Sunday in Hell, page 4
For the initial mail service flights, Pan American used the Martin M-130 flying boat, a thoroughly modern plane equipped with state-of-the-art navigation systems and a range of 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers). Modeled like a hotel, with broad armchairs and full meal service, it could carry as many as 52 passengers. Trippe dubbed the first M-130 the China Clipper, though in truth, Pan American landing rights were limited to the British colony of Hong Kong, on the south coast of China.
While the Italian Army was seizing Ethiopia in far away North Africa in October of that year, Pan American Airways was planning to begin mail service across the Pacific with the China Clipper, on 22 November 1935. With much fanfare the graceful flying boat took off from San Francisco and flew to its new Pearl City base in the Middle Loch of Pearl Harbor, on Oahu, then on to Manila in the Philippines, with additional stops in Midway, Wake, and Guam. After 59 hours and 48 minutes of flight across the international dateline, and six days en route, the China Clipper berthed in Manila on 29 November.18
While American’s Pan American Airways was opening up mail service to the Pacific and Far East, on 3 October 1935, a modern day Roman Caesar and renegade socialist turned Fascist, Benito Mussolini, sent his Army into Ethiopia. In December 1934, anxious to prove his new Fascist Troops, he had provoked a skirmish at Walwal, near the Ethiopian border. Although Emperor Haile Selassie appealed for help to the League of Nations, The League had been virtually condemned to failure in 1919, when the United States Senate defeated President Woodrow Wilson’s attempt to lead the nation into the world organization. Wilson had envisioned the League as an international forum to resolve issues and end war. Finally, the League could do nothing in 1935 because the remaining Great Powers refused to intervene. The war in Ethiopia lasted only six months but was marked by terrible atrocities.19
In 1936 events across the Atlantic and Pacific continued along the path of ever-deepening crisis. At the beginning of the election year, Democrats closed ranks and party leaders hailed the advent of good times. However, bad times continued for farmers when another scorching drought created a vast dust bowl and sent thousands westward in search of fertile land. On 2 March, Roosevelt signed the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act, which replaced the Agricultural Adjustment Act, previously invalidated 6 January by the Supreme Court. The new measure provided benefit payments to farmers who practiced soil conservation in a cooperative program to replace soil-depleting crops with soil-conserving crops.
Critics of the New Deal stressed the fact the national debt had been increased to twelve billion dollars since Roosevelt took office, while supporters countered with statistics of their own: an increase of thirty billion dollars in annual income. Labor warfare continued and unions discovered a new weapon in the sit-down strike.
While Hitler’s Nazi regime continued to extend its reach and influence, the 1936 Olympic Games, held in Germany, would be the last the world would see for twelve years. At the 5-11 February Winter Olympics, the United States’ team won two gold medals and placed fifth in the unofficial team scoring behind Norway, Germany, Sweden, and Finland. At the 5-16 August Summer Olympics, the U.S. won 20 gold medals and placed second in the unofficial team scoring, behind Germany. The star of the summer games was the U.S. Negro athlete, sprinter Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals - a stunning setback to Hitler and his Nazi Party’s “master race,” and a step forward in black Americans’ long struggle for racial equality in “the land of the free.”
On 7 March, between the winter and summer games, Hitler sent his troops into the demilitarized Rhineland and began to fortify it. The Allies did nothing but mumble. Next he sent agents into Austria, and began to subvert that mountain nation of 6,500,000 people.
On 9 May the German Zeppelin Transportation Company’s dirigible, Hindenburg, completed the first scheduled transatlantic dirigible flight, landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The craft, 830 ft long, 135 ft in diameter, and propelled by four 1050 hp Daimler Benz Diesel engines, had a range of 8,000 miles.20
The Spanish Civil War: Europe’s Proving Ground for World War II
On 18 July the Spanish Civil War began, the wildest, bloodiest, and most heart-rending of the lesser conflicts leading toward a much larger conflict. Germany, Italy and Russia tested tactics, weapons and commanders after a handful of well-financed right-wing Spanish generals, headed by forty-four-year-old Francisco Franco, led a military revolt against the weak republic. Communist and liberal groups throughout the world joined to support the Republican militia, while Fascists and conservatives backed Franco. The Germans sent tanks, planes and 10,000 men to support Franco, the Italians 75,000. The Russians sent planes, tanks, and ammunition to the Republican forces, and some of their best officers, operating under aliases.21
As was written in C.L. Sulzberger’s The American Heritage Picture History of World War II, “Spain aroused infinite passions and came to represent, in some weird prevision, the ideological fanaticism of World War II, so soon to explode. Before their own bodies and souls were torn on far greater battlefields, millions of people were caught in the emotional and symbolic vortex.”
