid from Chiang Kai-shek, knowing the Japanese would surely retaliate, a vengeance that claimed an estimated 250,000 lives.

Chiang Kai-shek cabled the horrors to Washington. “After they had been caught unawares by the falling of American bombs on Tokyo, Japanese troops attacked the coastal areas of China, where many of the American fliers had landed. These Japanese troops slaughtered every man, woman and child in those areas,” he wrote. “Let me repeat—these Japanese troops slaughtered every man, woman and child in those areas.”

Lieutenant General Stilwell received his first report of the destruction in October after one of his aides visited the region. He blamed Chiang Kai-shek and what he viewed as cowardly Chinese forces. “It was even worse than we thought,” he wrote in his diary. “A bitched-up action at Ch’u Hsien, buggered completely by the Generalissimo, and then orders to retreat, which were thoroughly carried out. The ‘reconquest’ was merely reoccupation after the Japs had gone, allowing plenty of time to make sure.” Chennault noted that the Japanese had so thoroughly wrecked the airfields at Chuchow, Yushan, and Lishui that it would be easier to build new ones than to repair them. “Entire villages through which the raiders had passed were slaughtered to the last child and burned to the ground. One sizeable city was razed for no other reason than the sentiment displayed by its citizens in filling up Jap bomb craters on the nearby airfield
,” he wrote. “The Chinese paid a terrible price for the Doolittle raid, but they never complained.”

The slaughter drew some notice in the American media when news trickled out in the spring of 1943 as missionaries who witnessed the atrocities returned home. A few major papers even published editorials, including the
New York Times
. “The Japanese have chosen how they want to represent themselves to the world,” the paper wrote. “We shall take them at their own valuation, on their own showing. We shall not forget, and we shall see that a penalty is paid.” The
Los Angeles Times
proved far more forceful, calling for vengeance and arguing that the destruction of the Japanese Empire would only partly atone for such atrocities. “To say that these slayings were motivated by cowardice as well as savagery is to say the obvious,” the paper argued. “The Nippon war lords have thus proved themselves to be made of the basest metal, and offer considerable evidence that the Japanese race is subhuman. It would be unfair to the lower animals to call it bestial. It might even be libelous to hell to call it demoniac.”

CHAPTER 23

I went through ninety-two days of hell and no words can adequately describe the mental and physical torture I had to endure.

—W. N. DICKSON, BRIDGE HOUSE PRISONER, AUGUST 31, 1945, STATEMENT

SKI YORK AND HIS CREW
settled in at the new dacha near Penza, anxious to forget the three-week train ride across Siberia. The raiders enjoyed decent quarters and food, complete with plentiful Russian cigarettes and vodka. “Most important of all, we were near the capital,” Emmens wrote. “They would probably keep us here a few days and then slip us into Moscow and turn us over to the embassy, or maybe back to Kuibyshev. On the other hand, this present setup certainly did have an air of permanency about it. But why the secrecy, and why deny us the right to contact our own people?”

The raiders adjusted to a daily routine that began at 9:30 a.m. with breakfast followed by lunch around 1:30 p.m., a late-day snack of tea and sweet rolls at 6 p.m. and dinner at 9 p.m. Afterward the fliers listened to the radio until midnight. Outside of meals the men played chess or chatted with the guards and the female housekeepers, attempting to learn some of the language. Every other day the raiders bathed in a log hut with a copper tub and two showerheads. “We later learned,” Emmens recalled, “that the frequency with which
we demanded baths astonished them.”

In an attempt to keep the airmen busy, the Russians brought movies and a projector, including the local films
Suborov
and a four-hour slog,
Peter the First
, as well as the American movie
One Hundred Men and a Girl
, the 1937 musical comedy staring Deanna Durbin. The Russians likewise provided a small gramophone and phonograph records, allowing the airmen to dance with the housekeepers, who taught them a few folk steps. “Always the thought was in the back of our minds: When?” Emmens recalled. “When will we see someone from our embassy? When will we be leaving?”

The long-awaited answer to that question came on May 24, 1942, with the arrival of Colonel Joseph Michela, the American military attaché, and Edward Page Jr., the second secretary of the embassy. The Russians had alerted the crew of the visit only the night before, prompting the airmen once again to shine boots and clean uniforms. “Now we would find out a lot of things. Had they received any of our messages in the embassy? Had they known we were in Kuibyshev that day we waited all day locked on the train? Would they have news of the rest of the Tokyo raiders?” Emmens later wrote. “And one very important thing—was I a father yet?”

Three cars pulled up around 12:30 p.m., one with the two American diplomats and the others filled with Russian officers. After a brief tour of the dacha Michela suggested the airmen meet privately in York’s room.

“How long have you been here?” the attaché began.

The raiders walked him through the six-week ordeal, including the grueling train trip and daylong layover in Kuibyshev in which the airmen had hoped for a visit from embassy personnel. York asked whether the officials even knew the raiders were there.

“We knew you were being moved from the east, but we were told that you had been in Kuibyshev only after you had left there.”

The airmen answered the formal questions about the raid that the War Department had requested, and they asked how America planned to get them out of Russia. Michela dodged the question, assuring them that life was far better in Penza than in Moscow, with more available food and freedoms.

“Getting out is not so easy,” added Page, jumping into the conversation,
no doubt sensing the airmen’s frustration. “These people are worried about a war in the east right now. And they are afraid that the Japs might be offended if you are released.”

The news sapped the airmen’s spirits. In an effort to be more upbeat, Page said the embassy was developing a plan and hoped to have them out in two to three weeks. In the meantime he promised to keep in touch weekly.

The airmen pressed for any information from home, prompting the diplomats to ask Emmens whether he had received the news from his family that the embassy forwarded. Emmens confirmed he had not.

“Congratulations! You have a son!”

Page translated the telegram from Russian: “You have a small, redheaded son. Everyone well including grandmothers. Wish you were here. Love, Justine.”

“I wish I had some cigars to pass,” a thrilled Emmens told the others.

York asked about the Tokyo raid and the fate of the others, but Michela could offer no concrete details, other than to confirm that Japanese news reports were greatly exaggerated—just as the airmen had suspected.

The diplomats gave them a few boxes of supplies that included a couple of cartons of cigarettes, shirts, socks, soap, and a few magazines collected around the embassy, such as issues of
Collier’s
,
Saturday Evening Post
, and
Life
. The raiders passed along letters to family members for the diplomats to mail and asked whether the embassy could send some more toothbrushes and toothpaste.

“In the meantime,” the diplomats requested, “keep your eyes open for any bits of intelligence that you can give us.”

The report Ambassador Standley forwarded to Secretary of State Hull commended the Russians for how well they had cared for the interned airmen. “Athletic facilities, books, billiards and other distractions are provided; in fact, the Soviet authorities have been most considerate in looking after the crew,” Standley wrote on May 25. “The food is better than that obtainable by the Diplomatic Corps in Kuibyshev and the men are accorded about the same freedom of movement as chiefs of mission. They appeared to be in excellent physical and mental condition and stated that they had no complaints as to treatment save that they are urged to eat and drink too much.”