The men from Shangri-La
October 26, 2013 7:55 PM   Subscribe

On November 9th, 2013, the four remaining Doolittle Raiders will perform their final Toast Ceremony.
posted by pjern (19 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
When I was first captivated by the stories of the men and the women and the machines of WWII as a child, the war was "just" 30 years in the past. The youngest veterans were just a few years older than I am now.

As the survivors dwindle, these already poignant stories take on an even sharper edge -
posted by jalexei at 8:05 PM on October 26, 2013 [6 favorites]


A brush with history...

My Dad is a docent at The National Museum of WWII Aviation. He'a a retired Air Force officer and military historian. Last Saturday, he took particular notice of some visitors in his group: a woman pushing an 80-ish yo man in a wheelchair. He did a tour, and they were particularly interested in the China-Burma-India Theatre (CBI). At one point the father and daughter (it turns out) were debating the variant of the B-25 that belongs to Westpac Restorations, Inc., adjacent to the Museum and part of the tour - I think the debate was 'J' vs 'E'. As Pop tells it, this is a pretty atypical discussion amongst visitors. He asks them something like, "I'm curious, but how are you so familiar with the CBI Theatre, and B-25's in particular?"

Turns out, it's Dick Cole, copilot in Doolittle's plane in The Raid.

And he is looking forward to the brandy.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:21 PM on October 26, 2013 [9 favorites]


I've seen this crop up over the past few months and its kind of moved me. Last year I saw the goblets on display and its a poignant, tangible illustration of the slow fade of veterans from that period. Each goblet is turned over as its owner passes and it took a while to pick one out whose owner was still with us, only one in twenty still around. Equally touching, this function of the goblets was designed into it from the beginning, each cup engraved both upside down and right side up. We're now looking down the opposite end of the tunnel from the inception of that idea. I'm kind of sad that they no longer have the energy to stick to the original plan: the last two raiders toasting each other before retiring the ceremony. This is a close second.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 8:56 PM on October 26, 2013 [5 favorites]


Im pretty conflicted about all the genuflexion we see towards the military these days. But as WWII was really the last war we were in in which it's hard to argue we weren't the good guys...A toast to these guys...
posted by Windopaene at 9:48 PM on October 26, 2013 [5 favorites]


Extraordinary men, every one of them. I was under the impression that they were one of the groups of airmen to fly with blood chits on the backs of their leather jackets, but it looks like I'm wrong on that one.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 9:51 PM on October 26, 2013 [2 favorites]


Thanks for posting this.

I've always been curious about the Doolittle Raid crew, plane no. 8, which landed in Vladivostok after the raid and was then interned by the then-neutral-with-Japan USSR. Found this 2007 interview with Nolan Herndon, the bombardier of that flight. Herndon thought the landing in the USSR was deliberate, a way of testing how Stalin and the Soviets would react to emergency landings by planes fighting on the Pacific front. At the time, Stalin was dead-set on maintaining neutrality in the Pacific War since the Soviets wanted to avoid a war on two fronts, and therefore he might not tolerate emergency landings. On the other hand, American lend-lease support was crucial to the Soviet war effort, therefore not pissing off the Americans was also quite important.

I have no idea if Herndon's theory is true and I suppose we'll never know. Certainly seems plausible since the reliability of the Soviet Union as an ally was a huge unknown in Washington in early 1942.

Minor revisionist history aside, the story of the crew who became guests of the Kremlin is quite interesting on its own. They spent a year being shuffled around the backwater Soviet republics, far from the war, and then they managed to escape via help from a British diplomat, taking a route through Afghanistan and Iran.
posted by honestcoyote at 10:06 PM on October 26, 2013 [1 favorite]


honestcoyote: "plane no. 8, which landed in Vladivostok after the raid and was then interned by the then-neutral-with-Japan USSR.
...
I have no idea if Herndon's theory is true and I suppose we'll never know. Certainly seems plausible since the reliability of the Soviet Union as an ally was a huge unknown in Washington in early 1942.

