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LABOR 8/31/2013 6:04:05 AM
There is more than one kind of Labor. There is Manual Labor (which I abhor) and there is Pregnancy Labor (which, needless to point out, I have never experienced). Except when my three children arrived — and when daughter Alex gave birth to Hutson and soon to Ellie — and when my other two kids had their own broods of six grandchildren between them!
Betty Thompson spared me the ordeal in 1943-1944 when I was 12 and 13. She was my flame back then, and she taught me all I ever knew about puppy love. Or cared to know.
With Labor Day almost a fait accompli, she sent me an email from her home on Lake Erie in northern Ohio, where she is now an elderly widow named Betty Yohus. We, in fact, correspond regularly via the Internet. This is what she sent:
Dear Bob,
On Tuesday, in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, the surviving Doolittle Raiders will gather publicly for the last time. Doolittle, himself a Medal of Honor recipient, had died a Lt. General (4 stars) in 1993 at age 98, and they once were all among the most admired and revered men in this countrys. There were 80 of them in April 1942, when they carried out one of the most courageous and daring military operations in our history. The mere mention of the unit's name in those years would bring goose bumps to most Americans’ forearms!
Now only four survive. That’s all’s left of the original 80.
After the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, with the United States wounded and reeling, something was needed to turn the war effort around.
Even though there were no friendly airfields close to Japan from which to launch a retaliation of this magnitude, a daring plan was devised. Sixteen B-25s were modified so that they could take off from the deck of an aircraft carrier.
This had never been tried before — sending such big, heavy bombers from a carrier to bomb the city of Tokyo!
The 16 five-man crews, under the command of then Lt. Col. James Doolittle (who himself flew the lead plane off the USS Hornet) knew that they would not be able to return to the carrier. They would have to hit Tokyo and then hope to make it to China for a safe landing.
But on the day of the raid, the Japanese military caught wind of the plan (yes, Virginia, even back then we had our share of big mouth traitors!).
The Raiders were told that they would have to take off from much farther out in the Pacific than they had counted on. Because of this, they definitely would not have enough fuel to make it to back to safety
So . . . those men went anyway!
They bombed Tokyo, and then flew on as far as they could. Four planes crash-landed; 11 more crews bailed out, and three of the Raiders died. Eight more were captured; three were executed. Another died of starvation in a Japanese prison camp. One crew made it to Siberia.
The Doolittle Raiders sent a message to the Japanese (and to the rest of the world): We will fight. And, no matter what it takes, we will win!
Of the 80 Raiders, 62 survived. They were celebrated as national heroes, men of true bravery.
Louis B. Mayer at MGM produced a motion picture based on the raid, THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO, starring Spencer Tracy and Van Johnson. It was a patriotic and emotional box-office hit, and the phrase became part of the national lexicon. In previews for the film, MGM proclaimed that it was presenting the story with supreme pride. And Americans viewed it as such.
Starting in 1946, the surviving Raiders have held a reunion in April each year to commemorate the mission. The reunion was in a different city annually. In 1959, the city of Tucson gave them a tribute of respect and gratitude by presenting the Raiders with a set of 80 silver goblets. Each goblet was engraved with the name of a Raider.
Every year, a display case bearing all 80 goblets is brought to the reunion city. Each time a Raider passed away, his goblet was turned upside down.
Also in the case is a bottle of 1896 Hennessy Very Special Cognac. The year is not a simple guess: 1896 was when Jimmy Doolittle was born.
There has always been a plan: when there are only two surviving Raiders, they will open the bottle, and at last drink it up, drink a goblet each and toast their comrades who had preceded them.
On New Years Day, 2013, there were five living Raiders. Then, in February, Tom Griffin passed away at age 96.
What a man he was! A bombardier, Tom bailed out of his battered B-25 after the Tokyo raid, over a mountainous Chinese forest. There he became ill with malaria and almost died. When he recovered, he made it back to the States and was deployed to Europe to fly more combat missions. He was shot down, captured, and spent nearly two years in a German prisoner of war camp.
The selflessness of these men, the sheer guts! There was an obituary printed in the CINCINNATI ENQUIRER for Tom Griffin that, on the surface, had nothing to do with the war, but was emblematic of the depth of his sense of duty and devotion:
When his wife became seriously ill, it said, and needed to go into a nursing home, he visited her every day. He walked from their house to the nursing home, fed his wife, and at the end of the day brought home her clothes. At night, he washed and ironed them. Then he walked with the basket up to her room at the nursing home the next morning . . . He did that for three years until her death in 2009.
So now, out of the original 80, only four Raiders remain: Dick Cole (Doolittle's co-pilot on the Tokyo raid), Robert Hite, Edward Saylor and David Thatcher. All are in their 90s. And they have decided that there are too few of them for the public reunions to continue.
So, the events in Fort Walton Beach this week will mark the end. It has come full circle; Florida's nearby Eglin Field was where the Raiders trained in supposed secrecy for the Tokyo mission. The town is planning to do all it can to honor the men: a six-day celebration of their valor, including luncheons, a dinner and a parade. And many speeches about bravery.
Do the men ever wonder if those of us for whom they helped save the country have been inspired in a way that is worthy of their sacrifice? They do not talk about that, at least not around other people.
But, being the traveler you are, if you find yourself near Fort Walton Beach this week, and if you should encounter any of the 4 Raiders, you might want to offer them a word of thanks.
I can tell you from first-hand observation that they appreciate hearing that they are remembered. The men have decided that after this final public reunion they will wait until a later date — sometime maybe this year — to get together once more, informally and in absolute privacy, to drink up the bottle of brandy. They are not going to wait until there is only two of them.
They will fill the remaining upturned goblets. And raise them in a toast to those who are gone.
Hav-a-Happy Labor Day!
Betty
PS — Pass this on to ten others and see what good luck occurs.
