ROBERT F. GOLDSWORTHY

By Bill Scheele

(with additional notes from Our Last Mission by Bob Goldsworthy)

Robert Goldsworthy, Sr. grew up in Rosalia and graduated from Rosalia High School in 1935.  He went to Washington State University and joined the Army Air Corps where he trained to fly the newest bomber in the U.S. arsenal, the B-29.  Before going to fight in World War II he was a flight instructor at Smyrna Air Base in Tennessee and at Maxwell Air Base in Alabama.  Major Goldsworthy was sent to Saipan to fight the Japanese in 1944.

Goldsworthy was a B-29 pilot during World War II.  He flew a plane named Rosalia Rocket as a part of the 73^rd Bomber Wing, which was the first wing of B-29s to go to the Pacific Theater in 1944.  They flew out of Saipan to the mainland of Japan for their bombing missions.  Major Goldsworthy went on three missions to Japan before being shot down over Tokyo.

He was the lead plane on a bombing run to the Mitsobisha aircraft engine factory in Tokyo.  There were Tony fighters all over the sky and the Rosalia Rocket got hit in the right wing fuel tank.  Three of the four engines on the plane were out and the controls were inoperative except for one aileron.  Major Goldsworthy could no longer fly the plane and gave the order to bail out.  Out of the eleven crew members on board, three did not make it off the B-29.  One other man lost his life when his parachute caught fire and he fell to his death.

The major was taken captive by the Japanese and taken to the Kempei Tai Headquarters in Tokyo.  Major Goldsworthy was in the Kempei Tai and then the Omori Prisoner of War Camp for a total of nine  months.  At the end of that nine months his weight was down to ninety pounds.  The Japanese made him sign a confession that was in Japanese, confessing he had committed war crimes.  Following that he was sent out for execution twice in the same day, but for some reason even beyond Goldsworthy's comprehension, he was not executed. 

After capture he was placed in solitary confinement for what was to be over four months, during which he suffered under all the cruelty that the diseased minds of his captors could conjure up.  The first day he was in solitary confinement a guard went into his cell to show him the way he was to sit.  He had to sit in the middle of the cell and was made to sit at attention, cross-legged on the floor, eyes straight ahead.  No movement was allowed, not even his eyes.  Guards paced the corridors continually to see that their instructions were obeyed.  At the end of the first fifteen minutes he thought his back would break.  And he had to continue to sit like that sixteen hours a day for four months.

His cell was eight by ten and absolutely bare.  A hole in the floor served as a latrine.  His clothing consisted of a pair of shorts and his summer flying suit.  He received ninety grams of rice a day, sometimes a cup of thin soup, and rarely a little fish cooked head, bones and all.  In those four months he lost eighty-five pounds.  For the first two months of his capture he was interrogated for an hour or two a day.  The rest of the time he had to sit in his cell, at attention, eyes not moving.

He developed bad sores from sitting sixteen hours a day.  When he once tried to sit slightly off center to ease the pressure of one such sore a guard came in the cell and kicked him in the jaw.  As bad as the daily beatings were, the cold and hunger were far worse.  All his waking hours he thought about food, and dreamed about food when he slept. 

He was eventually moved to a more relaxed area of the Omori POW Camp where he was able to move around and even was able to do some work in a garden. 

He was liberated when the war ended.  About two weeks after the Japanese surrendered, Major Goldsworthy was picked up by a hospital ship in Tokyo Bay and sent back to the United States.

The pilot of the Japanese Tony fighter that shot down the Rosalia Rocket survived the war too, but later died in a training mission.  Several years ago Retired Major General Goldsworthy and his wife Jean went to Tokyo to meet the widow of that Tony pilot.  They went to where Omori, the prison, had once stood and ate dinner at the Chinese restaurant that now stands there.

Major Robert Goldsworthy's experience in World War II was very interesting to hear.  He led a bomber group over Tokyo and was shot down.  He was in a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp and survived to tell about it.  In fact, he has written a book about his experiences entitled Our Last Mission.  He is a man who truly helped to define what the greatest generation was all about.