Minor revisionist history aside, the story of the crew who became guests of the Kremlin is quite interesting on its own. They spent a year being shuffled around the backwater Soviet republics, far from the war, and then they managed to escape via help from a British diplomat, taking a route through Afghanistan and Iran.
"

IIRC, there was also a B-29 that landed in the USSR as well (much later in the war, of course). The B-29 crew became "guests" as well, and ISTR that the Soviets even stripped the B-29 down to its individual components so they could reverse engineer it. I'm inclined to think I read the story in an issue of Smithsonian Air & Space magazine. Crazy stuff!
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 11:05 PM on October 26, 2013


Here's a bit from Air & Space Magazine (natch, part of the Smithsonian, but maybe something was also in the general-interest magazine), detailing how modern historians in the US and Russia are cooperating to dig up this bit of WWII/Cold War history. This article goes into more detail about how closely the Tu-4 was a reverse-engineered copy of the B-29.

Obviously the Soviets wanted the technology, but they needed to remain neutral with Japan because they were incapable of defending Vladivostok and the rest of the Far East should Japan decide to attack. Russia had lost influence and control of northern China and Manchuria as a result of the Russo-Japanese War, and subsequent to the Russian Revolution the Japanese had apparently been making inroads as far as 1000 miles up the coast in what was historically Outer Manchuria, so it wasn't just suspicion.
posted by dhartung at 11:26 PM on October 26, 2013


the story of the crew who became guests of the Kremlin is quite interesting on its own. They spent a year being shuffled around the backwater Soviet republics, far from the war, and then they managed to escape via help from a British diplomat, taking a route through Afghanistan and Iran."

If Wikipedia's references are accurate,
The smuggling was actually staged by the NKVD, according to declassified Soviet archives, because the Soviet government was unable to repatriate them legally in the face of the neutrality pact with Japan.
Of course, that's exactly the report you'd file if you had managed to lose several political detainees.
posted by zamboni at 11:29 PM on October 26, 2013


dhartung: "Here's a bit from Air & Space Magazine (natch, part of the Smithsonian, but maybe something was also in the general-interest magazine), detailing how modern historians in the US and Russia are cooperating to dig up this bit of WWII/Cold War history. This article goes into more detail about how closely the Tu-4 was a reverse-engineered copy of the B-29."

Sweet info, dhartung! Many thanks for the comment. I didn't know there were THREE B-29s that the Soviets kept. Now I'm going to have to pour over my old issues of SA&S Magazine and see if I can find the article I'm remembering. IIRC, the article was titled something like "Stalin's B-29" and it even had a photograph of the Tu-4 sitting in a spot rotting away.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 12:29 AM on October 27, 2013


German, British and American bomber crews which crash landed in Sweden were interned by the neutral Swedish government during WW2. That's what neutral countries are obliged to do to remain neutral.
posted by three blind mice at 12:52 AM on October 27, 2013 [1 favorite]


"I'm pretty conflicted about all the genuflexion we see towards the military these days. But as WWII was really the last war we were in in which it's hard to argue we weren't the good guys.."

Although I might've agreed with you a decade ago, I would now argue, having met many people in the military, that this is the exact wrong way to look at the situation. It's an unfair betrayal to the people we have serving in the military today.

Do you think they actually had a real choice as to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan, and that it should've been *their* responsibility to make sure their country couldn't have gone to war? Or is that something you -- and all the rest of us -- could've played a more major role in, with little risk to your freedom, your family, and your personal liberties, unlike anyone in the military who refused to serve?

There are still heroes out there. Ordinary men, put into extraordinary situations. We honor those who so long ago boarded a plane, dropped bombs, landed overseas, and sat out much of the war, but we don't honor my friend who, when an kid was shot by rebels and left to die, bleeding and screaming in Iraq, disobeyed direct orders and risked his life to rescue him, only to get shot in an ambush, losing his kidney, and having the other one fail on him due to inability to pick up the burden, combined with the constant need for morphine, requiring a transplant.

The kid lived, by the way, as did my friend, who was touch and go for a whole year. But let's face it... he was just another sucker fighting a war that we've all agreed doesn't deserve any respect, right? He still finds himself in the hospital every month or so, due to complications. C'est la vie, c'est la guerre.

Sorry, but it shouldn't work that way. It's unethical. It's horribly unfair.

