December 12 1937, USS Panay was attacked and sunk in China by Japanese forces. The Japanese claimed they had misidentified the ship and that the attack was an accident. The U.S. would be placed in a similar diplomatic conundrum 30 years later when USS Liberty was attacked by Israel.
Source: U.S. Naval Institute
Station HYPO 
13 December 2022 at 16:02
When history intersects with personal remembrances:
I did a fair amount of reading re: USS Panay when my older brother wrote to me & said to be sure to read the book “The Sand Pebbles” written by a retired Chief USN, & based upon his experiences serving on the Yangtze. The Chief was obviously making the most of his retirement.
Brother Bob, was a Platoon Sgt. with USMC in Quang Nam Province, RVN & between contacts with the NVA/VC, he managed to squeeze in a book. He also hoped for retirement in 7 years or so to the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. I did not read the book and Bob did not come home sitting up in the passenger section of an aircraft , he came home in the cargo hold in the standard metal gray casket in the summer of 1968. He did not make it to those beautiful hills of Shenandoah, he only got as far as Arlington National Cemetery.
Freedom comes only at an extraordinary price. We pray that it is not lost in our land nor in our time.
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13 December 2022 at 17:33
The History, as I remember it:
More than a few years ago, I dug this out, so part of it is fuzzy. Japanese leaders came to the conclusion that they should at least offer an apology to the US over the sinking of the USS Panay. The USA was at the time selling oil to Japan, so it may well have been the reason for the apology. Japan directed their Naval Attaché by the name of Yamamoto to deliver the apology. I have forgotten whether Yamamoto delivered the apology to the US Embassy in Tokyo or thru the Japanese Embassy in Washington, DC. Either way, Yamamoto was the individual that did deliver Japan’s apology. This is the same Admiral Yamamoto that was the brains behind the Pearl Harbor attack 4 years later.
Now of course, the U.S. Navy had broken the Japanese code in those early years prior to 12/7/41. So, that when Admiral Yamamoto scheduled his visit to the far flung Japanese units in the Southwestern Pacific, Hypo got that schedule and passed it along to the U.S. Command in the SW Pacific. The U.S. Army Air Force arranged for a squadron of P-38 to provide a rather warm, bordering on hot, welcome to him in the air. Yamamoto was shot down somewhere over the Pacific Ocean by those welcoming P-38s of the U.S. Air Force. I think I read somewhere that what goes around, comes around, but that too, I ‘ve forgotten where I read it. Of course, sometime after the sinking of the USS Panay & before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USA stopped selling oil to Japan, I think that was part of the reason Japan did attack Pearl Harbor. Go Navy!
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13 December 2022 at 17:36
Of course, I meant The U.S. Army Air Force, since the USAF did not come into being until 1947. My bad, as my kids use to say.
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13 December 2022 at 19:00
Several good history lessons in the three comments written above.
Of course, the United States had embargoed far more than the sale of oil to Japan, but this was after the sinking of PANAY and prior to 7 December 1941. We also froze Japanese assets. We also induced Britain and the NEI to stop selling oil to Japan. We made no secret of the fact that we were going to build up a large number of heavy bombers in the Philippines. We increased the number of submarines in the Asiatic Fleet…..And the list goes on and on.
Something PANAY had in common with LIBERTY was the nature of the two ships. According to Jeffery M. Dorwart’s CONFLICT OF DUTY: THE U.S. NAVY’S INTELLIGENCE DILEMMA, 1919-1945 (see pp. 92-94), “….For years the PANAY had gathered intelligence in China and had become the navy’s most successful spy ship….”
As PANAY, LIBERTY, Francis Gary Powers and various other incidents indicate, obtaining intelligence in the vicinity of one’s potential (and probable) enemies is not without certain risks.
The Station HYPO blog is a wonderful and diverse means of learning lessons from the past, while also enabling us to learn about the present and to look to the future. Thank you, Mario!
Andy McKane, now back home on Molokai
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14 December 2022 at 18:22
Panay’s crew returned fire bravely from exposed positions on deck, spawning the story of The Pantless Gunner of Panay:
“The Pantless Gunner was Chief Boatswain’s Mate Charles E. Mahlman. Just as the first bomb struck he had been starting to get dressed, and was part way into his trousers. He climbed the ladder as the second bomb struck the Panay, and hit the deck clad only in a long, wool shirt and a life jacket.
Mahlman was an old China hand, a hard-bitten marlinspike seaman and, above all, a fine leader. For his heroic action during the attack— pants or no pants—he was awarded the Navy Cross for
“manning three machineguns at different times… while continuously exposed to heavy bombing and machinegun fire from attacking planes”.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1987/december/i-was-board-panay
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14 December 2022 at 19:04
Thank you, “Anonymous,” for reminding myself and other of Chief Boatswain’s Mate Charles E. Mahlman’s actions aboard USS PANAY!
Exceptional performace!
Go Navy!
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