Story Brings to Mind Sinking of USS Panay
On Dec. 30, The Times presented a review of the book “The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II” by Iris Chang. She describes the killing 60 years ago of some 260,000 to 350,000 Chinese by Japanese soldiers.
There is no mention of the United States’ involvement, which at the time made front-page news in our nation’s newspapers, including The Times.
While the Chinese capital was being overrun, the USS Panay gunboat, stationed at Nanking, escorted three tanker ships 28 miles upstream on the Yangtze to supposedly safe waters. The Panay’s passengers included U.S. Embassy officials, four journalists and a few others. Aboard the tanker ships were Standard Oil employees and their families numbering in the hundreds.
On Dec. 12, 1937, without warning, the anchored ships were attacked, bombed and strafed by Japanese naval aircraft until the convoy was sunk or destroyed.
On April 22, 1938, the Panay incident, almost four years before Pearl Harbor, was officially closed when the Japanese government apologized and presented to the U.S. government a check for $2,214,007.36 for the loss of the Panay, the Standard Oil ships and for the deaths and injuries of the ships’ crews.
U.S. Navy historical records reveal that the USS Panay was its first ship to be sunk by hostile aircraft of another nation.
JOHN T. HALES, Hermosa Beach
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