II SHANGRI-LA IS BORN

SHANGRI-LA IS BORN

In April, 1942, the United States and the world at large was electrified by an announcement by President Roosevelt that American flyers had carried the Battle of the Pacific to the heart of the Japanese empire with a surprising and daring raid on military targets at Tokio, Yokohama, Osake, Kobe and other Rising Sun industrial centers. The dangerous mission was headed by Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle, and in the picture above, one of the planes is seen soaring off the flight deck of the USS Hornet enroute to Japanese territory. Taking off in the middle of the day, flying at low altitude, the squadron of American planes led by General Doolittle, and accompanied by 79 other aviators raided the mainland. In the navy yard south of Tokio a new cruiser or battleship under construction was bombed and left in flames. "Along the coast line," said Gen. Doolittle on May 19, at Washington, when he was decorated by the President and the story of the raid was revealed, "we observed several squadrons of destroyers and some cruisers and battleships. About 25 miles to sea the rear gunners reported seeing columns of smoke rising thousands of feet in the air. One of our bombardiers strewed incendiary bombs along a quarter of a mile of aircraft factory near Nagoya. Another illuminated a tank farm. However, flying at such low altitudes made it very difficult to observe the result following the impact of the bombs. We could see the strike, but our field of vision was greatly restricted by the speed of the plume and the low altitude at which we were flying. Even so, one of our party observed a ball game in progress. The players and spectators did not start their run for cover until just as the field passed out of sight. Pilots, bombardiers and all members of the crew performed their duties with great calmness and remarkable precision. It appeared to us that practically every bomb reached the target for which it was intended. We would like to have tarried and watched the later developments of fire and explosion, but, even so, we were fortunate to receive a fairly detailed report from the excited Japanese radio broadcasts. It took them several hours to calm down to deception and accusation." He added that he had issued instructions that the Imperial Palace in Tokio was not to be bombed. In the picture above General Doolittle is shown wiring a Japanese medal to the fin of a 500-pound bomb which shortly thereafter was returned to its Nipponese makers in a blast of destruction. The ceremony took place on the deck of the carrier Hornet from which the raiders took off.

Several planes in the squadron that took off for Tokio from the airplane carrier Hornet failed to return to the mother ship. Chinese carry some of the Tokio raiders from the summit of the Chinese mountain where their bomber was forced down after raiding the Japanese capital. Other flyers who were shot or forced down over Japan were not so fortunate and were forced to suffer horrible forms of torture, it was revealed several months later. One of the planes landed on Russian territory and the crew was interned by Soviet authorities, the Soviet not being at war with Japan. Several of the enemy's interceptor planes were shot down by the American flyers.

MARCH THROUGH THE JUNGLES

The march of Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell and his party from Burma which started on May 1, 1942 in Burma and ended May 20, in Imphal, Assam, will go down in history as one of the great feats of an American soldier. The General, wearing old style campaign hat shown at the head of the column followed by Lieutenant Colonel Frank Dorn and Lieutenant Richard Young, two aides and Major General Franklin C. Sibert. General Stilwell, chief of staff to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, had been in command of Chinese Fifth and Sixth Armies, operating with the British in Burma.

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