Lt. Dean Hallmark -- Member of Doolittle's Raiders

Meder Crew No. 6 (Plane #40-2298, target Tokyo): 95th Bombardment Squadron, Lt. Dean E. Hallmark, pilot; Lt. Robert J., copilot; Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, navigator; Sgt. William J. Dieter, bombardier; Sgt. Donald E. Fitzmaurice, flight engineer/gunner. (U.S. Air Force photo)

by Tech. Sgt. Mike Hammond  Air Education and Training Command Public Affairs  4/18/2007 - RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AETCNS) --  "I don't need a light to tell me what I already know!" said 1st Lt. Dean Edward Hallmark, ripping the flashing red light bulbs from the display in the cockpit of his B-25. It was April 18, 1942, and Lieutenant Hallmark and his crew were running out of gas over the coast of China following the famous Doolittle Raid. When the fuel lights illuminated, it wasn't news to the pilot or his crew.  About 63 years later, while watching the film, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo," a different kind of light came on for a relative of Lieutenant Hallmark... a cousin he never knew, but who unknowingly followed in his footsteps in serving the country. "All of a sudden, someone said 'There goes Hallmark!' And I began to wonder if he could have been related to me," said Army Capt. Adam Hallmark, a squadron signal officer based at Fort Hood, Texas. "I'm sort of into genealogy, so I started doing some research. I eventually found out we were distant cousins -- which turned out to be a complete surprise for everyone in my family!"  Captain Hallmark said his research led him to pencil in the details of what followed his cousin's last mission. "He was captured shortly after his plane went down (April 18, 1942), and eventually taken from China to Japan for what they (enemy forces) called a 'war crimes trial,'" Capt. Hallmark said. "Then he was taken back to China, where on Oct. 15, 1942, he was executed."  Capt. Hallmark attended last year's Doolittle Raider reunion, where he met some of the surviving crew members who knew his cousin. Lt. Col. (Ret.) Chase Nielsen, who passed away this year on March 23, was at that reunion. A fellow POW from Lt. Hallmark's plane, Colonel Nielsen told Captain Hallmark his cousin was "real cool," and a team player. "Colonel Nielsen remembered that Lieutenant Hallmark let the guys on the plane decide whether to try crash landing in China or to ditch in the ocean," Captain Hallmark said. "They elected to ditch in the ocean, and he did -- but not before ripping the 'low on fuel lights' out of the display panel and tossing them on the floor!"  Hearing the details of his distant cousin's military service has instilled pride in Captain Hallmark. "Reading about his sacrifice has really motivated me," the captain said. "He took the job, not even knowing what it was, and he did it well. Then, after what he endured as a POW, and eventually giving his life... I'm not going to let the family down."  Captain Hallmark said he has served a year in Iraq already and is scheduled to go back for a longer period of time in September. As this year's reunion ceremony took place in a hangar full of reporters and Airmen, many noticed the Army captain in full service dress uniform standing silently near the surviving Raiders. "I'm here to honor Lieutenant Hallmark and those who served with him," the captain explained.  "Since no one in my family even knew about him, I've taken it upon myself to make sure we remember him. The Raiders always remembered him, and now my family will."

WAR DEPARTMENT
HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY AIR FORCES
WASHINGTON July 9, 1942.

GENERAL DOOLITTLE's REPORT ON JAPANESE RAID

April 18, 1942

This report has been reproduced by the Intelligence Service, Army Air Forces, under the direction of the Commanding General, Army Air Forces and distributed as shown.

Further dissemination in the Air Forces, except among the higher staff officers, is prohibited. Certain parts of this considered suitable for wider dissemination are being extracted at this Headquarters and will receive wide distribution shortly in the form in Intelligence Summaries. The start and finish of the raid are believed still unknown to the Japanese, and it is this information which it is desired to safeguard.

