Last Mission to Tokyo: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raiders and Their Final Fight for Justice

Written by Michel Paradis

Narrated by Jacques Roy

Michel Paradis’s Last Mission to Tokyo, a “superb” (The Wall Street Journal) and “engrossing...richly researched” (The New York Times Book Review) account of a key but underreported moment in World War II: The Doolittle Raids and the international war crimes trial in 1945 that defined the Japanese-American relations and changed legal history.

In 1942, freshly humiliated from the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was in search of a plan. President Roosevelt, determined to show the world that our nation would not be intimidated or defeated by enemy powers, demanded recommendations for a show of strength. Jimmy Doolittle, a stunt pilot with a doctorate from MIT, came forward and led eighty young men, gathered together from the far-flung corners of Depression-era America, on a seemingly impossible mission across the Pacific. Sixteen planes in all, they only had enough fuel for a one-way trip. Together, the Raiders, as they were called, did what no one had successfully done for more than a thousand years. They struck the mainland of Japan and permanently turned the tide of the war in the Pacific.

Almost immediately, The Doolittle Raid captured the public imagination, and has remained a seminal moment in World War II history, but the heroism and bravery of the mission is only half the story. In Last Mission to Tokyo, Michel Paradis reveals the dramatic aftermath of the mission, which involved two lost crews captured, tried, and tortured at the hands of the Japanese, a dramatic rescue of the survivors in the last weeks of World War II, and an international manhunt and trial led by two dynamic and opposing young lawyers—in which both the United States and Japan accused the other of war crimes—that would change the face of our legal and military history. Perfect for fans of Lucky 666 and Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial, Last Mission to Tokyo is an unforgettable war story-meets-courtroom-drama that “captures the reader with the first sentence and never lets go” (John Grisham).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Jul 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781797110325

Michel Paradis

Michel Paradis is a leading human rights lawyer, historian, and national security law scholar and most recently the author of the critically acclaimed Last Mission to Tokyo. He is also a partner at the international law firm Curtis Mallet-Prevost and a Lecturer at Columbia Law School. He has appeared on or written for the PBS NewsHour, CBS, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, Netflix, NPR, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Lawfare, Just Security, Articles of War, among other publications. He is a fellow at the Center on National Security and the National Institute for Military Justice. He was awarded his doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Campion Scholar, and received his law degree from Fordham Law School in New York.

Reviews for Last Mission to Tokyo

[vladimiro sousa · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting factual side of the events. Felt it was to declarative, to formal and keep to the facts of the matter. Missed more personal side of the events. Despite the very graphic enunciation of the torture suffer by the POWs, kind a felt those like a check list of the crimes committed. Also, expected to find out more about the survive raiders.

[Mark Gaynor · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I had wrongly assumed that this was going to be a "Mission Impossible" story, but it was actually more "Matlock" which was perfectly fine as it told this tragic war story with no winners from a completely different angle. My hats off to the author for presenting the case in such an unbiased manner and letting the listener/reader draw his/her own conclusions. So often, writers ruin a perfectly good book by interjecting their own personal opinions & biases into their work.

[Marc Askew · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a compelling and highly detailed account of the experiences and sad fate of the captured Doolitle bombers, the subsequent trial of Japanese military figures connected to their execution and the American prosecuting and defending lawyers of the post-war trial.

[Walter Pearson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent book, exquisitely detailed. I really appreciated the author’s combination of intellectual rigour and story telling ability.

[GARY WIMBERLY · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great. Historical. Non. Fiction. Book. Based. On. Facts. From. Actual. Trals