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ll available participants in the recent “Doolittle Raid” on Japan, including half of the dozen native Texans, were honored at the White House on Jun. 25, 1941.

Nothing better describes American morale in the weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor than that old West Texas saying “lower than a snake’s belly.”  No one was more acutely aware of that fact than President Franklin Roosevelt, who insisted immediate retaliatory action be taken.

Jimmy Doolittle, a 45...