We, as a nation, routinely put people into positions of responsibility that we ourselves are not willing to accept ourselves... this goes from politicians to diplomats to soldiers. We put them into tough, no-win, best-of-several-bad-option situations. And then we get upset and accuse them of betrayal and inhumanity when they make those decisions and when people die... which they inevitably do.

We, of course, are not the ones thinking in terms of "How am I going to make the best of this? How will I save lives here?"

We tend to think in terms of ideologies and preconceptions. Of good wars and bad wars. Of being politically tough and determined / inflexible, or of bringing all the troops home right away. We judge the soldiers, the generals, and the leaders as heroes only in good wars... but somehow, we ignore our nation's complacency and complicity on the brink of war. We're not engaged enough, outspoken enough... we'll rack up $3000 in our share of war debt, but won't donate $100 to a political candidate who we feel will keep our nation out of war.

In practical terms, we fight our conflicts as if a doctor was fighting desperately against a nurse while trying to remove a tumor... only to have both finally, begrudgingly agree to stop, with the patient still bleeding on the table, the tumor only partially removed.

It's no wonder why the soldiers themselves so often feel disillusioned. They were making life and death decisions, at great cost. They were willing to risk their lives, in order to give the least bad option a chance. But we, as citizens, are apparently not up to the task of tackling these life-and-death matters seriously, as if the lives and liberties of tens of millions of people were riding on our making the least bad decision for not only our country, but for millions besides.

We never for a moment question why US soldiers spent decades in Japan or in Germany -- to give those countries a second chance -- even though there were war profiteers in those situations, just as there are today. It's amazing, in retrospect, the level of national unity in the face of enormous efforts and expense we showed for so long as a nation, in order to make it happen. And fundamentally, it wasn't because we genuflexed less than today to the military. Quite the opposite. But for good reasons... we *knew* they were seriously thinking about the future of Germany, Japan, and democracy itself.

We've lost that, sadly... and we've also lost focus in the real goal and the real sacrifice. We're unwilling to accept that hundreds of thousands of soldiers did their best under difficult circumstances to try to make the best of bad situations, making the least bad decisions on a day-to-day basis, because that was their duty... and that thousands gave their lives, buying time so that that millions have a chance at a future and at some iota of the freedoms that we so poorly exercise on a daily basis back home... a desperate holding action against the forces of chaos, as governments, armies, police, and nations are imperfectly rebuilt in the midst of conflict.

I'm not saying that we *MUST* stay the course, or *MUST* bug out... but what we must do, as a nation, is realize we are messing with real people's lives here, and that ideologies are trumped by informed, rational plans to address complex problems, rather than throwing up our hands and resigning to isolationism, which has historically been a common element of both the Right *and* the Left.

"The isolationists were a diverse group, including progressives and conservatives, business owners and peace activists, but because they faced no consistent, organized opposition from internationalists, their ideology triumphed time and again."

The fact is, it's easy to be an isolationist. It's easy to be distracted. It's far more difficult to be a fully engaged citizen, willing to fight when one must, but looking for peace, and always seeking out the least bad choice not just for ourselves, but for the future of all we touch through our action or inaction. That means voting and being politically engaged, but also being not ideologically motivated, but logically motivated, as much as is possible in such an ideological world. We should judge less, listen more, and advocate for reasoned progress, in a world full of unproductive dogma.

No, what united the country back then was a sense of common, rational purpose, a higher degree of trust in and reliance on others, and the knowledge that everyone was on the same side, and was doing their utmost to try to not only win the war, but to win the peace. Indeed, the determined, long-term effort to win the peace was arguably more impressive than the winning of the war itself.

So, when we remember these old soldiers, we should take a moment to remember all those who have been forced through circumstances to make the tough decisions in our name, and offer them not mere genuflection, but the degree of respect and thanks due to them, even as we might differ in our analysis of the least bad options for our nation and those we impact.
posted by markkraft at 1:53 AM on October 27, 2013 [11 favorites]


three blind mice: "German, British and American bomber crews which crash landed in Sweden were interned by the neutral Swedish government during WW2. "

While the trainloads of Jews were sent east through Sweden and the trainloads of German troops and equipment were sent west. Swedes should be very proud. That's a hell of a legacy. (Fine, use our railroads! Please just don't make us choose a side! Remember, we're on the side of whoever is winning.) That's some pathetic weasel behavior.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 1:56 AM on October 27, 2013


So Sweden should have handed the 1500 or so american airmen over to the Germans? Would that make us less pathetic?
posted by uandt at 3:42 AM on October 27, 2013


When I was first captivated by the stories of the men and the women and the machines of WWII as a child, the war was "just" 30 years in the past. The youngest veterans were just a few years older than I am now.

