'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Maj. Thomas Griffin, a navigator during the historic Doolittle Raid of World War II who later survived nearly two years in a Nazi prison camp, died Tuesday at a Veterans Administration nursing home in Cincinnati. He was 96 and is survived by two sons.
Doolittle's Tokyo Raid left a legacy of bravery that, even 70 years later, continues to inspire.
The roar of B-25 bomber engines still echoed overhead as 96-year-old Richard E. Cole slowly walked to the podium Wednesday afternoon.
The five remaining survivors of the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders — the daring crew that led America's first military strike against the Imperial Japanese homeland, four months after the infamous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor — recognize their prominent place in history seven decades later.
In the days following Lt. Col. James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle's daring raid on Tokyo and five other Japanese cities, no one was talking — not even President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
For those who lived through it, Hollywood's most recent depiction of the Doolittle raid completely bombed.
He quietly told the crowd that he never expected the daring raid, the nation's first military response against the Japanese homeland four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, to make him a legend.
