E. A. Petersen; Sailed Junk to Avoid Japanese

Dr. E. Allen Petersen, an osteopathic surgeon who in 1938 set sail on a junk with his wife and two crewmen from Shanghai to Los Angeles to escape advancing Japanese forces, has died in Healdsburg, Calif.

Petersen, whose wife died in 1982, was 84 and had retired to that Northern California city several years ago. He died last Sunday.

The one-time member of a medical clinic in Compton was trapped with his Japanese-American bride and thousands of other refugees and tourists in China before the outbreak of World War II.

They were unable to obtain passage on overcrowded commercial liners and purchased the Hummel Hummel, a 36-foot Chinese junk of German registry, and set sail from Shanghai on April 15, 1938. After 5,000 hazardous miles and 85 days in which they had to dodge Japanese warships and survive stormy weather, they arrived in Los Angeles Harbor to established what was then a trans-Pacific record for a small boat.

Petersen, who wrote a book about the voyage, “Hummel Hummel” (a German slang expression of defiance), had sailed American four-masted barks as a boy before entering medical school.

He is survived by a sister.