A Tale of Two Missions

by Angelle Albright

Crew 13 - including Lt. Bourgeois, far right.

A lesser-known event in World War II intersected the lives of two New Orleanians in a most unlikely place after the famous Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942. Mechanic Robert Bourgeois enlisted in the war, as many from the “Greatest Generation” did. Sr. Celina Seghers was a missionary of the Daughters of Charity. Their chance meeting made both of them heroes as their lives collided in a moment in history that would be inconceivable even by Hollywood standards. The setting for their meeting was a Vincentian mission church in the eastern province of China, a desolate place, pinpointed on U.S. military maps as the location now known for the brutal Japanese Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign. After Katrina, my father handed me a manila folder filled with newspaper articles and archival papers that documented the journey of his great-aunt Celina’s selfless acts that played a role in a horrific genocide that the world knows little about. I knew I was holding on to a piece of history that had to be told. With 2017 being the 75th anniversary of the Tokyo bombings, and after a chance meeting with an old friend, I knew it was time.

The bombardier

The U.S.S. Hornet was still 750 miles away from the target distance when it was spotted by a Japanese patrol boat. The Navy knew they had called in their positions, and the only way to defend the carrier was to get the 16 B-25s off their deck earlier than planned. The weather had turned bad, but the wind and the waves could serve as an aid on takeoff if timed right. Bourgeois watched as Doolittle prepared for a hurried takeoff. The revved engines were screaming loudly as he brought the speed up to full throttle and held the brakes while waiting for the signal from the flagman, who was timing the pitch of the ship against the waves. As Drez describes in his book, all eyes were on Doolittle as he headed out to the unknown: “The big bomber lurched forward and seemed in slow motion as it gathered speed. The Hornet’s deck was now on the upstroke as she climbed the next wave. Down the deck ran his plane. Up rose the Hornet’s deck, reaching for the sky as she crested the next wave. Doolittle’s bomber vaulted into the air, lifted by a combination of the spring-boarding deck and the 30-knot wind.” As he trimmed the plane and went airborne, the confidence of the remaining crews suddenly rose. Bourgeois was in Crew 13. The twelve planes that took off before his used less of the runway then they had trained for. Just before Bourgeois climbed aboard, he was given last minute intelligence about the location of the carriers they were to hit in the Yokosuka dry-dock. Leaving earlier than scheduled lengthened the distance to their targets, making the fuel situation even more bleak—if they could even make it to mainland China, the landing would be at night. Now they understood why they had to fly so low on their final training mission when they departed Eglin Air Force Base and made their way to California to meet the Hornet. As they headed across the sea at top speeds only 25 feet above the crashing waves, the speed of the aircraft was amplified. Drez explains how Bourgeois looked down at the angry sea, recalling the memory of buzzing low over the Texas fields watching chickens fly over fences beneath them. The crew members waved to each other across the waves as they flew for several hours.

USS Hornet’s flight deck crowded with B-25 bombers.

The first aircraft to depart, piloted by Lt. Col. Doolittle, had only about 450 feet of runway for take off.

