Golden Gate Wing Guest Speaker Archive

Presentation Date: March 22, 2001

Hap Halloran

B-29 Navigator shot down over Japan, interned in a Japanese POW camp B-29 Navigator, reluctantly bailed out of his doomed ship over Tokyo at 27,000 feet. Hap was greeted on the ground by civilians who nearly beat him to death. Hap's story is not a pleasant one of, torture, starvation, isolation and survival in a Japanese POW camp. This is a must view tape for today's 'easy-going' generation who don't have a clue about such sacrifices. In Haps own words 'Never give up!'

"I’m not a hero; I’m a survivor... and not alone, but with Gods help."

Hap Halloran, a B-29 navigator who survived brutality as a POW in Tokyo, is to be inducted this fall into the American Combat Airman Hall of Fame at the CAF Headquarters in Midland. And although he will tell you he is not a hero, he is a man who, through his experiences and years of introspection and action, has prominently demonstrated the virtues of a role model for generations to come. The Golden Gate Wing had the honor of having Hap speak at the March dinner meeting.

As a child growing up in the Midwest, of the few airplanes he saw - - usually a Piper Cub or Aeronca - - Hap nearly always would holler, Hey, mister, gimme a ride? He says he just wanted to be a part of whatever was going on up there.

Hap grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, one of five sons of a railroad worker. He vividly recalls being in Washington D.C. in 1939 and buying a ticket for a ride in a Stinson. That ticket cost him $1.50 for a half hour ride over the nations capital. And, Hap still has the ticket for the ride. He also saved the ticket for a DC-3 ride he took shortly thereafter.

As a teenager, the game of golf became his major attraction. He remembers spending many summer nights sleeping in the warmth of a sand trap, watching the lights of mail planes cross the starry sky. Hap was golfing when word of the Pearl Harbor attack reached him.

Halloran says his crew adopted its name from a comic strip by the name Rover Boys Express, “this was a case of fellows going downhill on one of these things with the wheels on the long board”... There we were, all working together in harmony. We were a fun loving crew, because after awhile you really get to know each other and you’re damn glad you’re part of the Rover Boys.

The Rover Boys completed their training and then waited at Harrington, Kansas near Wichita for the ship on which they’d fly together. They were young, ready for combat, and capable of doing anything.

Hap recalls the day they first saw the new bomber the Rover Boys would fly. Out on the ramp was a brand new, shiny, B-29, with the designation D-box-27 on the massive vertical stabilizer. It was December 1944, and Hap remembers thinking “boy, what a great Christmas present.” We went out and did all the touching and we were inside and outside. I think we treated it as a toy, but we knew it was far more serious than that.

A brown envelope came with the silver bomber - - orders for the plane and its crew. The Rover Boys finished their final training over the fields of Kansas, a time without incident, save for one daring event on their final practice bomb run.

They saved a single bomb to drop from 20,000 feet in a nearby lake. The bomb ended up hitting the water some 200-300 feet from what appeared to be two retired men in a fishing boat. Hap could only wonder what was going through their minds when the missile was whistling down upon them.

Soon, the Rover Boys were headed out of Kansas. It was a crystal clear night when the B-29 took off and circled to 18,000 feet, passing over the Golden Gate Bridge to the Pacific for operational deployment. Soaring out over the ocean, with a final look back at the Gate and the lights of San Francisco offered the crew its transition to a new world.

As you looked down there to see it... I could only speak for myself... you were moving away from it, and I kept looking back,…kept looking back. And I think at that time in our lives, in all of us, that was a period of transition. From youth to manhood, from peace to combat, from family to the far Pacific; and there was no talk. We were normally a very loquacious group. I bet it was a half hour before somebody broke the silence.

After Hawaii, it was off for fuel at the next stop - - Kwajalein, a tiny island with a name Hap says he couldn’t even spell. The atoll was so small, Hap says it could only accommodate five B-29s for the overnight fueling stop. The next stretch of water was unfriendly, another reminder they were heading to combat, and a final stop of Saipan.

