"The Doolittle Raiders: What Heroes Do After The War"

"As a grammar school kid in Willows … in the late 1940s," George Nolta writes, he met a man named Jimmy who was on a hunting trip with a group that included Nolta's uncles Floyd and Dale. "Jimmy" turned out to be Jimmy Doolittle, the man who commanded "sixteen B-25s that took off from the deck of the USS Hornet on April 18, 1942. Each carried a crew of five: pilot, copilot, navigator, bombardier, and flight engineer/gunner."

The mission, America's response to Pearl Harbor, was "the first bombing raid on Japan during World War II." Ted Lawson, pilot of the seventh crew, told the story in "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," written with newspaper columnist Robert "Bob" Considine. It was turned into a movie starring Spencer Tracy as Doolittle, Van Johnson as Lawson, and Phyllis Thaxter as Ellen, Ted's wife.

The Lawsons eventually settled in Chico. Ted died in 1992 "and is buried in the Chico Cemetery." After Nolta, who now lives in Citrus Heights, published a piece on Ellen for the Colusi County Historical Society, the two became friends. Ellen asked Nolta if he would use her research on the crewmembers to create a book documenting their lives, not only pre-raid but post-raid.

The book is called "The Doolittle Raiders: What Heroes Do After The War" ($16.99 in paperback from Schiffer Publishing); its vivid and clearly written narratives trace the accomplishments, and the heartbreak, of the eighty Raiders. Sixty-four survived; the remaining were lost in a crash landing, drowned, or tortured and executed by the Japanese.

In an email Nolta notes that "some of the Raiders flew up to the Willows Airport to do some last-minute short takeoff practice after their planes had been serviced at McClellan Field in Sacramento. …" 

Doolittle received the Medal of Honor and late in his life told a writer that "I believe every person has been put on this earth for just one purpose: to serve his fellow man. … If he does, his life will have been worthwhile." He was ninety-six when he died in 1993. Richard Cole, his copilot, the only surviving Raider, celebrated his 103rd birthday in September 2018.