After the Doolittle Raid: across the generations, second world war ties that bind China and the United States
- As a museum to the Doolittle Raiders opens, family members visit Chinese villages that rescued the airmen after the 1942 US attack on Tokyo
Weeks ago, in the cool of late October, Thomas Macia finally saw the mountainous land and village homes of Gangfeng county in Jiangxi province he had heard about all his life, territory his father would describe in stories from the second world war.
It was there James Macia, a B-25 navigator, had to bail out and parachute into the rainy night of April 18, 1942 – just hours after bombing Tokyo in the Doolittle Raid, the first-ever air attack on Japan’s home islands, and a turning point in the United States war in the Pacific.
James Macia and his four fellow airmen of Crew 14, including one who was injured, were eventually rescued by local villagers amid bombing by the Japanese army and travelled west until they reached Chongqing, then the capital of Nationalist China.
Thomas Macia, 71, had always been curious about the route his father took through China. He began to identify those locations after James died in 2009, at 93. During a three-day trip in late October, Macia saw the hill where his father landed and spent the night, and spoke with people whose parents or grandparents helped move him to safety.
“It was very gratifying to actually see the terrain and the locations and meet people whose ancestors had protected and assisted my father. Without them, I would not be here today,” said Macia in an email interview from the United States.
Before he left Jiangxi, he wrapped some stones in part of the parachute his father used 76 years ago, and brought them back to his home in Arlington, Virginia.