Fighting the Night: Iwo Jima, World War II, and a Flyer's Life

by Paul Hendrickson

From the acclaimed and best-selling author of Hemingway’s Boat, the profoundly moving story of his father’s wartime service as a night fighter pilot, and the prices he and his fellow soldiers paid for their acts of selfless, patriotic sacrifice

In the fall of 1944, Joe Paul Hendrickson, the author’s father, kissed his twenty-one-year-old wife and two baby children goodbye. The twenty-five-year-old first lieutenant, pilot of a famed P-61 Black Widow, was leaving for the war. He and his night fighter squadron were sent to Iwo Jima, where, for the last five and a half months of World War II, he flew approximately seventy-five missions, largely in pitch-black conditions. His wife would wait out the war at the home of her small-town Ohio parents, one of the countless numbers of American family members shouldering the burden of being left behind.

Joe Paul, the son of a Depression-poor Kentucky sharecropper, was fresh out of high school in 1937 when he enlisted in mechanic school in the peacetime Army Air Corps. Eventually, he was able to qualify for flight school. After marriage, and with the war on, the young officer and his bride crisscrossed the country, airfield to airfield, base to Santa Ana, Yuma, Kissimmee, Bakersfield, Orlando, La Junta, Fresno. He volunteered for night fighters and the newly arrived and almost mythic Black Widow. A world away, the carnage continued. As Paul Hendrickson tracks his parents’ journey, together and separate, both stateside and overseas, he creates a vivid portrait of a hard-to-know father whose time in the war, he comes to understand, was something truly heroic, but never without its hidden and unhidden psychic costs.

Bringing to life an iconic moment of American history, and the tragedy of all wars, Fighting the Night is an intense and powerful story of violence and love, forgiveness and loss. And it is a tribute to those who got plunged into service, in the best years of their lives, and the sacrifices they and their loved ones made, then and thereafter.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, World War II, American History, Military Fiction, Memoir

320 pages, Hardcover

Published May 7, 2024

Reviews

[KOMET · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fighting the Night: Iwo Jima, World War II, and a Flyer's Life represents Paul Hendrickson's lifelong effort to try and understand the man who was his father: Joe Paul Hendrickson (1918-2003). It is also a book that sets out to show how the impact of Joe Paul Hendrickson's stint as a night fighter pilot with the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) during World War II in the Pacific affected Hendrickson himself, as well as his family.

I found the story of Joe Paul Hendrickson's life a remarkable one. He grew up a farmer's son in a small Kentucky town during the Depression in a large family that struggled to eke out a living. Hard work was the hallmark of his life. From the time he was a boy and had looked overhead one day to see a Ford Trimotor aircraft fly past, he had aspired to be a pilot. So, shortly after graduating from high school in 1937, Joe Paul Hendrickson embarked on a Greyhound for Chanute Field, at Rantoul, Illinois. He had managed to gain admittance into the U.S. Army Air Corps as a mechanic trainee. It was an exacting program, but he showed he had both drive and mettle. Steady promotions followed.

Shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, Joe Paul Hendrickson was made an officer and allowed to undertake flight training. He proved to be a very skilled pilot, trained initially to fly multi-engine bombers before volunteering to be trained as a night fighter pilot, flying the P-61 "Black Widow" twin-engined fighter from Iwo Jima on nocturnal missions against the Japanese during the spring and summer of 1945.

As the son of a U.S. Army combat veteran of World War II, I found much about this book relatable in some respects to my own experiences with a father I deeply respected, admired, and loved.

The passages in the book that dealt with Joe Paul Hendrickson's final days I found especially touching and poignant. The following admission by the author speaks volumes about the lifelong relationship he had with his father: "This terribly stern and often uncommunicative and occasionally violent man - which is to say the figure I had known through my childhood until I could escape home at fourteen for the seminary - is now showing me, by example more than word, how to die. He had been all those things through my childhood, true, but he had also been the other things, teaching by example more than word, about self-discipline, about completing a task, about self-respect, about the nature of sacrifice for a larger purpose, about honoring one's obligations."

For anyone wanting to understand how the lives of the World War II generation -- a generation that is now soon to leave us -- impacted upon their families, I invite you to read Fighting the Night. You'll be glad that you did.

