After bombing Nagoya, Japan, the "Bat" attempted to reach safe haven in China. DeShazer and the rest of the B-25 crew were forced to parachute into enemy territory over Ningpo, China when their B-25 ran out of fuel because of the extra distance it was forced to fly by early launch of the raid. DeShazer was injured in his fall into a cemetery and along with the rest of his crew, he was captured the very next day by the Japanese. During his captivity, DeShazer was sent to Tokyo with the survivors of another Doolittle crew including Robert Hite, and was held in a series of P.O.W. (prisoner-of-war) camps both in Japan and China for 40 months – 34 of them in solitary confinement. He was severely beaten and malnourished while three of the crew were executed by a firing squad, and another died of slow starvation. DeShazer's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Emperor Hirohito.