An excerpt from Twenty-Five Yards of War tells how Crew 13 listened intently to Tokyo Rose over the radio. “She taunted her American listeners with her lilting voice. Her theme was how beautiful it was to live in the land of the cherry blossoms where all the Japanese were free from the dangers of bombing and how wonderful it was to feel such safety. As they flew on, Tokyo Rose brought her usual variety of music and propaganda. Suddenly, about an hour before they were scheduled to make landfall in Japan, they knew that Jimmy Doolittle had arrived. Tokyo Rose told them. Her voice, which had been so peaceful and content, was now frantic as she announced, ‘We’re being bombed!’ After a few panic-stricken minutes, she went off the air.” Each crew had its own mission. After they parted ways, Bourgeois’ plane headed towards Yokosuka. According to Drez, as they approached land, they realized they were off course and flying directly over an airfield. They quickly corrected the error and headed toward the coast, but they were now taking on antiaircraft fire. They climbed to 1,500 feet, and as the bomb bay doors opened, Bourgeois could see the aircraft carrier was going to be easy to hit, as the targets he had been practicing on were much smaller. He released the bombs, and the co-pilot said the ships went flying into the air as the dock toppled along with the oil tankers and machine shop in a glorious ball of fire. The mission was a complete success, but now it was time for part two—surviving. Drez explains that the aircraft then turned and headed to China as if it were any other mission. The hour-long flight took on no anti-aircraft fire, but unfortunately, they found themselves flying over a Japanese naval task force with more than 25 ships. The crew made a wise decision to fly low right through the middle of the column, thinking the ships would never risk shooting at each other. The plan worked, but landing at the airstrip in Chuchow was no longer possible; it was now nighttime and a violent storm had enveloped them. They were flying blind in “the soup” and had to climb up to 6,000 feet to avoid the towering mountainous terrain. The Chinese plane that was meant to guide them to the grass landing strip had crashed in the same storm, and now after 13 hours in the air, their engines finally quit, one at a time. With one still sputtering, the pilot said they had two choices: go down with the plane or get out. The men jumped one by one. Drez recounts Bourgeois’ experience of the dread they suddenly felt, having to jump into the void after all they had accomplished on this day. They weren’t even sure they were over land. As he was falling into the abyss, he was imagining the worst, but surprisingly, he landed as gently as one could imagine, directly into a rice paddy fertilized with human waste. Bourgeois said, “Boy, did I stink!” He cut his chute to keep from drowning in the thigh-high muck. As he tried to make his way out, he realized he was on a mountainside that had been carved out into a series of rice paddies that were like steps and quickly thanked God as he realized how close they must have come to crashing into the towering mountains. Exhaustion, fear of the unknown and barking dogs convinced him to wait out the night. Morning brought hope as he smiled at his first Chinese poppy farmer, hoping for a smile back—a sign he was taught would distinguish the locals from the Japanese. There is beautiful detail in Twenty-Five Yards of War about the overwhelming kindness Bourgeois experienced from the Chinese during his unorthodox visit to their country. He had no idea what he would have to endure, and certainly no idea he was about to meet a friendly face from home.

Sr. Celina, first on back row, in China.

The missionary

The Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent De Paul of the St. Louis Province worked diligently to help the people of China. The Vincentian Order first went to the Mission of the Miraculous Medal in Joachow, China, in 1923. A civil war forced them out in 1927, and it wasn’t until 1935 that they returned. A ship from San Francisco carried a petite, 100-pound, steadfast, courageous nun from New Orleans, Sr. Celina Seghers, my father’s great-aunt. She too, like Bourgeois, was headed on her own blind mission a world away and was photographed sporting her “flying nun” habit as she departed the mainland. In April 1942, Sr. Celina was at the mission in Yukiang, helping to take care of 200 orphan girls. When I read the stories about Sr. Celina from the documents my father gave me, I was moved in the same way Drez was, knowing I was holding on to a story that needed to be told someday—but when? As fate would have it, my daughter was in a play last year, and my 85-year-old father noticed that one of the cast members had the name Seghers. He reminded me of the story he had put in my hands years before. So I dug it out and contacted the girl’s father, who turned out to be an acquaintance of mine, a well-known Catholic author, speaker and radio host named Jimmy Seghers. I couldn’t believe this man I had long admired was my second cousin. What a special day that was when I invited him over to meet my father to reminisce about their family days on Napoleon Avenue across from St. Stephen’s Church. They recalled how much they admired their Aunt Celina and how they learned about the remarkable life she led from newspaper articles and from stories told on the front porch of their childhood homes. A story from the Daily Quill newspaper in Missouri quotes Sr. Celina as she recalls events following the Doolittle Raid. “Five of the American flyers who had bailed out of their planes dropped right into our yard, and of course we helped them. The boys who came down in our dooryard, as well as all of the others, lost all of their belongings, and their clothing was torn and soiled. One had even lost his shoes. We gave them all kinds of supplies, including tooth brushes and paste, towels, and numerous other articles, and we washed their soiled clothing and did all we could to make them comfortable. “I asked them how long they were over Tokyo doing their bombing and one of them said quickly, ‘five seconds flat.’ They realized their task was a dangerous one and said frankly that they were ‘plain scared.’” One of the boys was bombardier Lt. Robert Bourgeois of New Orleans, her home town. Both Jimmy Seghers and my father can still recall Sr. Celina telling the story on the family porch on Napoleon Avenue and how utterly excited she was to find that a man from home could wind up in her care in such an unlikely place. Her joyful tale turned sour as she shared how, soon after the flyers left, the sisters had to flee the mission to escape the Japanese, who were performing atrocities village to village, looking for anyone who had laid eyes on the Tokyo bombers. The priest at the mission had only allowed the flyers to stay one night because of the risk, but the next morning the girls offered the soldiers flowers and sang for them before they rushed away. Sr. Celina spoke of fleeing the mission later with the priest and the other sisters, taking the older orphan girls with them into the mountains, where they hid for months. They had been relatively safe at their mission, but twice, low-flying Japanese aircraft had bombed and shot aircraft fire around the mission. They left behind an Italian priest and others, including older women and children, thinking they would be unharmed, but that was not to be. After two months, when the group returned from the mountains, they found that as punishment for the shelter they gave to the American flyers, the Japanese forces came to steal, rape, murder and burn everything. Sr. Celina said, “Not even the aged women escaped their brutality.” Three priests were dead, along with a number of other refugees who had fled to the mission to escape harm in other villages. Every man, women, and child at the mission perished. The genocide that occurred on the people of China after the Doolittle raids is certainly one of the lesser-told stories of WWII. The Japanese were furious about the bombing of Tokyo, but even more so that the Chinese were helping the Americans survive. Sr. Celina told the press that many people didn’t like to hear about the brutality that went on as the killings were horrific, only falling short of cannibalism. After the raid, Sister Celina and others were ordered to evacuate and make their way back to the United States. She told the St. Louis Post Dispatch upon her return home that they were thankful for the bad weather for the first few weeks, because it provided a shield from the bombers as they began their journey just moments before the Japanese arrived at the mission. By foot, rickshaw, bus and an old truck converted into a bus, the five nuns, three priests and children made their way to an airfield deep in the interior. They met an American pilot who was scheduled to join the American volunteer group the Flying Tigers, and he promised them a ride if they were around when he finally got his orders. The group sat up next to the plane all night to make sure they didn’t miss it. When they arrived, they met American soldiers who offered them coffee and donuts; the rest of their journey began in a jeep that had empty gasoline cans as seats. From there, it was more trains and planes, plus a 72-day boat ride—a journey through India to Central America and finally back to the United States. The exhausted, but grateful, group told the media that the Chinese people were undergoing a grave situation and a terrible ordeal. One of the priests, Fr. Yager, told the Dispatch, “The Japanese who take part in the inland expeditions are allowed to run wild. They sweep over the land like a locust swarm.”

