The Doolittle raid.

General Jimmy Doolittle Interview - YouTube

Also the day in 1943 Admiral Yamamoto was shot down by US Army P-38 pilots.

Did the B-25s ditch their machine guns to save weight before they took off from the aircraft carrier ?

No, they had a .30 Browning in the nose for the bombardier, and the twin .50’s in the dorsal turret manned by the flight engineer. They put a set of broom handles in the tail to simulate tail guns. The B-25B had also originally had a ventral turret in the belly, but it never worked right and was stripped out of the planes to save weight.

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The lesser known story is that the Japanese took reprisal against the Chinese by murdering hundreds of thousands of them after the Doolittle raid. The Untold Story of the Vengeful Japanese Attack After the Doolittle Raid | History|
Smithsonian Magazine

The Japanese were absolute barbarians during WWII. I guess everything has changed now.

Japan never has truly owned up to the evil they unleashed.

They were as bad as the nazi’s. But at the time the western media didn’t cover Asia in the same lens. My wife is native Korean born in 1956. Both her mother and grandmother would tell terrible stories of growing up under Japanese occupation. The Chinese the rest of Asia all suffered similar atrocities.

Nanjing Massacre - Wikipedia

Departed from here

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Hard to imagine that Hirohito was not hanged after the war. The Japanese know very little about that time now.

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How the Japanese teach WWII...

...in order to make an important ally out of Japan, they couldn't hang Hirohito or much of the country would prefer to die with him.
It was preferable to put the blame on military leaders.

To be on topic, I never appreciated the value of the Doolittle raid because it seemed like a risky operation to get planes to drop a few bombs on Japan at the cost of lives. I finally realized the blow that the Japanese felt knowing that their home islands had been attacked by the enemy. And the raiders had humongous....amounts of courage to conduct such a raid and dying for it. And they were all volunteers. Don't mind me, I'm just an idiot.

I wonder if that would have changed if Hitler and Mussolini been captured alive? Would have been a challenge to mete out different punishments to each.

I suppose a case could have been made to hang Hitler, imprison Mussolini - but allowing no punishment for Hirohito? Hmmm.

As an aside, Doolittle's raid on Japan likely encouraged Japan to go after Midway.

The Doolittle raid was mainly a morale building exercise for the American people, and secondly to demonstrate to the Japanese that the home islands were not immune from American attack. The raid did very little damage to Japanese industry. Nothing good would have come from trying the Emperor for war crimes, as he was seen as a living god to his subjects. Occupation of the country during the postwar period would have been far more difficult had he been tried and executed. Much better to have a cooperative Japanese population that could be easily controlled by leaving the Emperor on his throne, as he actually had no power to do anything. MacArthur had all the power. There was a famous picture of a stern MacArthur towering over Hirohito that showed the Japanese who was in charge. Emperor Hirohito pays a precedent shattering visit to Supreme Commander MacArthur | Harry S. Truman

There is another book titled "The Rape of Nanking" that goes into great detail the mass rape and slaughter of the Chinese in Nanking by the Japanese. It is nearly unbelievable what atrocities happened there. Things like Japanese soldiers throwing Chinese babies into the air and catching them on their bayonets as they fell back. And beheading competitions.
The Rape of Nanking (book)

Probably one of the most brilliant strategic decisions of the war and it saved untold numbers of both American and Japanese lives and saved billions of American dollars. It's one of those decisions where you have to take emotion out of it and look at it subjectively in context.


The plans to invade AF (Midway) were already developed and sitting on Yamamoto's desk before the attempted Port Morsby occupation, but the AF plan was not well received. Following the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Doolittle Raid, the Japanese political climate was more receptive to Yamamoto's AF proposal.

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I remember the hatred the ROK’s had for the Japanese. I was over there (1974) when there was an assassination attempt of their President (Pak Chung Hee) and the (very popular) First Lady has killed. Every Korean I talked to blamed the Japanese (& I wondered what the Japanese would stand to gain from that). I’m not judging them though, the Koreans had good reasons for feeling the way they did.

No better ally (or greater enemy) than the ROK Army.

There were a few horrified NAZI observers at the Rape of Nanking that called for the Japanese to stop, but they were ignored. Not that NAZI's collectively had any moral high ground, but that says something as to how bad it was.

Over 20 years ago, I had a Chinese friend who married a Japanese woman. He was disowned by and expelled from his family.

When I was in grammar school I read 30 seconds over Tokyo and Flight Deck many times each. With vision well better than 20/15 I had the eyes, if nothing else, to be a pilot. Although I was invited to apply, growing up in the greater Boston area and attending a public suburban school, the odds of my seeking an appointment to a service academy were slim to none.

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...weren't nearly as hard core or indoctrinated as the ones running Germany. They mostly lived in remote countries. They actually believed that the Japanese were acting in an uncivilized manner and that any decent country wouldn't/couldn't act that way. They were 'good will' guys sent out to make friends with other countries and to put on a good face. They were as surprised as anybody at the extent of the horror the NAZIs perpetrated on Europe.