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Hidden History: The USS "Panay" Incident [1]
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Date: 2023-08-08
For most Europeans, the Second World War began in September 1939 with Germany’s invasion of Poland, while for most Americans, the War began with the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. But the USS Panay Incident in December 1937 almost ignited war between the United States and Japan years before either of those events.
"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.
USS Panay sinks after Japanese attack photo from WikiCommons
By the end of 1931, invading Japanese forces had established control over the Chinese province of Manchuria (which would soon be converted into the Japanese-ruled puppet state of Manchukuo), and had set their sights on the rest of China. In January 1932, anti-Japanese street demonstrations broke out in the Chinese city of Shanghai and five Japanese Buddhist monks were beaten by a crowd of protesters. One of them died. In retaliation, Japan moved a force of 20 ships to the harbor at Shanghai with 7,000 troops who occupied railroad stations and other strategic spots, ready to invade to “protect Japanese citizens”.
After some diplomatic concessions from China, the Japanese forces withdrew. The “Shanghai Incident”, however, emboldened the Japanese militants further, and in July 1937, after a clash at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing, the Japanese launched a full-scale invasion of China. It could be argued that this attack, rather than the German invasion of Poland two years later, marks the real beginning of the Second World War.
By November the Japanese had captured the port city of Shanghai and had begun moving up the Yangtze River towards Nanking, which was at that time the capitol of China. They reached the capitol in early December.
The United States and the European nations were all officially neutral in the war, and they made no effort to stop the invaders. But as the Japanese approached and stories began to reach the West of the war crimes and atrocities being inflicted by the conquering Imperial Army, plans were made for a hasty evacuation of Westerners from the city. As part of these plans, a number of naval gunships were positioned on the Yangtze to protect the evacuation.
One of these was the US Navy gunship Panay. Built in 1926, the Panay was a 191-foot flat-bottomed riverboat armed with two 3-inch main guns, a number of anti-aircraft machine guns, and 59 crew and officers. She was now assigned to escort and protect the unarmed commercial vessels which were steadily evacuating American citizens from Nanking. To identify herself as a neutral vessel, Lt Cmdr James J Hughes ordered that the Panay be festooned with large American flags.
On December 9, 1937, the Panay was docked in the Yangtze as a pair of motorized sampans were ferrying 15 civilians from the American Embassy for evacuation, including Vice Consul J Hall Paxton. A number of American and European journalists also happened to be aboard, including cameramen Norman Alley, from Universal News, and Eric Mayell, from Movietone. Over the next few days, as it continued to gather refugees, the Panay moved upriver several times as Japanese shells began to fall uncomfortably close. Each time, Commander Hughes notified the Japanese commander by radio of his new position.
On December 12, the Panay was leading a small group of American oil tankers and cargo ships up the Yangtze when they were briefly detained by a Japanese naval officer, then docked again 28 miles north of Nanking. Once again, Hughes notified the Japanese of his new position.
Just after 1:30 that afternoon, lookouts on the Panay spotted a flight of three Yokosuka B4Y Type-96 biplanes heading towards them. These were new carrier-based torpedo bombers that had just entered service with the Imperial Japanese Navy the year before and had been given the codename “Jean”. Now they were being used as land-based attack aircraft that had been fitted with aerial bombs instead of torpedoes.
By this time, air raids on the city of Nanking were a regular event, and the Americans did not think much of it, though as a standard precaution the Panay’s crew went to their battle stations and manned their anti-aircraft guns. As the Jeans approached, they were joined by another flight of older IJN Nakajima A4N Type-95 carrier-based biplane fighters.
The Americans expected the Japanese warplanes to pass over the river and proceed to a target in Nanking. Instead, the torpedo bombers dropped into a dive and began an attack run. One bomb hit the Panay near the wheelhouse, severely wounding Commander Hughes and causing heavy damage to the ship, including knocking out the 3-inch guns. Executive Officer Lieutenant Arthur Anders assumed command of the ship until he was hit in the throat with a piece of shrapnel—unable to speak, he continued to write out orders in his own blood.
As the Americans returned fire with their AA machine guns, the Japanese fighters began to strafe the stricken vessel, and were then joined by six more bombers. The Panay was hit several more times, and two of the accompanying oil tankers were also hit. The entire attack was filmed by Alley and Mayell.
After twenty minutes, the Panay was beginning to sink, and Anders gave the order to “abandon ship”. The surviving crew moved as many of the wounded as they could to the two sampans and made for shore. The Japanese fighters continued to strafe them.
The Panay sank just before 4pm. Three of her crew had been killed in the attack, and 49 people injured (including five of the civilian refugees). Rescue missions were carried out by British gunboats in the area, and also by local Japanese vessels. The Japanese commander quickly passed on word that the attack had been a misidentification by the pilots, who had taken them for Chinese troopships.
The US promptly filed a formal diplomatic complaint, and the Japanese Government continued to apologize and offered $2 million in compensation. But when Alley and Mayell’s film was shown in American newsreels (after being heavily censored), it provoked outrage from the American public. There were calls for a declaration of war against Japan, though these were quickly squelched by Roosevelt, who realized that the United States was nowhere near ready for such a conflict. But the incident led to increased hostility between Japan and the US, provoking American demands that Japan withdraw from China and resulting in an escalating series of sanctions and punishments that eventually led to war in December 1941.
The Panay incident is still a matter of controversy. Publicly, the US Government accepted the Japanese explanation that the attack had been a case of mistaken identity. But privately, everyone knew that the ship had been attacked on a clear day, and had been prominently marked with American flags. Today, most historians have concluded that, while the attack had been intentional, it had not been authorized by the Japanese Government and had instead probably been ordered by some fanatical local Japanese naval military officer acting on his own—something that happened quite regularly at the time as Japanese militarists acted in open defiance of their own government.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/8/2172658/-Hidden-History-The-USS-Panay-Incident
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