Jayhawk

Love, Loss, Liberation and Terror Over the Pacific

Jay A. Stout, George L. Cooper

• Publisher: Casemate
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781612008837
• eBook ISBN: 9781612008844
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

The true story of the B-25 pilot who "fought a personal aerial war to retrieve his family from Japanese captivity in the Philippines . . . stirring" (Barrett Tillman, author of Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan 1942–1945).
Born in the Philippines to an American father and a Filipina mother, George Cooper was one of the few surviving veteran pilots who saw action over such fearsome targets as Rabaul and Wewak. Not just another flag-waving story of air combat,  Jayhawk describes the war as it really was—a conflict with far-reaching tentacles that gripped and tore at not only the combatants, but also their families, their friends, and the way they lived their lives.
Jay Stout examines the story of Cooper's growing up in gentle and idyllic pre-war Manila and how he grew to be the man he was. Stout reviews Cooper's journey to the United States and his unlikely entry into the United States Army Air Forces. Trained as a B-25 pilot, Cooper was assigned to the iconic 345th Bomb Group and flew strafing missions that shredded the enemy, but likewise put himself and his comrades in grave danger. A husband and father, Cooper was pulled two ways by the call of duty and his obligation to his wife and daughter. And always on his mind was the family he left behind in the Philippines who were in thrall to the Japanese.
"A story of love, honor, service, sacrifice, and endurance, captured in page-turning prose that honors a decorated aviator who was truly a giant among the many from America's greatest generation." —Stephen L. Moore, author of Rain of Steel: Mitscher's Task Force 58, Ugaki's Thunder Gods, and the Kamikaze War off Okinawa

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• 1 “Kiss Your Mother Good-Bye”
• 2 “Several Scantily Dressed White Women”
• 3 “May God Protect and Help You”
• 4 “We Had a Beauty Contest Yesterday”
• 5 “I Didn’t Go Any Closer”
• 6 “I Sat There for Some Time”
• 7 “She Was ‘Knocked Up’”
• 8 “I Hated Flying Straight into that Flak”
• 9 “I Will Tell You About It Some Day”
• 10 “I Might Not Get to Write You Again”
• 11 “It Was a Bit of a Shock”
• 12 “I Would Have Stayed”
• 13 “I Opened the Door”
• 14 “I Got Plowed in the Skull”
• 15 “Roll Out the Barrel”
• 16 “They All Lined Up and Marched Away”
• 17 “We Watched Daily for His Return”
• 18 “It Almost Felt Like Two Different Wars”
• 19 “I Thought It Was Just Another Island”
• 20 “Everyone Knew the End Was Very Near”
• 21 “Instead of Brutality They Found Kindness”
• Epilogue
• Afterword by George Cooper: Reflections of a Centenarian
• Bibliography
• Endnotes