[DeWayne Neel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another of those stories about the many WWII heroes which was written mostly using a search of military records long after the fact. P J Hendrickson, the father of the author, has a desire to fly and to escape the Depression and the sharecropper lifestyle of Kentucky. He enlisted in the military and was assigned to the Army Air Corps as a mechanic. His skills and his desire to continue his aviation training took him to numerous military all over the USA, trailed by his new wife. Since he enlisted in 1937, he has been knowledgeable in all aspects of flying, he was allowed to become a pilot just as the war was beginning. He continued his training as an officer and with various airplanes until the P-61, a new night fighting aircraft. In 1944 he was now ready to see the war up close and personal and was sent to Iwo Jima. The story of death quickly became real as the clean-up of the islands was met with a determined Japanese defense force. The final days before the atomic bomb was dropped, provided secret missions to protect the total secretary of this first and last of its kind of weapon.
He survived the conflict to become an airline pilot, but never fully dealt with his PTSD (unknown to this group of the greatest Generation).

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book about a unique fighter plane and the brave men who flew her in combat. Their personal stories are moving and heartbreaking. May they all rest in peace.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

You can follow my reviews at https://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot.com

[Chad Manske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Hendrickson's "Fighting the Night: Iwo Jima, World War II, and a Flyer's Life" is a masterful blend of personal memoir, historical narrative, and investigative journalism. This poignant work delves into the life of the author's father, Joe Paul Hendrickson, a night fighter pilot who flew approximately 75 missions over Iwo Jima during the final months of World War II. The book's narrative arc spans from Joe Paul's humble beginnings as the son of a Depression-era Kentucky sharecropper to his transformation into a skilled aviator piloting the legendary P-61 Black Widow. Hendrickson paints a vivid picture of his father's journey, from enlisting in the peacetime Army Air Corps in 1937 to his eventual deployment to the Pacific theater in 1944. What sets this work apart is Hendrickson's unflinching examination of his father's complex character. He portrays Joe Paul as a man of contradictions - ambitious and reliable, yet also acerbic and occasionally racist. This honest depiction adds depth to the narrative, avoiding the pitfalls of hero-worship often found in similar works. The author's journalistic background shines through in his meticulous attention to detail and his commitment to factual accuracy. Hendrickson's prose is both lyrical and incisive, creating a hypnotic narrative that is at once profound and compulsively readable. “Fighting the Night" is more than just a war story or a biography. It's a meditation on the impact of war on individuals and families, exploring themes of violence, love, forgiveness, and loss. Hendrickson skillfully weaves together the experiences of those who fought and those who waited at home, creating a tapestry that reflects the collective psyche of the World War II generation and their descendants. This book stands as a testament to the sacrifices made by servicemen and their families, not just during the war but in the years that followed. It's a powerful exploration of the hidden costs of war and the enduring impact of trauma across generations. Ultimately, "Fighting the Night" is a deeply personal yet universally resonant work that offers new insights into a pivotal moment in American history while prompting readers to reflect on the true nature of heroism and the lasting consequences of conflict.

[Len Rudner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fighting the Night, Paul Hendrickson’s latest book, tells the story of his father, Joe, who was a P-61 Night Fighter pilot, serving on Iwo Jima in the last months of World War II.

It is the story of where he came from, who he served with, what he did and what became of him. To borrow the title from Tim O’Brien’s collection of Viet Nam stories, it is the story of the things that Joe Hendrickson carried during the war and what he brought back with him. The title of *this* book, you can see, can be read as a description of Joe Hendrickson’s combat experience, and of everything that came after.

Hendrickson’s books are all biographical, and deal with complex and not entirely lovable characters: racist sheriffs in the southern States, a secretary of defense who prosecuted a war long after he knew it was lost, one of America’s greatest authors crushed by his fame and his fear, and an architect whose genius was like a fire, and was pursued by fire throughout his life. His first book was autobiographical, the story of his early years in a Catholic seminary. And there are demons aplenty in that read as well.

These books are quite different, and yet they can be seen as chapters in a single book that Hendrickson has been writing for 40 years. This single book asks – and seeks to answer -questions of who we are, why we are, and the extent to which it is possible to free ourselves from our pasts.

As important, Hendrickson seeks to understand and illuminate the role that our parents play in our lives, how important is to know them and how unknowable they can remain. “I am haunted now,” he writes, “by what I don’t know about my father, and long to know. I’m haunted because I’ve lost my chance.”

[Gary Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took three things away from this book, talk to your parents while they are alive as you can’t ask them about their lives once they are gone. We all have photos but all too often without dates or names on the back. The condition called PTSD affects people in different ways, and for those who have been to war it can take years, decades or they may never get past it. This book is written with emotion, pride but also a twinge of guilt. I love how Paul navigates the reader through the life of his parents, other squadron members and their families. He also emphasizes many times, correctly, it does not matter how long someone is in a combat zone they are still both brave and doing a very important job. It made me think of my father and how we never spoke much about his time in the military. I have photos and medals and some documented specifics but it’s like trying to complete a jigsaw without all the pieces of a picture of what the final piece of work should look like. I was completely engrossed in this book, one of the best I have read in a while!

