On Doolittle Raid, Darlington’s Bill Farrow gave his life to repay Pearl Harbor

"My time has come now. I have but once to die. The sooner the better. I wonder what the next world will be like? I'm sure there is one. I am not afraid."

-Letter from Lt. William Farrow of Darlington to his family, written in a Japanese prison before he was executed. The letter was found after the war.

On April 18, 1942 – 75 years ago on Tuesday – 80 men in 16 B-25B Mitchell bombers, led by famed aviator Jimmy Doolittle, launched from the pitching deck of the aircraft carrier Hornet and bombed Tokyo and other Japanese cities. The Doolittle Raid was America’s initial payback for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

“But it would be a pinprick compared to what they did to us,” said Heather McPherson of the South Carolina Military Museum.

The raid was the first time that medium-sized Air Force bombers took off from a Navy aircraft carrier. The planes had been stripped down to pack in just enough fuel to reach China.

Many considered it a suicide mission.

The men had volunteered at the Columbia Army Air Base, what is now Columbia Metropolitan Airport, for an unidentified hazardous mission. They trained here and in Florida for the raid.

Farrow was the pilot of Plane No. 16, called Bat Out of Hell, the last off the carrier. He attended the University of South Carolina. He was considered a straight arrow. God fearing. Bound to duty.

The Darlington native would pay the ultimate price for his patriotism. But his “rules for life” he had written while a student at USC lived on after his death.

Farrow was one of eight members of Doolittle's Tokyo Raiders captured by the Japanese. He endured six months of torture and deprivation before being killed at age 25 with two fellow Raiders.

After word of his execution reached the United States, Farrow was touted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as an example for the country.

But time fades memory. Most Americans, or South Carolinians for that matter, don't remember the sacrifice he made. Farrow came to be known as the Forgotten Raider.

The late Bill Hite, who died in March 2015, was Farrow's co-pilot on Plane No. 16. The two endured months of captivity together before the Japanese executed Farrow.

In 2002, at the 60th Doolittle reunion held here in Columbia, Hite was hesitant to talk about the experience. “It gets me a little emotional,” he told The State at the time.

He described Farrow as “a really nice-looking fellow. Tall and slender. A sweet guy. Dedicated, with ability. He didn't drink or do some of the other stuff that the others guys did. I especially trusted him because he was such a fine guy.”

Getting his wings

Farrow was born Sept. 24, 1918, in his grandmother's home in Darlington. He graduated from St. John's High School in 1935 and, after saving his money from a Works Progress Administration job, entered USC in 1938.

In 1939, the federal Civil Aeronautics Authority identified Farrow as a candidate for air training. The nation saw war coming, and began to prepare its best and brightest for military service.

While at flight school in San Angelo, Texas, Farrow became assistant editor of The Fledgling, the base newspaper.

He wrote columns about his love of flying - “a soft, dazzling cloud layer beneath, the sun glistening on graceful wings cutting through the blue.” On Friday, July 11, 1941, “with a very dull ceremony, we graduated.”

Four months later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Farrow had his wings, a $245 monthly paycheck and a rendezvous with horror.

The Doolittle Raid was intended to boost American morale and shake Japan’s confidence. The plan was for the planes to launch close enough to Japan for the crews to bomb the cities and continue to an airfield in China.

On April 18, 1942, Farrow's plane perched precariously at the end of the flight deck of the USS Hornet, lashed to the deck of the aircraft carrier. Its tail stuck out over the roiling sea below.

A Japanese trawler had spotted the fleet surrounding the Hornet, and the 16 planes had to take off early. They were 170 nautical miles from the intended launch point.

Crew members fought stiff winds and slick decks to get the planes into position.

As Plane No. 16 prepared for takeoff, the gust from another plane's propellers blew a sailor into the prop of Farrow's plane. The seaman lost his arm. Before taking off, it struck the tail of Plane No. 15, damaging No. 16's nose.