As the survivors dwindle, these already poignant stories take on an even sharper edge


I could have written exactly this, jalexei.
posted by Fists O'Fury at 4:53 AM on October 27, 2013


I remember reading "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" when I was a kid. It's a great book, and the Spencer Tracy movie version does not do it justice. If you think you know the story because you've seen the movie, the book is well worth a look.
posted by briank at 5:59 AM on October 27, 2013


According to Wikipedia, the Japanese murdered 250,000 Chinese civilians in the search for the Doolittle fliers, and as punishment for helping them. I wonder, if the planners had been able to anticipate that effect of the raid, if they would have done it anyway.
posted by oneironaut at 7:42 AM on October 27, 2013


Obviously the Soviets wanted the technology, but they needed to remain neutral with Japan because they were incapable of defending Vladivostok and the rest of the Far East should Japan decide to attack. Russia had lost influence and control of northern China and Manchuria as a result of the Russo-Japanese War, and subsequent to the Russian Revolution the Japanese had apparently been making inroads as far as 1000 miles up the coast in what was historically Outer Manchuria, so it wasn't just suspicion.

It's a little more involved than that. In fact the Russians and the Japanese had been duking it out in Manchuria as early as 1932 and up to August 31, 1939 when the Japanese got a pasting at Khalkhin Gol (where Zhukov made his name). At that point, both sides agreed to put the matter on hold while each tended to other empire building interests elsewhere. Prudence ruled the day.

The decision was nudged along on both sides by events back in Europe. More or less coincident with Khalkhin Gol, Germany bowed out of the Anti-Comintern Pact (interesting bedfellows in that crew) and signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 23 August 1939 (it had been in the planning for months) and co-invaded Poland. In September 1940, Japan, Germany and Italy put a military element into their alliance (and indeed discussed with Russia the possibility of Russia's joining in). Although failing to join the Axis, Russia did sign a neutrality agreement with Japan on April 13, 1941, which benefited Japan as much as Russia, although it did little good for the other allies fighting in the Pacific. (Russia broke the treaty with Japan in April 1945, when (western) Europe was safe for democracy, and scooped up some more real estate (pdf) basically because they could.)
posted by BWA at 2:53 PM on October 27, 2013


German, British and American bomber crews which crash landed in Sweden were interned by the neutral Swedish government during WW2.

Well, heck, if you want a better example than Sweden, try Ireland. It is probably more fair to note that most of the countries that chose neutrality at the beginning of the war were unable to maintain it throughout. Sweden, for her part, was constrained by geography. She could have refused transit rights, but then faced the Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine.

Meanwhile, Sweden at least deserves some credit for providing refuge for Danish and Norwegian Jewish refugees.

Incidentally, if you've ever wondered who the Koch-funded John Birch Society was intended to honor: he was a missionary in China, and he assisted both the Doolittle raiders who landed near his post, as well as organizing an intelligence network that assisted the Allies throughout the war. The Society honors him mainly because right after the war ended, during a chaotic patchwork of allegiances in China, he passed through an area controlled by Chinese Communists and, through murky circumstances, ended up on the bad side of a checkpoint commander, who shot him. As a Christian missionary turned spy and guerrilla leader, he didn't have much in the way of protection under international law, but still you can see that he wasn't the crazy foxhole-dweller that you might imagine -- a sort of American T.E. Lawrence, if you will. It's almost too bad his legacy was hijacked for rank political purposes that seem the polar opposite of his selflessness.
I've toyed with starting a Real John Birch Society, but you know I'd never get anywhere, lacking the Koch family's billions.
posted by dhartung at 12:22 AM on October 28, 2013 [1 favorite]


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