“Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor” is not only one of the greatest stories of World War II but one of the greatest stories of the nation, says author James M. Scott.
The book gives new information on a story you might think you know, says Scott, who will be presenting at 1 p.m. Saturday, March 12, in the Star tent during the Tucson Festival of Books.
The scope and size of WWII is unimaginable, says Scott, a former reporter and investigative journalist who left the newspaper business in 2007.
WWII affected how we lived and it affected the nation as nothing ever has, he says. At its height “the war consumed 96 cents of every federal dollar spent” and more than 10 million men and women were in uniform.
While WWII attention is often focused on Europe, Scott hones in on the other side of the globe, the war in the Pacific.
In “Target Tokyo” Scott tackles the symbolism-rich Doolittle Raid, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered to boost morale, prove U.S. military prowess, and retaliate for the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The battleship USS Arizona sank with its crew onboard during the attack, and it remains a memorial in Pearl Harbor.
It is a powerful story of confidence — that the U.S. would survive — and it speaks to the bonds of war and of friendship, says Scott.
Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle led the daring bombing raid on April 18, 1942 — 80 airmen in an armada of 16 Army B-25s took off from the deck of aircraft carrier the USS Hornet for the long-range bombing attack on Tokyo.
Scott’s deeply researched book — he spoke with survivors, read diaries and scoured dozens of archives that stretched to four continents — brings to light new details and information on crew training, the planes, the attack and the political complexities that followed the raid.
Of the 80 airmen, 73 survived the raid and its aftermath and returned to the U.S. Doolittle got his general’s star and was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Doolittle’s Raiders, as the airmen came to be known, gathered annually to toast one another. At the 17th annual reunion held in Tucson in 1959, a civic booster group, the Sunshine Climate Club, presented the survivors with a set of 80 silver goblets.
“Each goblet is engraved twice,” explains Scott. The raider’s name could be read if the goblet is right side up or upside down.
One of the two living group members, Richard E. “Dick” Cole, Doolittle’s copilot during the raid, built a portable display case to transport them. The Air Force Academy displayed goblets between reunions. In 2005, the surviving raiders decided to make the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, the goblets’ permanent home.
Scott says he likes stories of “ordinary people in extraordinary situations.”
He’s the author of “The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship,” which won the 2010 Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Excellence in Naval Literature, and “The War Below: The Story of Three Submarines That Battled Japan.”
What to expect at the book festival: “New information on an old story,” he says.
—James M. Scott will speak at 1 p.m. on Saturday