The two accidents were ominous foreshadowing of the tragedies to follow.

‘A kind of wasp’

Being the last plane off the carrier meant that Plane 16 also would be the last to reach Japan. It would not have the element of surprise the early planes would have.

Despite the rough start, the plane's mission seemed to be on course. But as Plane No. 16 reached the China coast, Farrow and Hite made a fateful decision.

With fuel running out because of the early launch, the crew turned southwest, flew as far as they could, then bailed out. But the Japanese occupied the area, and within an hour they captured all five crew members.

The Japanese handcuffed the Raiders and placed them in individual cells. One by one, they hauled the men before a tribunal of a dozen Japanese officers.

The officers questioned each man through an interpreter. The Raiders were told they would be shot if they didn't answer the questions.

What's the Hornet? “It's a bug, a kind of wasp,” Hite answered.

It's an aircraft carrier, too! “I'm in the Army. I'm not familiar with the other branches of service.”

Then the torture began.

The Raiders were held in separate cells, shackled on small stools, not allowed to sleep.

One by one, the men were pulled into interrogation rooms. An interrogator would charge at each with a club, screaming. He would stop the threatened blow inches from a prisoner's head, tapping him with the club instead. Each refusal to answer drew slaps and blows with fists and rifle butts.

If the the Raider refused to answer, the torture would become more vicious.

The guards would place a towel over the man's nose and mouth, then pour water through the towel and into the victim's mouth until he lost consciousness. Then the guards forced the water from the men's lungs, revived them and repeated the process.

They forced the Raiders to kneel with thick poles behind their knees. Guards then jumped on the men's thighs, separating their knee joints. The interrogators jammed sharp sticks the size of pencils into the membrane between the Raiders' fingers. Then they tied the fingers together and manipulated the sticks to increase the pain.

The torture continued. Then, suddenly, Farrow, Spatz and Hallmark were taken away. Unknown to the other Raiders, a Japanese military tribunal had sentenced the three to death for allegedly bombing civilian targets and strafing non-combatants.

The men were allowed to write letters home. On Oct. 15, 1942, six months after their capture, the three were led to their deaths.

Rules for Life

The Japanese erected three short crosses in the prison courtyard. They made Farrow, Spatz and Hallmark kneel, then tied them to the crosses.

After the war, a Japanese officer testified at a war crimes trial that he hadn't wanted to execute the men but had to do his duty. He had the men tied to crosses to comfort them because they were Christians.

He told the men that Christ had died on the cross – “and when you die on the cross, you will be honored as gods.”

Farrow reportedly replied, "Please tell the folks back home that we died bravely."

The men were blindfolded. A black dot was marked in the center of each blindfold. The nine-man firing squad was ordered to shoot. The Raiders' heads snapped back, and their bodies slumped forward.

After his capture, Farrow's mother found the rules for life in a trunk. In October 1942, she told a Washington Post reporter about them. They were published under the title "An American's Creed for Victory."

Publication from coast to coast followed.

On Jan. 27, 1943, USC President J. Rion McKissick read Farrow's creed instead of delivering a farewell address to graduates.

It would be almost a year before Americans found out about the executions. On April 27, 1943, a little more than a year after Farrow's plane had left the Hornet, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made a radio announcement to the nation:

“It is with the deepest feeling of horror . . . that I have to announce the barbarous execution,” he said.

After the war, in 1945, the men's ashes were found in jars at the prison, along with the letters the three men had written home.

“He reassured his mother to keep strong, keep going and keep the faith,” the museum’s McPherson said.

On Jan. 17, 1949, the ashes of Farrow and Hallmark were interred in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington. A simple marble base and urn bear Farrow's name in the family plot in Darlington.

This story was originally published April 15, 2017 at 2:57 PM with the headline "On Doolittle Raid, Darlington’s Bill Farrow gave his life to repay Pearl Harbor."