Author Paul Hendrickson
Author Paul Hendrickson is an award-winning American journalist and author. After much research and many interviews, Hendrickson penned this book about his father, Joe Paul Hendrickson (1918-2003), pilot of a P-61 Black Widow fighter plane based in Iwo Jima during World War II. Hendrickson describes his father's plane as follows: "A sleek and lethal thing, poisonous as the spider from which she'd taken her name, a combination fighter-bomber, a pursuit ship, from the Northrop Aircraft Corporation, with a twin-boom tail design and with a crew of three: pilot, radar operator, gunner."
Joe Paul Hendrickson
P-61 Black Widow
Pilot Joe Hendrickson (center), with radio operator Jack Kerr (left), and gunner Leo E. Vough (right)
Hendrickson starts with the early decades of his father's life, so we get to know the future pilot and his family. In brief, Joe grew up in a large family on a Kentucky farm; joined the Army Air Corps in 1937, when he was nineteen; and gradually worked his way up from airplane mechanic school to flight school, becoming an officer along the way. Hendrickson describes his father's training in detail, and includes depictions of other pilots, radar operators, and gunners in his father's unit.
Joe married his wife Rita Bernardine Kyne in early 1942, and "after marriage, and with the war on, the young officer and his bride crisscrossed the country, airfield to airfield, base to base: Santa Ana, Yuma, Kissimmee, Bakersfield, Orlando, La Junta, Fresno." Once Joe qualified, he volunteered for night fighters and the almost mythic Black Widow.
In September, 1944, Joe said goodbye to Rita and his young sons Marty and Paul, and flew overseas. If it was left to Joe's mother-in-law Dora, Joe would have remained stateside. In 1942 Dora took it upon herself to write a letter to the first lady, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. Dora explained that she was concerned about her son-in-law Joe being sent overseas because her daughter was pregnant and Joe was needed at home. Dora implored Mrs. Roosevelt, saying, "You as the mother of six children can see how important it is that he be left in the States & I know can & will do something about it." (You have to admire Dora. 🙂)
Joe Paul Hendrickson and Rita Hendrickson with Marty and baby Paul
Rita Hendrickson with Marty and one-year-old Paul
Regardless, Joe was sent overseas in 1944, as a member of the 549th Night Fighter Squadron. The unit's first stop was Hawaii, where the P-61 Black Widows were assembled. Joe named his plane 'The Rita B', which was painted on the side, under the cockpit.
The Rita B
The 549th squadron then island hopped 5,242 miles from Hawaii to Saipan, followed by another 726 miles to Iwo Jima "where for the last five and a half months of World War II, [Joe] flew approximately seventy-five missions, largely in pitch black conditions." Hendrickson vividly recounts some of his father's sorties: Joe's patrol missions, which were defensive; and Joe's intruder missions to other islands, whose purpose was to hit enemy aircraft; sink enemy shipping; and harass the enemy.
The fighting on Iwo Jima was brutal. In his memoir, former marine William Manchester wrote, "The deaths on Iwo were extraordinarily violent. There seemed to be no clean wounds; just fragments of corpses.....You tripped over viscera fifteen feet long, over bodies which had been cut in half at the waist. Legs and arms, and heads bearing only necks, lay fifteen feet from the closest torsos. As night fell the beachhead reeked with the stench of burning flesh." Hendrickson notes that he understands why his father later "seemed disinclined to talk much about the war, to shrug off whatever things he had done in it."
Carnage on Iwo Jima
When Joe returned home after WWII, he became a co-pilot, then a pilot for Eastern Airlines.
However, family life was difficult for the Hendricksons. The author observes, "I am convinced my father came home from the war with bad PTSD, and took it out on his sons, or at least on Marty and me who were the two oldest.....I now believe that his anger and violence and eruptive tendencies were the result of the war and all of his past. Hendrickson notes, "My father.....didn't know how to escape [his PTSD] except to take it out savagely on his sons backs with his belt....Sometimes he went after us with boards he retrieved from the basement."
As a result, at age fourteen Paul (the author) left home for a seminary, following his brother Marty, who departed two years before. Joe's temperament adversely affected his marriage as well. Hendrickson observes, "I haven't a shred of doubt about how much [my parents] loved each other. And still, it all went wrong.....They were woefully mismatched. By the middle of their sixty-one year marriage it seemed a matter of twin titanic wills, and all the problems flowing outward."
Paul Hendrickson's book about the seminary
Despite their difficult childhoods, both Marty and Paul were close to their dad as adults. They'd visit, schmooze and drink beer, and go up with Joe in his private plane. Joe even helped Marty, who was a troubled adult, out of frequent jams, usually related to gambling and money.
Author Paul Hendrickson recalls a fishing trip he took with his dad in the late 1980s, when they met in northern Wisconsin, flew to Canada in Joe's private plane (called the Deb), and met Joe's old Eastern Airlines cronies at Eagle Lake Resort. Hendrickson recalls, "For the next four days, there was much boozing and jesting and fishing....Over the next few years, as [Dad's] health slowly declined, our relationship grew better, more open. It was as if we both realized: Time is short."
Paul Hendrickson and his father Joe took a trip to the Eagle Lake Resort
Paul Hendrickson (front) with his father Joe Paul Hendrickson
In addition to writing about his father, Hendrickson detours into tangential topics, such as American poet James Dickey, who wrote 'The Firebombing', about the P-61 Black Widow. Hendrickson interviewed Dickey and says the poet inflated (lied about) his war missions and claimed to be a P-61 pilot, when he was really a radio operator. Hendrickson rails about Dickey, and the topic feels like an outlier in the book.
Poet James Dickey
On a more positive note, Hendrickson admires director Clint Eastwood's 2006 movie "Letters from Iwo Jima", the companion film to Eastwood's 2006 movie "Flags of Our Fathers." "Flags of Our Fathers" is about the five Marines and one Navy corpsman who raised the flag at the Battle of Iwo Jima. Eastwood wanted to tell the Japanese side of the story as well, and "Letters from Iwo Jima" revolves around General Tadamichi Kuribayashi of the Japanese Imperial Army. Clintwood admires Kuribayashi, who fought bravely and "revealed his humanity so utterly in the letters to his family."
General Tadamichi Kuribayashi
Hendrickson also takes the opportunity to include mini-biographies of several men, besides his father, who served on Iwo Jima. Hendrickson is especially intrigued by the story of Captain Laurance Joseph Garland Jr., a VERY skilled P-61 pilot who seemed to dive straight into the ocean after a routine patrol mission, killing himself, the radio operator, and the gunner. Hendrickson 'investigates' this incident, trying to make sense of the tragedy.
Captain Laurance Joseph Garland Jr.
This memoir/biography, centering on Hendrickson's father Joe, is thoroughly researched and well written. Hendrickson is very proud of his dad, who had the grit to leave the farm and become a fighter pilot. At the end of the book Hendrickson shows Captain Joseph P. Hendrickson's citation, which reads (in part): "For meritorious achievement while participating in aerial flight.....Captain Hendrickson's display of high professional skill and courage reflected great credit upon himself and the Army Air Forces."
I don't read a lot of books about the armed forces, but I like the book and recommend it to interested readers .
Thanks to Netgalley, Paul Hendrickson, and Knopf for a copy of the book.
Rating: 4 stars
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