In October 1936, while the brutal, bitter Spanish conflict raged, Britain, France, and the United States maintained strict neutrality, Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini reached the agreement that created the Rome-Berlin Axis. Not surprisingly, Franco was victorious and then joined the Rome-Berlin Axis.22
In the same month, Pan American Airways inaugurated its first passenger flights across the Pacific, the largest ocean in the world, by carrying nine travelers round-trip from San Francisco to Manila, the route on which the first stop would always be the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Each passenger paid more than $1,400, an astronomical sum at that time. Soon after extending service to Manila and Hong Kong, Juan Trippe began pushing for routes to Australia and New Zealand. Though the British refused to grant landing rights to Australia, New Zealand was more cooperative. Pan American’s Clippers would begin regular passenger services to New Zealand in March 1937, flying via Kingman Reef south of Hawaii, and American Samoa.23
In America’s 1936 general elections, the New Deal received a huge vote of confidence. The Democrats increased their gains to three fourths of the seats in both Senate and House of Representatives, and President Roosevelt won reelection in a landslide.
Among books published in 1936 was the blockbuster novel, Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, which sold 1,000,000 copies in six months, and in 1937 won the Pulitzer Prize; Further Range by Robert Frost, which included the poem “Two Tramps in the Mud Time;” and The Big Money by John Dos Passos, the third novel of his U.S.A. trilogy, which included The 42d Parallel (1930) and 1919 (1932). The foremost American dramatist, Eugene O'Neill, won the Nobel Prize for Literature.24
As 1937 began, the worst of the Depression seemed over. The New Deal entered a period of transition in which its measures lost much of their emotional impact. Voices were increasingly raised against the program despite administration attempts to press ahead. The inauguration of President Roosevelt on 20 January 1937 marked the first time the presidential inauguration was held on that date, and in less than a month, the President began efforts to change the composition of the Supreme Court.
On 5 February, after informing congressional leaders at a special Cabinet meeting in the morning, he sent a message to Congress at noon recommending revision of statutes governing the judiciary. Although the purpose was ostensibly to provide more efficient and younger judges in all federal courts, the President was charged with attempting to pack the Supreme Court, which in the past had invalidated hard sought parts of the New Deal legislative program. The following July the Supreme Court Bill was effectively killed when it was voted back into committee.
The American response to the conflicts exploding around the world was increased isolation. On 1 May the United States’ Neutrality Act of 1937 went into effect, a law which further tightened the 1935 Act and prohibited the sale of arms to belligerents. The false sense of security the Act brought to America would later prove more detrimental to the nation’s natural democratic allies than it would to totalitarians then stalking the earth.
On 6 May, the same day the nation heard the first coast-to-coast broadcast of a radio program, the dirigible Hindenburg was destroyed by fire at its mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Herbert Morrison conducted the program, which aired the Hindenburg disaster. The huge lighter-than-air-transport burst into flames and fell to the ground in a few horrifying seconds, marking the virtual end of transportation by dirigible. Six days later Americans heard the first worldwide radio broadcast received in the United States. Listeners heard the coronation of King George VI of England. On 27 May the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California was dedicated.