The Rover Boys first mission was to Iwo Jima, about 650 miles, a three-hour up and back jaunt. There was light flak but no fighters, and Hap says, “Afterward, I thought we’d done something brave.” Then I thought, back home today it was December 24. I didn’t adjust for the time (difference) of 16 hours. But I said today, tonight back home ... in Cincinnati, Ohio my family would all be gathered around the tree opening gifts... But then you realize you’ve gotta get that baby back to Saipan, which is down the road a ways.

Next, the Rover Boys had another high altitude mission to Kobe. It was one of the best missions we had at high altitude. That was a fifteen and a half hour flight as I recall, up and back. You’re over water; you’ve got to go over two hostile fronts, over and on the way back. We stayed at low altitude for fuel purposes on the way up. Then we would climb.

The B-29s had to avoid storms; on that day the weather was so severe that 26 Mustang escorts were lost when they hit a front.

After a mission to Nagoya, the Rover Boys next mission, also at high altitude, was January 27, 1945. Hap says the wind that day was off of Siberia, moving at about 180 mph at 29,000 feet, where the B-29s were flying their bomb run northwest of Tokyo. Part of the problem we found out later was that when you’re doing 470 miles an hour at that altitude, there’s a temperature differential. Our bombsight wasn’t adjusted to that kind of speed. There could have been other factors, but that was one of them.

Hap says the Rover Boys were at about 32,000 feet when they made the turn into the target. He remembers the intelligence briefing of the day, “There will be no fighters at your attitude, and there will be light flak, if any. Have a good mission. Drop one for us.”

Today, 56 years later, Hap knows as many as 300 Japanese fighters had swarmed up from the ground below and were cycling at several altitudes to intercept the B-29s that were to bomb target #357 - - the Musashino-Nakajima aircraft plant on Tokyo’s west side.

Coming in, there were fighters on the front of you, fighters on the back, and all the calls coming out, Hap remembers. It was more than we had experienced or expected. On the west side of the city there were a couple of fighters coming in at 11 o’clock, and the first thing you think of is... ramming, it was a common practice.

Hap says the planes didn’t ram. One pulled off while the other continued at the Rover Boys, its colored tracers whizzing past D-box-27. Just before reaching the target, with the bomb bay doors opened about 70 percent, there was a blast, as shells burst the bombers nose, flinging Plexiglas and debris back through the flight deck.

The temperature in the crippled B-29 had been about 70 degrees, allowing the crew to comfortably fly in khaki cotton suits. Seconds after the Plexiglas nose burst, the temperature in the bomber plunged to 58 degrees below 0. Two engines were out and the B-29 was smoking heavily.

Hap remembers that despite the damage, there remained hope the plane could be turned toward Saipan, hopefully to limp back. You say a lot of prayers and hope. Suck more oxygen. I put my jacket on and took off my flak suit off.

The intra-plane communications system was down and for the first time since they’d been together, the Rover Boys were separated. There was a 33 foot tunnel that led to the boys in the back and the radar man from Montana took off his parachute so he could crawl down that tunnel to see to it the crew in the back got word to get out. He returned to say the survivors would bail out, on their own. Hap didn’t find out until this past year that none of them ever left the crippled airplane, and their bodies were found in the B-29’s wreckage.

Hap says the forward escape hatch wouldn’t open. The nose landing gear jammed due to the loss of power, blocked that exit. The only way out was to squeeze through the racks of un-dropped bombs and the partially open bomb bay doors. One by one, starting with the bombardier, the Rover Boys slipped out the bomb bay and into Japanese airspace.

Hap says he and the B-29 commander Snuffy Smith were the last two crew members forward, and when Smith told him it was time to jump, Hap responded that he first wanted to eat one of his specially prepared turkey sandwiches - - white turkey meat and mayonnaise on white bread with the crust cut off.

