Chase Nielsen, 90; participated in Japan raid after Pearl Harbor
LOS ANGELES -- Chase J. Nielsen, a navigator on the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan who spent 40 months as a prisoner of war after participating in the air assault that lifted American morale only four months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 90.
Mr. Nielsen, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, died March 23 of age-related causes at his home in Brigham City, Utah, said his wife, Phyllis.
On the morning of April 18, 1942, 80 volunteer airmen on 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers took off from the aircraft carrier Hornet more than 600 miles from Japan. They were about 200 miles farther out and took off earlier than they had planned. They were forced to move up the operation after the US task force was spotted by Japanese picket boats.
Mr. Nielsen, then a 25-year-old lieutenant, was the navigator for Crew No. 6.
Led by Lieutenant Colonel James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle, the 16 planes bombed targets in Tokyo and several other cities.
Because the bombers could not land on a carrier, the pilots were supposed to land in airfields in China during the day. But with fuel running low, primarily because of the increased distance and bad weather, the airmen were forced to ditch their planes or bail out over or along the Chinese coast at night; one plane diverted to Russia.
Mr. Nielsen was in one of the two planes ditched off the coast. Two men were killed.
Once in the water, according to a 1995 account in the Salt Lake Tribune, Mr. Nielsen became separated from fellow crew members in the darkness. He was later found on shore by a Chinese guerrilla and soon reunited with his pilot and co-pilot. Japanese forces occupying China eventually found them, and they, along with five other Raiders, became prisoners of war.
"Being a prisoner was something I had never prepared for," Mr. Nielsen told the Salt Lake Tribune. "It takes all the wind out of your sail, if you had anything left."
Mr. Nielsen and his fellow prisoners were taken to Tokyo, where they were beaten and tortured while being interrogated. Three of the eight American airmen were executed after a brief trial; Mr. Nielsen and the four others were sentenced to life in prison under solitary confinement and shipped to a small brick cell in Nanking, where one of them, weakened by dysentery, later died.
"I don't think I was really afraid of dying," Mr. Nielsen recalled in the 1995 interview. "The big thing was, who will even know what happened to me?"
Mr. Nielsen and the other three imprisoned Raiders were not freed until the end of World War II.
Mr. Nielsen, whose decorations for the raid included the Distinguished Flying Cross, returned to China in 1946 to testify against his former captors in the International War Crimes Trials in Shanghai.
In 1949, he became a member of the Strategic Air Command at Roswell Air Force Base in New Mexico, where he was assigned to the 509th Bombardment Group, which was equipped and trained for atomic warfare.
After retiring from the Air Force in 1961, he worked as an industrial engineer at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
Over the years, Mr. Nielsen frequently spoke about the Doolittle Raid to school, civic, and military groups.
"There were so many people who liked to hear his story, and he was happy to tell it," said his wife. He also attended as many of the Doolittle Raiders' annual reunions as he could, she said.
"I am proud to have been on the Doolittle Raid," Mr. Nielsen said at the reunion last year. "I am more proud to have been of service to my country. I hope and I pray that what we Doolittle Raiders have done will be an inspiration to you people." 