Sr. Celina, fifth from left, in China.

After Bourgeois bid Sr. Celina goodbye, he journeyed 40 miles on foot, horse, train, bus and sedan chair to reunite with Doolittle and eight other crews eight days after leaving the U.S.S. Hornet. Each aircraft had hit their target, but with bad weather and fuel running out, most of the men had to parachute to safety. One of the only planes to execute a landing landed in Russia, where the men were taken into captivity. Another crashed into the sea, killing two, and eight other men were taken prisoner by the Japanese. They were tortured in captivity for nearly two years, during which three were executed, and another died from disease. The rest all eventually made their way back home, but most, like Bourgeois went right back into warfare until America finally ended the war by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sr. Celina told the Daily Quill that before heading back to St. Louis for her important work after her long, arduous journey, while visiting her family in New Orleans she had the unusual pleasure of receiving a surprise visit on her front porch from Lt. Bourgeois’ wife. Mrs. Bourgeois wanted to find out about her young husband, who was bombing the Axis in Europe and had not returned home since that fateful day over Tokyo. Lt. Bourgeois’ brother and mother also came along to hear first-hand news of the American fighter. Nearly seven years in the Orient wasn’t enough for Sr. Celina, who insisted on going back to help the people of China. Once it was thought safe, she returned for another two years before finally coming home to the Daughters of Charity in St. Louis, where she spent out the remainder of her years in education. One of the nuns in her convent said, “Sr. Celina Seghers left her heart in China,” as she eulogized her at her funeral after she died from cancer at the age of 66. Lt. Bourgeois’ life was complete and full and loaded with great friends like Ronald Drez, who made sure his story got told. Drez reminisced on his friendship with Bourgeois fondly, and shared how “He was such a down-to-earth guy, with a great sense of humor. The type of guy who looked in the face of doom and gloom and made a choice to get on with his life. He never looked at his efforts as part of the Doolittle raid as heroic or special; he saw every person involved in the effort as a hero.” In New Orleans, the front porch is a place of welcoming, a place for storytelling, and a place for social connections that have created communities and friendships far beyond what most people have known. From a porch in Yukiang, China, to a porch on Napoleon Avenue, Sr. Celina Seghers and Lt. Robert Bourgeois received each other as their life experiences and heroism collided in a story that almost defies time and space. Everyone has a story. Some are told on porches time and again. Some become movies, some go the graves with our ancestors and some lie in manila envelopes in our parents’ attics. Whether hero or ordinary, each of us has a story worth remembering. Who will tell your story?

Sr. Celina, fifth from left, in China.