Field of Spears: The Last Mission of the Jordan Crew (review)

In the fifteen months of the World War II American strategic bombing offensive against Japan, nearly 150 B-29s were lost to enemy fighters and antiaircraft fire. Many of the eleven-man bomber crews perished with their aircraft, but hundreds of flyers fell into Japanese hands. A great number were killed by enraged civilians seeking revenge for the devastation of the bombings or for the death in overseas combat of soldier relatives. Many others died at the hands of the Japanese army or were brutalized and tortured during painful interrogation sessions. Well over 200 American airmen are estimated to have been killed by their military captors — some, indeed, even after the official Japanese surrender. Only 362 survivors returned home safely from captivity.

Field of Spears is the dramatic story of one B-29 crew shot down over Japan. Captain Gordon Jordan's plane was one of five bombers dropping mines on the harbor entrance to the northwest Honshu port of Niigata on the night of 19-20 July 1945. As Jordan turned the plane to leave the area, his navigator made the fatal mistake of choosing a route directly over the center of the city. Before long, Japanese anti-aircraft fire crippled the aircraft. All of the crew except the copilot were able to bail out and reach the ground safely, but three of the flyers were killed by excited, screaming, angry mobs; Japanese soldiers captured the remaining seven.

Tied up and blindfolded, the Americans were held locally, roughly interrogated by kempei-tai officers, and then sent on to Tokyo for further, more brutal kempei-tai questioning. When Japan surrendered on 15 August, the seven were shifted to a nearby prisoner-of-war camp from which they were finally liberated by American forces at the end of the month. All of the men had somehow survived their brief but bitter captivity.

Gregory Hadley, a Professor of English and American Cultural Studies at Niigata University, narrates these harrowing events with skill and perception. He carefully describes the personal background of the flyers, their training and previous experience, and their individual actions on their final flight. Several photographs taken immediately after their capture lend dramatic emphasis. Hadley also examines wartime life in Niigata and the personalities, behavior, and motives of key local Japanese civilians. His research is extensive: his chapter endnotes include archival and published materials, interviews and correspondence with the American survivors and several of the Japanese, and a number of written Japanese accounts. Some of the Japanese with whom he spoke refused to allow their names to be used, or would not answer questions at all, but Hadley nevertheless elicited an impressive amount of information from these hitherto untapped sources. In the end, Field of Spears emerges as a well written, balanced, and, indeed, very sensitive account, a model case study of a B-29 mission over Japan.