James “Jimmy” Harold Doolittle was born on December 14, 1896 the only child of Rosa and Frank Doolittle. In his autobiography, Doolittle claimed that he was born without a first name since his birth certificate just read “Doolittle.” He wrote, “The ‘James’ and ‘Harold’ were added later and I have no idea where they came from.”
His father was carpenter who moved the family to Nome, Alaska during the gold rush just six months after Jimmy was born. As a town on the remote American frontier, Nome at that time was a rough place.
In a 1993 interview, published in World War II Magazine in 2003, Doolittle recalled, “It was a dangerous area, for certain. There were saloons, prostitutes, everything. The real Wild West. There was no law to speak of; everyone carried weapons, and they used them. Gambling was rampant, and crime increased with the growing population.”
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