Only later did he recognize his sudden appetite as denial - - denial over the loss of the safety of the bomber, and the realization he would soon have to leave the plane.

With Snuffy Smith’s coaxing, Hap walked to the bomb bay and slid between the stacks of bombs through the bay doors. Remembering that enemy pilots frequently strafed parachuting B-29 crews, Hap began a free fall from about 27,000 feet down to somewhere between 4000 and 2500 feet.

He was coming down somewhere in the Chiba prefecture, farther east than originally expected. Hap would later learn that due to the 180 mph jet stream, his B-29s bomb load had dropped somewhere in Tokyo’s downtown Ginza district.

After hitting the silk and hanging in the chute, Hap became aware of three Japanese planes circling him. They throttled back, dropped flaps and made a few revolutions before two of them flew off.

Hap says he thought the remaining pilot would finish him off. But instead he made a close pass and saluted the dangling navigator before flying off. The downside of being spared was the enemy planes prop wash set Hap swinging in an extreme arc, which made the chute unable to control before he struck the ground. Descending toward downtown Tokyo, Hap could see hundreds of people gathering below.

Hurt upon landing, Hap was dragged a distance by the chute, which he was unable to control. And then, the beating and kicking began and Hap says he thought, “This is the way you die.” But the crowd eventually parted for four soldiers. They cut his parachute shrouds, put a pistol barrel to his temple, bound his hands together behind his back, tied his feet and then behind his back so he was bent double, backwards. They dragged the 215-pound navigator to a truck and drove him to Koricki Airfield, where Hap was worked over with rifle butts, and a ring was cut from his swollen finger.

He was thrown into prison - - a prison which years later Hap was to learn was the Kempe Tai torture prison, just across the north end of the moat of the Emperors Palace - - a prison infamous for its cruel treatment of B-29 crews.

I was blindfolded and always had a blanket over my head. That combination... not being able to see anything, and hurting, hurting, hurting all over, and then a foreign language being spoken. And you always believe that language is about you. And it’s something bad. And this just churns you inside. I was frightened the entire time I was in Japan, until the day that I was liberated and on a plane headed home. Never one minute that I didn’t have that fear of what could happen, even though I tried to control it.

One of the first things Hap was forced to do that first night after he was shot down was to sign a three-page statement. By signing, Halloran explains that guards steadied his arms, held his hand to grip the pen, and scrawled a circle.

Hap says about sixty days later he was told what he’d signed. I had said in that statement that I had willfully and indiscriminately bombed Japanese cities and killed many people. Therefore I was not a POW, I was a federal prisoner and was on trial for my life. Another document signed in similar fashion, revoked the navigator’s rights under the Geneva Convention.

Put in a cage with dimensions about 4-by-5 feet, Halloran became inundated with lice, shirami, bed bugs and fleas. A toilet had been cut in the corner of the cage and a light continuously burned overhead. He figured he’d been imprisoned with some Japanese who were conscientious objectors to the war effort.

When my food came to me, which was a ball of rice, I couldn’t eat it, because every day I was beaten. This fellow told me recently that, Hap, I was in the next cage, and the guard gave me your rice because you couldn’t eat it. I kept hollering Hap you’ve got to eat it. But somehow, I did get enough water to keep me alive.

That was the first seven days of captivity. Because of his condition, Hap couldn’t control sounds he made, disturbing the other prisoners, and leading to a doctor’s visit. The doctor offered poison as an option to Haps pain.

Every morning Hap heard the guard come by, saying what he thought was the word Ohio. Hap thought the guard was trying to make him homesick for his native state. After the doctors visit, Hap had had enough and he blurted out, “Yeah, Cincinnati. And Ill get back there someday and you wont.”

That statement made a tremendous difference for Hap in this dark hour. It’s amazing what that can do for restoration. When you have no control, that’s when you die.

Later that day, at Haps first interrogation, he learned Ohio is the Japanese phrase for Good Morning. Hap says the episode taught him to, “Make certain you understand what is said before you make a judgment.” Sometimes you must learn from adversity.