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author did extensive research on aircraft, his father's military history, and Iwo Jima. The book is a combination of a chronological retelling of his father's journey through training to his flight time on Iwo Jima, and many other tangential stories that he investigates, such as the lives and fortunes of members of other flight crews that were there at the same time. It is also a recounting of some of his family's emotional dynamics and his own struggle to communicate with his father throughout his life.

I found myself wanting more of the military story of his father's time on Iwo Jima and less on the related and family material. I also found distracting his frequent use of parenthetical phrases, such as (which I will cover in more detail later in this book), which disrupted the narrative flow. Overall, the book held my interest and did a good job in capturing a portrait of his father.

[Bearhands · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hendrickson writes with empathy, action, and creativity about his father's service as a Night Warfighter - and in a larger sense a story about a great and classical American archetype. Despite not having his father and mother's war correspondence nor never having in-depth conversations with his father about his war service, Hendrickson is able to write around and into the emotional truths of his father's life, of course combining with hard primary facts. I was especially struck by Hendrickson's parent's humble beginnings and the striking photographs that capture his handsome father and beautiful mother. A great read for those interested in WWII history, father-son relationships, and readers looking to become better writers!

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hendrickson has cobbled together some interesting material in this reported memoir about his father’s military service as a Black Widow pilot during World War II, but the narrative often veers off course with digressions about other people and incidental details that detract from the story. The book needed one more thorough revision to edit out all the repetition and minutiae. Yet the delightful additions of poetry, such as the passage from James Wright’s “Stages on a Journey Westward” and Sharon Old’s “I Go Back to May 1937,” are a testament to the author’s erudition and romantic sensibility. The Essay on Sources at the back of the book offers fascinating insights into Hendrickson’s research process.

[Ph. D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poignant account of a member of the Greatest Generation's service flying a Black Widow war plane out of Iwo Jima, and the emotional cost to him and to his family. Father-son relationships can be complicated even without the exacerbation brought about by PTSD. In reading this account of a son grappling with the specter of a father that he both loved and feared, we can all move toward understanding -- and maybe even forgiving -- our own fathers for the wounds that they inflicted on us. Most likely it had nothing to do with us.

[Arthur Rohloff · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful book. First, this is not a history of one of the most famous battles of World War II, nor is it a detailed examination of the legendary P-61 Black Widow.
Instead, this book is an author’s exploration of his complicated relationship with his father with the war and flying serving as a narrative to tie it all together. The fact that the author also explores so many other lives and stories and how they all relate it one way or the other to his father makes it even better.

[Vince · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book stinks to high Heaven. It’s not about World War II, combat flying, nor P-61s. It’s about the author and his relationship with his abusive father. And why does the author insist on using the phrase “ that is to say “ 24 times in the book. It’s so bad I couldn’t finish it. Don’t waste your time.

[Joe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring!

The author writes about his deceased father's life and his time as a pilot during WWII. The father is a violent person who has no problem beating his son until he bleeds and must crawl away on all fours. But that is OK, that is the way things were done then in that culture. It seems to add to the romantic allure of that time and place.

The author seems to have an intense desire to gather as much history and family lore as he can and wants to talk to his near and distant family for many, many hours about their lives and how his family was. Problem is: the author spent most of his life away and busy so that by the time he gets around to starting his history project, the principal players are dead.

Since he cannot interview dead people, he just makes up what they thought, said and did based on whatever slivers of information he could.

I was hoping this was a first-person account but was very sadly mistaken.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a chronicle of night fighters on Iwo Jima. Instead it’s more of psychological look at the interplay of the author’s relationship with his father with some of the speculation of the effects of war. Lots of digression down rabbit trails. Some will like, I didn’t.

[Peggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't a bad read,but it was the best,either.

It read more like the author's memoir,then the story of his father's time flying in World War 2.
This book could have been much enlightening regarding the night flying from Iwo Jima. The details were just
not there.

[Rita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meticulously researched memoir of the author's fighter pilot father. Paul grew up in Kankakee, IL, 15 miles from my home town Clifton. His Dad trained at Chanute Air Force base in Rantoul. The book brought me closer to understanding what my Dad went through as a tail gunner in Italy during WWII.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book, the author was invested in the life of his father as a flyer on the P-61 "Black Widow" during WWII. He also stepped out to talk about others that served with his father and how all of those men suffered from their exposure during "the War."

[Robin Brink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent history of his father and the times. I wish I had done the same with mine when he was alive