Interesting story in the paper today about the crew of a German liner, the Columbus.
I didn’t know this bit of local history. She sailed from New York to the Caribbean in August 1939 on a twelve day cruise with 750 passengers and 579 crew. Arriving at Martinique, she was denied entrance to the port, and returned to New York.
During the return, she received notice to divert and return to Germany or seek refuge in a neutral port. She went to Havana and disembarked the passengers. After Germany invaded Poland, she sailed to Mexico, was painted gray, and took on fuel for the trans atlantic trip. She was waylaid by a British destroyer 400 miles off Virginia, scuttled, and the crew taken into custody by the USS Tuscaloosa.
Interned on Ellis Island, then repatriated to Germany via a train to San Francisco, they were to be picked up by three Japanese ships. In the event, those ships never arrived, and they were interned on Angel Island. With some freedom, they wandered around San Francisco, went to the World’s Fair, and lived well until 1941, when we entered the war, and they were interned for the rest of the war in Roswell, NM.
They were moved from pillar to post so much it took the martians 2 extra years to locate them, and since they had already been released, the martians lost it on takeoff and crashed…
The Japanese ships were probably coming over for loads of scrap metal and the embargo hit them and they had to turn back…
It could have been worse, the could have been stuck on the Channel Islands. From what I heard, after the Germans attacked and invaded what they though was a Bitish military installation, they were left to occupy it and hold everybody there. The islanders said that during Overlord they could catch glimpses of the action, flashes for the shelling, aircraft, and so on. Then the war just happened to pass them by, stranding not only them but the Germans who could not let anyone leave. They weren’t liberated until something like late 1945 or so, at which point the situation was pretty desperate for both parties.
I am not sure about the Germans thinking the Islands were a military installation, i am sure they knew it was more than that. leaving the Islands un occupied would have been rather foolhardy, leving enemy land just off the coast which could be used to launch attacks amngst other things. And there was a big properganda value in landing on British soil.
The Channel Islands were liberated on 9th May 1945, the day after VE day.