In sports, War Admiral, with jockey Charles Kurtsinger aboard, won the 63rd annual Kentucky Derby on 8 May, with a time of 2:03 1/5. A week later the two repeated victory in the 62nd running of the Preakness Stakes in 1:58 2/5. Their third in their triple crown triumphs came on 5 June in the 69th Belmont Stakes, with a time of 2:28 3/5. On 22 June Joe Louis won the world heavyweight boxing championship when he knocked out James J. Braddock in the eighth round in Chicago. At the Wimbledon tennis championship in England, J. Donald Budge won the men’s singles title. In the fifth annual baseball All-Star Game on 7 July, the American League defeated the National League 8-3, the League’s fourth win. In Davis Cup tennis, Americans won the championship on 27 July, defeating Great Britain four matches to one. On 31 July-1 August the yacht Ranger successfully defended the America’s Cup, winning four straight races from the British challenger Endeavor. In October the 34th annual World Series was won by the American League’s New York Yankees, four games to one, over the New York Giants.
In August the first signs of a new recession became apparent when a wave of selling hit the stock markets. After Labor Day, the retreat sharpened, and many stocks fell rapidly. By 19 October, a demoralized market had reached the largest number of transactions since 1933. In late summer, as the market slid, Congress passed and the President signed the National Housing Act, which created the U.S. Housing Authority for administering loans to small communities and states for rural and urban construction.
The American people were deeply affected by the Spanish Civil War. While the government took no official position on the conflict, a considerable portion of the public gave highly emotional support to the Loyalist, antifascist side. Hundreds of volunteers went to Spain, where they joined the Loyalist armies.25
Japan’s “Special Undeclared War”
While the Spanish Civil War and Axis powers in Europe drew American attention to the east, to the west across the Pacific, Japan, in what was dubbed a “special undeclared war” brought much of Northern China and the Yangtze valley under control, pushing as far as the Wuhan cities. As Chinese resistance stiffened, Japanese blows became more widespread. Invading armies took the coastal cities and territories first, then moved up the rivers and spread inland. Begun in July 1937, the fighting in “The China Incident” lasted until November 1938.
Just after midnight in the early morning hours of 11 December 1937, one of the world’s most luxurious cruise liners, the Dollar Line’s SS President Hoover, ran aground on Hoishoto Island (now Green Island) off the east coast of the Japanese colony of Formosa. The Hoover was evacuating Americans from the Far East as a result of mounting tensions and the renewed Japanese offensive in China. She ran aground while en route south on the east side of Formosa, from Kobe, Japan to Manila in the Philippine Islands. With 503 passengers and an inexperienced crew of 330 on board, she was proceeding at night in unfamiliar waters, skirting her normal route and the port of Shanghai. To compound the ship’s navigation hazards leading to the accident, the Japanese had turned out all their coastal navigation lights.
After firing flares, sending an SOS, approximately twelve hours of futile attempts to free the ship, and an apparent worsening situation, at low tide, 1 p.m., Captain Yardley ordered the passengers evacuated to the nearby shore. The early SOS alerted the US Navy in Manila and the destroyers Barker (DD-213) and Alden (DD-211) were ordered to speed to the Hoover’s assistance. At dawn on the 11th, the German freighter Prussia, arrived but there was nothing she could do. At 3 p.m., as the passenger evacuation was beginning, the Japanese heavy cruiser IJN Ashigara and an unidentified Mutsuki Class destroyer appeared on the scene to observe and protect the Hoover.
All the passengers were landed on the island within 36 hours, although the rescue was complex and harrowing in the heavy seas. At 12:45 p.m. on 12 December, the Alden’s crew sighted Hoishoto and signaled the Japanese cruiser asking permission to enter Japanese territorial waters. The USS Barker arrived shortly afterwards whereupon a Japanese naval officer boarded the Alden to formally grant permission on behalf of the Japanese government for the two ships to enter territorial waters and assist the Hoover. At 3 p.m. the same day, a Japanese ship, the Toriyama, arrived from Keelung carrying food and other necessities for the crew and passengers of the Hoover. On 13 December, the Dollar Lines’ SS President McKinley arrived and the following day departed to Manila carrying 700 passengers and crew from the Hoover. By the time McKinley left on 14 December, a major international incident involving the United States and Japan was in progress.
