Transcript

1.23.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye and to
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day I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated January
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February twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio I as
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a reading service intended for people who are blind or
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have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Please join me now for the first article, which is
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part two of the dramatic Rescue of the citizen Sailors
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who patrolled the Atlantic Coast looking for Nazi U boats
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by David Wollman and Julian Smith. In the first part
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of our story, we learned that during World War Two,
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civilian sailors in the Coastal Picket Force used private vessels
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to patrol American waters reporting U boat positions to neutralize
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their stealth advantage. German U boats were causing significant losses
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to American vessels, highlighting the need for the Coastal Picket Force.
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The picket Force had been formed after public outcry, despite
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initial Navy reluctance to involve citizens. It included volunteers from
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various backgrounds, including college students, taxi drivers, and even celebrities.
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The picket Force faced both tedious and dangerous situations, including
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close encounters with U boats. The Zada, a fifty seven
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foot sailboat, faced a severe winter storm, causing injuries and
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significant damage, leaving the crew stranded. The search for the
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Zada involved numerous Army bombers and Canadian planes, becoming one
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of the most extensive in the Navy. After weeks at sea,
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the Zeta's crew was finally spotted and a blimp dropped
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emergency supplies. That's where we pick up our story here
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now is part two. Within an hour, nine rescue planes
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had peered, a Coast Guard patrol boat pulled alongside, and
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the Zada's crew climbed aboard, where pots of beef stew
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were waiting in the galley. Then a heavy fog rolled in,
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forcing the crew to spend one last night on the
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water until conditions improved enough to tow the Zeta through
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the minefield and back to shore. They landed at the
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hamlet of Okracoke, North Carolina, on the morning of December
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twenty fourth. Hundreds of people lined the dock in nearby
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roads to welcome them. The bedraggled crew quickly boarded a
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plain to a Naval's air station in Brooklyn, where their
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family members were waiting, including Vance M. Smitty Smith's pregnant wife.
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Some had been grieving their loved ones, convinced they had
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been lost at sea. Others had clung stubbornly to hope.
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The men who stepped off the plain were sun browned, skinny,
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and trauma tized from their month long, nearly three thousand
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mile saga. The mood at the reunion was not festive.
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There was no shouting or laughing, just handshakes, quiet embraces,
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and a hurried effort by the military to get everybody
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home in time for Christmas. During the following year, the
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Navy built more capable patrol vessels, and German submarines shifted
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their attention to operations farther from America's shores. U boat
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captains learned they could no longer attack with impunity up
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and down the eastern seaboard. As the threat from submarines decreased,
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the coastal picket force was reduced by two thirds, and
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it was discontinued at the end of the war. Miraculously,
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only one member of the Hooligan Navy was killed while
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serving during a collision with the Dutch freighter. In a
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letter to the Greenport Picket Forces commanding officer, a Navy official,
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applauded the civilian sailor's superb brand of seamanship. I will
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not go so far as to say our pickets go
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hunting for gales, But when the gales do come along,
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these sturdy little boats just take the storms as a
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matter of course and ride them out. Newspaper accounts praised
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the Hooligan Navy as iron men in wooden ships, but
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most Americans were understandably focused on the wars being fought
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in Europe and the Pacific. The fleet's military impact on
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the Battle of the Atlantic remains an open question. There
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are no accounts of U boats sunk directly because of
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a patrol boat siding, but Robert Desh, a Coast Guard historian,
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says the Germans were forced to change their tactics after
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the Picket Force became operational. The presence of so many
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small craft limited the Germans of ability to hunt, while
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reassuring merchant seamen that if they were targeted, an American
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craft would be there to scoop them out of the water.
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It certainly had an influence on what the Germans were doing,
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he says. John Wilbur, an independent researcher who has studied
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the coastal picket force for decades, offers a comparison with
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American submarine activity in the waters off Japan a few
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years later. The American subs were very wary of small
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coastal craft. He says. Perhaps they were not the perfect answer,
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but sailboats were the best solution available in nineteen forty
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two and nineteen forty three. Despite everything that Zayda's crew
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went through, most served through the end of the war.
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Some continued to sail for the rest of their lives.
