Apparently The "Edsel Ford" Mountains Are A Thing; A Correction

SUN 21 JAN 1940
Auxiliary Bear (AG-29) follows leads in the ice spotted on the 19th; the ship's Barkley-Grow floatplane flies over the northern limits of the Edsel Ford Mountains.

Minesweeper Penguin (AM-33) transfers 24 survivors of Japanese fishing schooner No. 1 Seiho Maru, stranded off the southeast coast of Guam, M.I., on 15 January, to Japanese freighter Saipan Maru.

British light cruiser HMS Liverpool stops Japanese passenger liner Asama Maru 35 miles off Nozaki, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, and removes 21 Germans from the ship. All but nine are naval reservists, survivors of the scuttled passenger liner Columbus; the nine civilians are released. The incident further strains relations between Great Britain and Japan.

[The following information was submitted by Shirley Weiss, daughter of one of the German seamen stranded in America (mentioned below) -- HyperWar]:
"Unfortunately, there are a number of errors in the entry. I have documents from the German, English, and Japanese archives which dispute the information. The 21 Germans who were removed from the Asama Maru were all civilian seaman who shipped on oil tankers for the Panama Transit Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company. None were in the military rather they were just of military age. None of the men aboard the Asama Maru were from the scuttled Columbus. The men were initially interned in Hong Kong at LaSalle College. On 2/29/1940 nine of the men were transported via the Australian Cruiser Canibula to Japan and released. In May of 1940 a telegram was sent to the Hague informing the Dutch that the remaining civilian seamen were to be transferred from internment in Hong Kong to Ceylon. These same men were subsequently interned in Singapore and Alberta, Canada. According to a daughter of one of the seaman removed from the Asama Maru, her father was not returned to Germany until 1946.

What's important about this event is that hundreds of civilian seaman of Axis nations were stranded in American ports in 1939. The Asama Maru incident justified not repatriating any of the seaman. Basically, Standard Oil retained the men's passports starting in August of 1939 until they were interned in May of 1941 (7 months before Pearl Harbor). However, by confiscating the passports the seamen could not leave the country anyway. The government could not intern them legally in 1939 since the US was a neutral nation. (Britain and it's protectorates & colonies, Canada, and Australia did intern the men that were caught in ports across the western hemisphere).

The men always wondered why they were allowed freedom until May of 1941 and then rounded up for internment. After reviewing the archival documents, my conclusion is that the presidential election made it politically inconvenient to intern the men until 1941. Only 3% of the public favored involvement in the European war in 1939. Although Roosevelt received much pressure from England to enter the war in 1939 he had to influence public opinion first. If he had interned the men in 1939 it might have influenced his re-election bid. Almost immediately after the Asama Maru incident Standard Oil announced that they would scuttle all plans to repatriate the seaman. By stopping the Asama Maru and seizing the seaman the Allies removed all axis national seaman from oil tankers and stopped all repatriation on the basis that the "Atlantic was too dangerous to repatriate the Standard Oil seaman." Almost all of the seaman stranded in US ports were sent to Ft. Lincoln, North Dakota for internment.

List of the 21 men removed from the Asama Maru and their ages. (The last 9 on the list were released in Japan on 2/29/40):
Bohnsack, Rudolf -- 29
Gnirs, Karl -- 31
Grimm, Fritz -- 31
Gottke, Walter -- 29
Heino, Xaverius -- 30
Jachowski, Walter -- 30
Kempfer, Kurt -- 26
Hartmann, Oswald -- 34
Oesterle, Karl -- 33
Schleyer, Karl -- 19
Schroder, Hermann -- 39
Wesselhofft, Johnny -- 36
Herman Groth -- 40
Arthur Kruger -- 36
Willy Plucas -- 29
Hans Hartwig -- 19
Rudolf Kaselau -- 30
Paul Rupprecht -- 18
Otto Wantke -- 59
Eduard Lege -- 34
Albert Dankowski -- 36
For a fuller write-up, see: The Asama Maru Incident of January 21, 1940 by Chester G. Dunham

U.S. freighter Nishmaha is detained at Gibraltar by British authorities (see 22 January).

Ultimate villain in this mess? Standard Oil Company, natch.