After interrogation, Hap spent the next sixty-seven days in a horse stall, with no light, no calendar, no one to speak to, and punishment if he made sound. Some of the Doolittle Raiders had been in his cell after their capture, before they’d been beheaded. Next door, a man with severe burns died. And there was a 19 year old, obviously delirious, who kept calling out, “Okay, Mom, I’ll be right down for breakfast.” After two days, the young man was taken away, never to return.

Hap resorted to prayer. And he learned to cry, quietly, as a release from the torture and the torment of being alone.

Starving was another thing, with daily balls of rice providing the only subsistence. On a good day we get that ball, rolled through a little cut in the front door. After awhile, you could almost hear it in the darkness, and smell rice. All the rice had bugs in it, and we welcomed that. And I would crawl across the floor and get the ball of rice. And Id sit there are take two, three or four grains at a time, try and perpetuate something. If there was a raid that day by some of our planes, maybe we’d only get two balls of rice. I was able to get water by asking for it. And you’d get a tin cup ... some of the guards were okay... but you’d put your hand out for the tin cup and they’d wait until it was all the way out and some of the guards would pour the scalding water all over your arm.

To cope with realities of his imprisonment, Hap thought about people he knew other than his family, because Hap says that would bring me down, totally. I’d think of George Mosling in school. He always smelled bad in the second grade.

Then came March 10, 1945, a night when B-29s launched a fire raid on Tokyo. The bombers had aimed for points east of the city, but again the incendiaries carried into Tokyo, starting a firestorm with winds above 100 miles an hour.

Hap and other prisoners were padlocked in a cage, and the guards left the prison compound for their own safety. The firestorms heat was so intense, the cage door burned off. The next day an interrogator filled Hap in on some of the details, telling him the river had filled with the bodies of about one thousand people who’d been caught on a nearby bridge. The firestorm had superheated the bridges structure, causing it to fail.

Hap remembers having been taken then to Ueno Zoo. It was his first daylight in 71 days. During the truck ride, Hap saw the devastation the firestorm had wrought. Haps clothes were taken and he was tied to the bars in the front of the cage, naked, bearded and filthy from ten weeks of abuse.

And then some civilians were marched through. They were mostly ladies and young children. I think the purpose was... I don’t know... they were complaining about the B-29s and you can’t stop them. And the army was trying to show them look at this person. And I think I even saw some of the ladies look up. You kind of hoped you saw some compassion.

About an hour later, Hap was taken off display. The next day he was trucked to a camp on the southwest edge of Tokyo. The camp, called Omori, had prisoners from Corrigedor, China and other locations. But Hap and his fellow B-29 crew prisoners, always guarded by soldiers with bayonet-equipped rifles, remained completely isolated from these others. The exception was Pappy Boyington, whose living area was near the front of Hap’s barracks. Hap recalls Pappy telling him he’d gladly trade his Congressional Medal of Honor for a hamburger sandwich. Hap also says Pappy had a magic charm about him, and, that as long as he was there, we’d be all right.

Especially important though, was Haps reunion with five of the Rover Boys, including Captain E.G. Smith. Hap says at first he didn’t recognize his B-29 captain in his dirty, disheveled state. Yet there was a great boost in even the small amount of secret communication Halloran and his fellow prisoners had, and not surprisingly, most of it was about food. When the POWs at Omuri were finally freed, Hap weighed all of 115 pounds.

Not all of the experiences Hap had while a captive in Japan were completely negative. He looks back today at small kindnesses, at expressions of true compassion he received - - the seven beans he and a fellow POW were each given by a woman who would have been beaten had they been discovered, the bucket of hot water and tiny piece of soap he was offered by another civilian.

Liberated on August 29th, 1945, two weeks after the war ended, Halloran has been back to Saipan and Tokyo on numerous trips. Each time he’s learned more about his imprisonment and torture, his captors and their place in Japans society. He’s also learned more about Hap Halloran.