Airplane No. AC 40-2298 -- Took off at 8:40 a.m. ship time
Pilot	Lt.	Dean E. Hallmark	0-421081
Co-pilot	Lt.	Robert J. Meder	0-421280
Navigator-Gunner	Lt.	Chase J. Neilson	0-419938
Bombardier	Sgt.	Wm. J. Dieter	6565763
Engineer-Gunner	Cpl.	Donald E. Fitzmaurice	17360
This airplane landed in the Nangchang Area near Poyang Lake. From the best reports available (which are not to be relied upon) two crew members, presumably Sgt. Dieter and Cpl. Fitzmaurice are missing and three crew members, presumably Lts. Hallmark, Meder and Neilson were captured by the Japanese. It was reported that one of these was bayoneted resisting capture but was not killed.

Here is a website on the Poyang Lake area of China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poyang_Lake  and I’ll add a Google map that should show the map between Toyko and the landing/crash site.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&sugexp=pfwc&tok=v_fszAP-TXV67DC04EoXSw&pq=nangchang+area,+china&cp=12&gs_id=h&xhr=t&q=poyang+lake+china&rlz=1G1ACAWCENUS306&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1273&bih=601&bs=1&wrapid=tljp133426898663604&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

WWII History: The Day Japan Bombed Oregon

The only plane ever to drop a bomb on the United States 

during WWII was this  submarine based Glen.

By: Norm Goyer

September 9, 1942, the I-25 class Japanese submarine was cruising in an easterly direction raising its periscope occasionally as it neared the United States Coastline. 

Japan had attackedPearl Harbor less than a year ago and the Captain of the attack submarine knew that Americans were watching their coast line for ships and aircraft that might attack our country. 

Dawn was approaching; the first rays of the sun were flickering off the periscopes lens. Their mission; attack the west coast with incendiary bombs in hopes of starting a devastating forest fire. 

If this test run were successful, Japan had hopes of using their huge submarine fleet to attack the eastern end of the Panama Canal to slow down shipping from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

The Japanese Navy had a large number of I-400 submarines under construction. Each capable of carrying three aircraft. 

Pilot Chief Warrant Officer Nobuo Fujita and his crewman Petty Officer Shoji Okuda were making last minute checks of their charts making sure they matched those of the submarine's navigator.

September 9, 1942: Nebraska forestry student Keith V. Johnson was on duty atop a forest fire lookout tower between Gold Beach and Brookings Oregon . 

Keith had memorized the silhouettes of Japanese long distance bombers and those of our own aircraft. 

He felt confident that he could spot and identify, friend or foe, almost immediately. It was cold on the coast this September morning , and quiet. 

The residents of the area were still in bed or preparing to head for work. 

The aircraft carried two incendiary 168 pound bombs
and a crew of two.

Lumber was a large part of the industry in Brookings, just a few miles north of the California Oregon state lines.

Aboard the submarine the Captain's voice boomed over the PA system, Prepare to surface, aircrew report to your stations, wait for the open hatch signal. 

During training runs several subs were lost when hangar door were opened too soon and sea water rushed into the hangars and sank the boat with all hands lost. 

You could hear the change of sound as the bow of the I-25 broke from the depths, nosed over for its run on the surface. 

A loud bell signaled the All Clear. 

The crew assigned to the single engine Yokosuki E14Ys float equipped observation and light attack aircraft sprang into action. 

They rolled the plane out its hangar built next to the conning tower. 

The wings and tail were unfolded, and several 176 pound incendiary bombs were attached to the hard points under the wings. 

This was a small two passenger float plane with a nine cylinder 340 hp radial engine. 

It was full daylight when the Captain ordered the aircraft to be placed on the catapult. 

Warrant Officer Fujita started the engine, let it warm up, checked the magnetos and oil pressure. 

There was a slight breeze blowing and the seas were calm. A perfect day to attack the United States of America . 

When the gauges were in the green the pilot signaled and the catapult launched the aircraft. After a short climb to altitude the pilot turned on a heading for the Oregon coast.

