Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor
By: James M. Scott / Narrated By: LJ Ganser
Length: 20 hrs and 3 mins
AWEsome! Breathtaking! Riveting! Holy cow! …and I could go on and on and on!!!
Dude, this is 20 hours long—certainly I should’ve had my mind wandering at SOME point (Especially when one considers how eeeeeasily my attention wanders!)?
Not so, and not by a long shot!
This is actually the third time I’ve listened to Target Tokyo, and I get something new each time, I am wholly engaged and rapt each time. Now THAT’S great writing from James M. Scott. And LJ Ganser? Is that you?!?
I’ve a lot of Mr. Ganser in my Library, have listened to a lot of his performances, have never quite forgiven him for turning Tim O’Brien’s STUNNING In the Lake of the Woods into a definite It Had To Be This Way And This Way Only type of deal. But this time? Here? Oh my holy cow, the man is soooo into the delivery, it’s as though we’re listening to him perform his favorite. book. EVER. He has the multiple characters covered, be they heroic, monstrous, be they larger than life. Heck, he delivered Jimmy Doolittle’s words and actions in such a way that we feeeeel just WHY so many men jumped at the chance to volunteer for a dangerous mission with absolutely no information given them; those 80 (Er… 79 plus Doolittle himself) men were in the dark about what they were asked to do, but seeing it was Doolittle who was leading, they raised their hands so high, willing to follow him anywhere. Then too, this is a dramatic tale with LOTS of action, and LOTS of emotion and drama, and Ganser delivers. I loved his performance here, absolutely was tickled to death that at no point in 20 hours did I wanna throttle him…!
Here it is: America is still reeling after Pearl Harbor, morale is at an all-time low following defeat after defeat, and people are just plain mad. The idea comes up, and it’s foolishly, laughably, absolutely impossible: Wouldn’t it be just AWEsome if we could fly over Tokyo and bomb them where they are, give them a bit of their own medicine?
Right away, brains start whirring away and chipping away at the impossible: It can be done, but danged if it’s not going to be SUCH a near thing with so many things that could spell disaster up and down the line. And so we’ve got hours of brilliant minds at work followed by valiant efforts by brave and noble men. When the aviators are on the USS Hornet, and the sailors learn of just what this secret mission is, the joy, the sense of feeling part of something greater near ‘bout made me cry. After all, they’ve painted “Remember Pearl Harbor” on part of their ship… These sailors are soooo thrilled to be part of the Army effort!
Now the bombing isn’t much: The crews were gunning for high-value targets but, really, this was mostly to send a message and to lift spirits. There is, too, collateral damage as in: School children killed, hospitals accidentally bombed, so it’s nothing to feel pride about, right? Except that you do, the way it’s written, you just want so much for all these men flying this mission. I’d just finished four audiobooks in honor of the anniversary of Pearl Harbor here in 2020, and I gotta tell ya, I was pretty peeved with Japan’s military.
And make no mistake: Tho’ the book opens with author Scott plainly stating that the Chinese paid dearly for such a raid (For harboring the airmen when they landed throughout China post-bombing), along the lines of 250,000 Chinese killed in retribution, that our government knew such would happen and deemed the raid still worthy given the morale-boosting it would do back home? I gotta tell ya, this book really shows that yes, the Japanese were MAD about the bombing, but YES, they were barbaric and committed horrific atrocities and would’ve done most of that slaughter anyway. Scott tells us of one Japanese scientist in China churning out the anthrax, cholera, plague, you name it, then of the military poisoning water sources and dropping plague-ridden fleas throughout China. Now you tell me, was that man over there BECAUSE of the raid, or was he already there and planning on acting anyway.
I think I would like to say here that there’s the most marvelous review of this book over on Amazon, written by the son of David Thatcher, the engineer/gunner of “The Ruptured Duck”, the man who saved his crew members when their plane crashed in China. It ends with what Thatcher told him. That the Chinese were heroic, that they had nothing, gave everything, deserved all the thanks in the world. I agree, and some of the toughest listening comes when the peasants the fliers tried to repay by giving them American cigarettes, candy, coins were condemned by this proof that they’d met and assisted is the most heartbreaking thing: The airmen’s tokens of gratitude damned poor peasants to torture, to death.
Throughout all of this is what’s going on back in America, and Roosevelt rather comes off like a manipulative goon. Doolittle is paraded around, given medals, and he doesn’t lie but he doesn’t correct the American public as they’re led to believe all 16 planes landed safely, all 80 men are safe and sound. It seemed so very familiar, the way the government leads us to believe only what they want us to believe—Coffins coming back from Iraq, anyone? But at least the book doesn’t center on the government so much as on the men.
Their stories will have your heart breaking, will have you cheering, will have your heart breaking one more time. AWESOME stories.
AWESOME book.
And as an audiobook? LJ Ganser, is that reeeeally you?!? AWESOME!!!
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