City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Target Tokyo, Jimmy Doolittle and the raid that avenged Pearl Harbor, James M. Scott

eng

no index present

non fiction

Target Tokyo

James M. Scott

Jimmy Doolittle and the raid that avenged Pearl Harbor

In December 1941, as American forces tallied the dead at Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt gathered with hsi senior military counselors to plan an ambitious counterstrike against the heart of the Japanese Empire. 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