On 12 December, as the Christmas holidays were drawing near, the Japanese Naval Air Force bombed and sank the American gunboat Panay (PR-5) in Chinese waters, sparking a crisis in U.S-Japanese relations. The Japanese invasion of China was proceeding up the Yangtze River. Most of the American Embassy in Nanking had been evacuated in November while the Chinese were abandoning the city, and the Panay had been ordered to remain nearby to provide protection and to evacuate the remaining US Embassy staff “at the last possible moment.”
The last of the Embassy evacuees came on board 11 December and Panay moved upriver to avoid becoming involved in the fighting around the doomed capital. On 12 December, the Japanese Army ordered naval aircraft to attack “any and all ships” in the Yangtze above Nanking. Knowing of the presence of the Panay, the Japanese Navy requested and received verification of the order, prior to launching the attack. Shortly after 1:30 p.m., three Japanese Navy bombing planes flew overhead and released eighteen bombs, one of which disabled Panay’s forward 3-inch gun, wrecked the pilothouse, sick bay and fire room, wounded the captain (Lieutenant Commander J.J. Hughes) and several others. Immediately after, twelve more planes dive-bombed and nine fighters strafed, making several runs over a space of twenty minutes. She fought back with her .30-cal. machine guns. By 2:06 all power and propulsion were lost, the main deck was awash and, as Captain Hughes saw that his ship was going down, he ordered her to be abandoned. Japanese planes strafed the boats on their way to shore, and even combed the reeds along the riverbank for survivors. Two of the three accompanying oil barges were also bombed and destroyed.
American gunboat Panay (PR-5), sinking in the Yangtze River, 12 December 1937. NHHC
The Panay survivors, kindly treated by the Chinese, managed to get word through to Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, the Commander-in-Chief, American Asiatic Fleet, and were taken on board USS Oahu (PR-6) and the British vessel H.M.S. Ladybird two days later. Two bluejackets and one civilian passenger died of their wounds; eleven officers and men were seriously wounded. The Panay was sunk, the three men killed, with a total of 43 sailors and 5 civilian passengers wounded. On 14 December the American government demanded an apology and reparations. The Japanese complied immediately, but continued to wage war in China. The SS President Hoover and the US Navy gunboat Panay were both total losses.26
The news of the Panay’s sinking was a shock to Captain Lee S. Border, Bob and Karl Border’s father, and brought back memories and an old sea tale to his Midshipmen sons at the Naval Academy. As a Navy commander serving in Chiang Kai-shek’s China in 1925-28, their father had supervised the construction of the Panay, and the entire family, including nine-year old Bob and eleven-year old Karl had witnessed the exciting launch. Built by Kiangnan Dockyard and Engineering Works, Shanghai, China, and launched 10 November 1927, the gunboat was commissioned 10 September 1928. But there had been a hitch in her launch, an omen for superstitious sailors.
Launched sideways, sliding down rails, instead of the more traditional stern first, the special, more expensive grease for the rails, purchased in the United States and shipped to China, was pilfered by Chinese thieves and sold on the black market. Unknown to Captain Border, a cheaper substitute grease was used in Panay’s launch. When the signal came to release her restraints, she slid unceremoniously to a stop part way down the rails, in the words of superstitious sailors, “foretelling a dark end for the ship.”27
By early March 1938, Adolph Hitler’s agents in Austria had done their work well, and with the help of armed Austrian Nazis, in what was termed the Anschlus, he added Austria’s land of 6,500,000 people to the German Reich. Again the Allies did nothing, and Hitler announced he wanted no more territory. On 11 March he explained to Benito Mussolini why he had absorbed Austria into the Reich, setting the stage for his move against Czechoslovakia, and the Munich Agreement that would follow 29 September.
While German tanks and planes were being tested in Spain, Hitler turned his attention to the great Slavic plains that the Teutons had long coveted as living space, Lebensraum. Within two weeks after the Anschlus, the funny little man with the mustache was planning to use the large German minority in the Czech Republic’s Sudetenland to mount increasing pressure to collapse the Czech government and peacefully overwhelm a second, entire nation. By seizing Austria, he outflanked a ring of fortifications erected around conglomerate Czechoslovakia’s western frontier. He had correctly reckoned the Allies would do nothing as long as their interests were not directly threatened.28
