“Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid that Avenged Pearl Harbor,” James Scott
The Doolittle Raid is a feat of legend: a daring, some thought suicidal, bombing mission designed to avenge the attack on Pearl Harbor by taking the fight to the heart of the Japanese Empire—Tokyo. The raid’s success became a rallying point for the United States, destroyed Japan’s sense of its own invulnerability, and helped force a confrontation at Midway, a critical turning point in the Pacific War. Shrouded in secrecy at the time, the raid quickly entered the realm of myth, almost literally: the White House and the American press began using “Shangri-La,” the name of a fictional mountaintop utopia, as a stand-in for the undisclosed launching point of the operation. In “Target Tokyo,” award-winning historian James Scott strips away the layers of the legend and provides the first truly comprehensive account of the raid, one that’s based on new interviews and scores of never-before published records drawn from archives across four continents.