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Curtis Annall, the professional actor and Zayda's captain, went on
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to own two commercial fishing vessels. Whenever he had a chance,
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he would tell any one neighborhood kids in Long Island,
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family friends, strangers and bars about Zeta and its harrowing
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tale of wartime survival. Joe Choked, a former banker and
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experienced weekend sailor, ran the National Boat Show in New
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York for twenty years. Edward Jobson, who had been a
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sophomore at William's College and at twenty the youngest crew member,
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became a publishing executive and continued to sail, cruising and
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racing along the East Coast aboard his own boat, the
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Storm's Bala, the Swedish name for kind of storm petrel.
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The wartime experience also seemed to strengthen Warred Wymar, the
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Dartmouth students love of sailing. It didn't shake him up
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enough to get him off the ocean, his son Charles
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recently recalled for the rest of his life. Weimar seemed
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to have a special connection to the ocean and to
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rough waters. In particular, he settled in Bright Waters, New York,
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just off the Great South Bay, and whenever a storm
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rolled in, he would sit and stare out to sea.
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The Zeta is still berthed in Greenport, where its owner
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takes it out every summer. The gray paint is gone,
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but its owner keeps the Coast Guard Reserve number painted
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on the whole, and the boat has most of its
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original fittings. At eighty eight, it is one of the
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few Hooligan vessels still sailing. During a recent overhaul, a
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rusty rifle bullet was found lodged in the ceiling, most
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likely trapped there when the boat was knocked over during
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the nineteen forty two storm. It's now in a frame
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on the cabin wall, a reminder of the yacht's wartime
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service and astonishing ordeal. Next four decades after the fall
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of Argentina's dictatorship, a fight over the country's darkest chapter
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is re opening grievous wounds inside the fight to memorialize
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victims of the military junta that ruled over the South
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American nation in the nineteen seventies and eighties. By Joshua Hammer.
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The former Navy School of Mechanics in Buenos Aires sits
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on a leafy campus of whitewashed buildings and grassy plazas
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running alongside the Avenida del Libertador, one of the city's
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main thoroughfares. On a recent Tuesday morning, I passed through
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the front gate and walked up the steps of a
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neo classical structure adorned with four doric columns. The elegant
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facade belied its notorious history. The building served as the
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primary secret detention center for the military dictatorship that ruled
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Argentina from the mid nineteen seventies to the early nineteen eighties.
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Maria Belene Giso, a young guide, greeted me at reception
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and led me down a narrow flight of stairs into
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a basement with scuffed yellow walls. This is where they
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tortured people, she told me. In the nineteen seventies, the
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space was divided into cubicles in which leftist guerrillas and
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their sympathizers were shocked and water boarded to force them
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to reveal the whereabouts of fugitive comrades. The members of
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the military task force who administered the torture lived right
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upstairs on two floors of dormitory rooms. The detainees spent
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the rest of their time on the third floor of
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the building, chained and blindfolded in a kennel like hold
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called the capucha Spanish for hood. Here, Guizo told me,
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they lay side by side and gravel like compartments for weeks,
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allowed to shift positions only to eat and use the toilet.
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A secondary holding area, known as the capuchita or little hood,
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was on the attic floor above. It was psychological torture,
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she said, ducking her head beneath a truss supporting the roof.
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Its main purpose was to dehumanize them, but that was
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not the worst that the prisoners, mainly young men and women,
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were forced to undergo. Every Wednesday, naval officers would single
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out about a dozen detainees and announced that they would
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be transferred to a detention center on a ranch in Patagonia,
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in the country's south. They would call your case number,
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and some of the prisoners waved their hands crying out,
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I want to go, I want to go. Miriam Lewin,
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a former leftist activist who survived a year of imprisonment
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at the Navy school known by the Spanish acronym ZMA,
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told me later they wanted to ass escaped to that idyllic,
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beautiful place in Patagonia. The announcement was a ruse. After dark,
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guards led the selected inmates to the basement, where they
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injected them with the sedative. Then they loaded their semi
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conscious prisoners into a truck, which took them to a
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regional airport five miles away. The prisoners were herded onto
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a propeller plane. Often the captives received a second shot
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that rendered them unconscious and were stripped naked to remove
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traces of their identity. Then the pilots flew over the
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Rio de la Plata, the wide estuary separating Argentina and Uruguay,
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several thousand feet above the water. The guards in back
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cranked a winch the rear ramp lowered and the prisoners
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were pushed to their deaths. The navy hoped the corpses
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would disappear without a trace, but in at least sixty
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five cases, bodies washed onto beaches in Argentina and Uruguay.