Johnson was sweeping the horizon but could see nothing, he went back to his duties as a forestry agent which was searching for any signs of a forest fire. The morning moved on. 

Every few minutes he would scan low, medium and high but nothing caught his eye.

The small Japanese float plane had climbed to several thousand feet of altitude for better visibility and to get above the coastal fog. 

The pilot had calculated land fall in a few minutes and right on schedule he could see the breakers flashing white as they hit theOregon shores.

Johnson was about to put his binoculars down when something flashed in the sun just above the fog bank. 

It was unusual because in the past all air traffic had been flying up and down the coast, not aiming into the coast.

The pilot of the aircraft checked his course and alerted his observer to be on the lookout for a fire tower which was on the edge of the wooded area where they were supposed to drop their bombs. 

These airplanes carried very little fuel and all flights were in and out without any loitering. 

The plane reached the shore line and the pilot made a course correction 20 degrees to the north. 

The huge trees were easy to spot and certainly easy to hit with the bombs. 

The fog was very wispy by this time.

Johnson watched in awe as the small floatplane with a red meat ball on the wings flew overhead, the plane was not a bomber and there was no way that it could have flown across the Pacific, Johnson could not understand what was happening. 

He locked onto the plane and followed it as it headed inland.

The pilot activated the release locks so that when he could pickled the bombs they would release. 

His instructions were simple, fly at 500 feet, drop the bombs into the trees and circle once to see if they had started any fires and then head back to the submarine.

The Glen was launched via catapult from
a I-25 class Japanese submarine.

Johnson could see the two bombs under the wing of the plane and knew that they would be dropped. 

He grabbed his communications radio and called the Forest Fire Headquarters informing them of what he was watching unfold.

The bombs tumbled from the small seaplane and impacted the forests, the pilot circled once and spotted fire around the impact point. 

He executed an 180 degree turn and headed back to the submarine. 

There was no air activity, the skies were clear. 

The small float plane lined up with the surfaced submarine and landed gently on the ocean, then taxied to the sub. A long boom swung out from the stern. 

His crewman caught the cable and hooked it into the pickup attached to the roll over cage between the cockpits. 

The plane was swung onto the deck, The plane's crew folded the wings and tail, pushed it into its hangar and secured the water tight doors. 

The I-25 submerged and headed back to Japan.

This event, which caused no damage, marked the only time during World War II that an enemy plane had dropped bombs on the United States mainland. 

What the Japanese didn't count on was coastal fog, mist and heavy doses of rain made the forests so wet they simply would not catch fire.

Warrant Officer Fujita is shown with his Yokosuka E14Y
(Glen) float plane prior to his flight.

Fifty years later the Japanese pilot,
who survived the war,
would return to Oregon to help dedicate
a historical plaque at the exact spot
where his two bombs had impacted.
The elderly pilot then donated his ceremonial sword
as a gesture of peace and closure
of the bombing of Oregon in 1942.

Kilroy Was Here!

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, 'Speak to America,' sponsored a nationwide contest to find the REAL Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article.

Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts had evidence of his identity.

Kilroy was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war. He worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet.

Kilroy would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn’t be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.

Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time resulting in double pay for the riveters.

One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters and asked him to investigate. It was then that he realized what had been going on.

The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his checkmark on each job he inspected, but added KILROY WAS HERE in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message. Once he did that the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks.

Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them.

As a result, Kilroy's inspection 'trademark' was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troop ships the yard produced. His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific. Before the war's end, 'Kilroy' had been here, there, and everywhere on the long haul to Berlin and Tokyo.

To the unfortunate troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that some jerk named Kilroy had 'been there first.' As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always 'already been' wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arch De Triumphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.)

And, as the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for the coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo! In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference.

The first person inside was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), 'Who is Kilroy?'...

To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy front yard in Halifax, Massachusetts.