Raider once called Camden home
Hite, 93, salutes last 3 comrades in 1942 Japan attack
Lt. Col. Robert Hite, a longtime Camden resident who is one of the four surviving Doolittle Raiders, couldn’t make it to the group’s final reunion in Ohio on Saturday night.
Donning a Raiders blazer, he celebrated in Nashville, Tenn., with a toast to his fellow airmen whose attack on Japan boosted American morale during World War II.
Since the 93-year-old Hite could not travel to the reunion because of his health, the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force placed a picture of Hite, with his glass raised, on a screen as the other three surviving Raiders made their final salute.
Hite was one of 80 volunteers in 16 planes in the April 1942 attack on Tokyo and other cities on Honshu Island. The air attack began with a sea launch from the deck of the USS Hornet. Each plane had five crewmen.
The mission was for the planes to fly over Japan, drop their bombs and then land in China.
But before reaching China, the aircraft began running low on fuel. Some crews bailed out. Others stayed aboard planes that crash-landed. Most of the crewmen were found by Chinese villagers and taken to safety.
But eight crewmen who survived crash-landings were captured by the Japanese. Hite, a co-pilot, was one of those eight.
Three of his comrades were executed, and five were tried in a Japanese tribunal, Hite’s son, Wallace, said in a telephone interview Saturday.
The five were imprisoned and faced life in prison at hard labor if the Japanese won the war and execution if the Japanese lost. As it turned out, Wallace Hite said, U.S. forces liberated the condemned men before the sentences could be carried out.
Robert Hite spent two months in prison with 60 others before he was put in solitary confinement “in a 5-foot by 5-foot by 9-foot cell” for 38 months, Wallace Hite said.
“When he was captured, he was a little over 6 feet tall and about 175 pounds,” Wallace Hite said. “When he came out, he weighed 76 pounds.”
On Aug. 15, 1945, the U.S. Marines flew in and began liberating the imprisoned. Robert Hite was one of the last to return home, Wallace Hite said. His father was stationed at Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Okla., where he met his future wife, Portia.
Robert Hite also served in the Korean War as a base operations officer in Casa- blanca, Morocco, for about two years.
After his military discharge, the Hite family returned to Enid for a time, until Camden leaders decided to build a hotel and asked Robert Hite to manage it. The city leaders and residents pooled money for bonds and capital to build the 72-room, six-story Hotel Camden in 1952 to help revive the city’s postwar economy.
While Hite was its manager, the hotel hosted the 33rd Doolittle Raiders reunion in 1961, which attracted state politicians Winthrop Rockefeller and Orval Faubus who also stayed there. Robert Hite and his wife lived on the second floor until the hotel was sold in the late 1960s. In 1996, crews imploded the hotel as part of the city’s downtown revitalization effort.
Robert Hite went on to manage other hotels in different cities.
His family returned to Camden in 1984, and as the years went by he was inducted into several aviation halls of fame, including Arkansas’ in 2004. About three years later, Robert Hite moved to Tennessee to be closer to some family members.
He wasn’t able to grant an interview Saturday, but he reveled in the Ohio festivities attended by family members.
“He’s a people person,” said granddaughter Christy Glaze, who lives in Camden. “He got the Man of the Year award in 1997 in Camden … just because everybody loved him. He could not meet a stranger.”
The veteran, who rarely spoke of his World War II experiences, would go to Andy’s restaurant to have coffee every morning and catch up on the local news, said Glaze, who owns a local restaurant and catering business. He also frequented car dealerships “at least once a week” to see which cars were new and what was going on, she said.
He remained active in Gideons International, a Christian-based group that places Bibles in hotel rooms, and in St. John’s Episcopal Church, she said.
Camden is “where he wanted to come back and be buried at,” Glaze said, adding that he is eligible to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. “My grandmother was also buried there in Camden. It’s what he considers his hometown.”