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As time went on, the executioners began studying the tides,
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improving the techniques so that the bodies could be taken
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to the bottom of the sea, says Nicolas Gill la Vedra,
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an Argentine filmmaker whose twenty twenty four documentary Treslados Roughly
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The Transported, detailed the crimes. The captives left behind at Esma.
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Suspected that some terrible fate had befallen their comrades. We
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used to find their shoes, their clothing, and we asked
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how come they left these here, Lewin recalls. They told
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us we provided them with suitable clothing because it's cold
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down south. In March nineteen seventy seven, the Argentine investigative
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reporter and leftist activist Ridolfo Walsh, who was wanted by
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the junta, wrote an open letter to the regime, which
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he sent to several media organizations. Walsh, whose own daughter
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had been executed by the armed forces, described prisoners hurtling
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down to the sea from the doors of the first
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Air Brigade, and he sighted the discovery in Uruguay of
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some two dozen corpses that had washed onto the beach.
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Shortly after mailing the letter, he was shot dead on
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the street by Argentine security forces. Two years after that,
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few details about the death flights emerged when three former
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Asthma detainees who had been released and sent into exile
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testified before France's National Assembly in Paris about the crimes
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of the dictatorship, repeating a story told to them by
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a fellow prisoner while they were still captive. One night
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in nineteen seventy seven, He told them he was drugged,
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loaded into a truck, and pushed onto a plane with
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a dozen other detainees, but just before the plane took off,
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his captors realized they'd selected him in error, and they
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brought him back. He got to see the whole scene,
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Lewin told me. The prisoner, Emilio Carlos Asallees Bonizzola, later
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disappeared after the Paris testimony, facing mounting rumors of torture
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and murder. The dictatorship was forced to allow the Inter
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American Commission on Human Rights to inspect the Navy school,
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but before investigators arrived, the task force transferred all remaining
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detainees to an island north of Buenos Aires, destroyed the
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internal staircase and the elevator, and made other structural alterations.
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The aim, Guiso told me was to prove that witnesses
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were not remembering the place correctly. Of five thousand people
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held at the school during the dictatorship, fewer than two
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hundred and fifty survived. The dictatorship collapsed in nineteen eighty
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three after Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, the British Colony,
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and the s South Atlantic and proceeded to lose a
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bloody and humiliating war. Mass protests at home and increasing
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opposition abroad led the military leadership to announce a transition
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to democratic elections. Many were elated when a human rights lawyer,
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Raoul Alfonsine, was sworn in as president and initiated trials
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of the junta's top leadership. In a watershed event in
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nineteen eighty five, a panel of civilian judges sentenced the
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former junta president, General Jorge Rafael Vedella and Admiral Emilia Messera,
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the architect of esma's torture and murder program, to life
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in prison, and delivered lesser sentences to three others. But
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the armed forces remained a powerful institution, and in nineteen
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ninety Alfonsin's successor as president, Carlos menem gave endoltos or
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pardons to all military personnel, springing Vidella and Messera from jail.
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In the two thousands, successive leftist presidents Nestor Kirchner and
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his wife, Christina Fernandez de Kirchner, both lawyers, throughout the indultos,
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and put Vedella back in prison. Massera was incapacitated after
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an aneurism. They also set in motion a series of
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trials that, in various shapes and forms, continue to the present.
