The American Pilot Who Forgave His Japanese Captors
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the dark months after Pearl Harbor, the United States launched the Doolittle Raid, a daring strike on Tokyo meant to lift American spirits. Among the men who volunteered was Jacob DeShazer, a young bombardier whose life would take a turn few could imagine. Captured and imprisoned in a Japanese POW camp, he endured starvation, torture, and isolation. Yet years later, the man who once bombed Japan returned not as a soldier, but as a missionary. His journey from vengeance to mercy changed lives on both sides of the Pacific. Told by his daughter, Carol Aiko DeShazer Dixon, author of Return of the Raider: A Doolittle Raider’s Story of War & Forgiveness, this is the story of how a World War II American soldier found peace after unimaginable suffering.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:14.0 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything on this show, |
| 0:20.5 | including your stories. Send them to Our American Stories.com. stories about everything on this show, including your stories. |
| 0:21.6 | Send them to our American Stories.com. |
| 0:24.4 | They're some of our favorites. |
| 0:26.2 | This next story begins where the movie Pearl Harbor left off. |
| 0:30.9 | Two enemies, one led Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the other, an American |
| 0:36.2 | Doolittle Rader who bombed Tokyo. Here to tell the story |
| 0:40.0 | is Carol Aiko Deshaezer Dixon, the daughter of Doolittle Raider Jacob DeShazer. She is the author of |
| 0:47.5 | Return of the Raider, a dool little raider's story of war and forgiveness. Here is Carol. Hi, my name is Carol Iko DeShazer Dixon. And today, I'd like to tell you |
| 1:04.0 | the story of my father, Jacob DeShazer, whose story has made a mark in history. I'm not a historian, and I'm no military expert, |
| 1:16.8 | but when I received the phone call from this radio station asking if I would consider |
| 1:23.0 | sharing my father's story, I knew I had to say, yes, I'll try. |
| 1:29.3 | So, on February 26, |
| 1:34.3 | 1940, more than a year and a half |
| 1:38.3 | before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, |
| 1:42.3 | my father joined the Army Air Corps at Fort McDowell in California. |
| 1:48.0 | He always wanted to be a pilot and believed being a pilot would be a great way to serve his country. |
| 1:57.0 | However, his dream of becoming a pilot was short-lived. |
| 2:02.6 | At 27 years old, he was too old by military standards to begin pilots training. |
| 2:09.6 | Instead, the military trained him to become an airplane mechanic. |
| 2:15.6 | When the training was complete, he was stationed at McCord Field near Tacoma, |
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