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As of mid twenty twenty four, seventeen trials were ongoing,
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involving more than one hundred defendants, according to current estimates
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by human rights groups. During its seven years in power,
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the junta killed as many as thirty thousand people, though
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the bodies of most Los Desperacidos that disappeared have never
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been found today, more than four decades after the fall
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of the dictatorship. The pervasive and unresolved trauma inflicted by
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that period is evident in many forms across Argentina. The
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Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, a non violent protest group
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formed in the early days of the dictatorship by mothers
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of Desperacidos, still demonstrate once a week in front of
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the Casa Rosada, the presidential Palace. When I visited Buenos
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Aires this past September, hundreds of young people gathered in
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a plaza outside the National Congress for the annual commemoration
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of the Night of the Pencils, when, on September sixteenth,
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nineteen seventy six, Masched military gunmen kidnapped ten high school
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students who had led protests for cheaper bus fairs, then
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tortured the students and later killed six of them. For
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the anniversary, protesters blocked traffic, held up photographs of the dead,
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enchanted Nuca mas or never Again, the mantra that became
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a rallying cry across Argentina after the dictatorship. But the
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Houja's crimes can hardly be relegated to the past. One
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of the regime's most insidious programs involved detained women who
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were pregnant at the time of their abduction, or became
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pregnant in captivity after being raped by their captors. The
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military authorities waited until the women gave birth, then killed
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the women, forged birth certificates for the newborns, and turned
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the babies over to military couples or in some cases
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to childless Christian families, often with the complicity of the
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Catholic Church. As many as five hundred such children, now
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in their forties, grew up in Argentina without knowledge of
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their real parentage. Some three hundred fifty have yet to
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be identified, and the ongoing process of identification led by
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the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, an offshoot of the Mothers,
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remains an open wound. As the country has carved a
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circuitous path toward justice and comments, Esma has emerged as
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a central symbol of that historical reckoning. In twenty fifteen,
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the former torture center was established as the ESMA Museum
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and Site of Memory, which in twenty twenty three UNESCO
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classified as a World Heritage Site. About three miles away
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is Memory Park, an expanse of manicured lawns along the
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Rio de la Plata landscaped with art installations and gray
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walls inscribed with the names of thousands of the dictatorship's victims. Offshore,
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supported by Buy's stands a steel statue of fourteen year
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old Pablo Maguez, who was placed on a death flight
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in nineteen seventy seven. The likeness of the junta's youngest
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murder victim seems to walk on the water as he
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gazes toward the horizon, even as the country seeks to
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emerge from the legacy of those seven horrible years. However,
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a new government elected in twenty twenty three has become
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the first since the fall of the dictatorship to justify
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the regime's extra judicial killings and violent repression. The new president,
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Javier Malai, a libertarian econo economist and TV personality, and
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the Vice president, Victoria villaruel have both disputed estimates of
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the number of the disappeared. Villaruelle, the daughter, granddaughter and
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niece of former officers of the dictatorship, has also threatened
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to close memorial sites, audit the records of human rights organizations,
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and reopen criminal cases against former leftist guerrillas. Never before
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has a democratic Argentine government of any political persuasion decided
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to break its links with human rights groups. Marcella Perelman,
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the head of research for the Center for Legal and
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Social Studies of Buenos Aires based international rights group, told
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me exsultant social fracturing is pitting the vast majority against
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a newly vocal minority of junta's sympathizers. After forty years
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of demonization, were not afraid any more, Villarouelle said during
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a twenty twenty three campaign rally. Lewin, the former ESMA prisoner,
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as one of many seasoned human rights activists seeking to
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challenge the administration's efforts. She first came to national prominence
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in nineteen eighty five when she testified in the first
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criminal trial of the junta's leaders. Later, she became an
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investigative television journalist. She produced a documentary La Escuela the
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School about the experiences of ESMA survivors, and co wrote
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a book putas Egerrellerus, Horace and Guerrillas about sexual violence
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in the detention camps. She was at the forefront of
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the campaign to convert ESMA into a memorial center, and
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she regularly protests and works in other ways to ensure
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the lessons of Argentina's darkest chapter are not forgotten. Now
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Lewin is gaining international attention for a project she believes
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will make those horrors tangible for a new generation. A
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mission to locate and bring home a long lost death
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plane used by the regime in the nineteen seventies. Villarouelle
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is trying to rewrite history, paving the way for a
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return of the military. Accusing politicians and members of the
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opposition of having a guerrilla criminal passed. She says it
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worries me. Lewin grew up in Buenos Aires in the
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nineteen sixties, a period of steady decline from the glory
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days of the early twentieth century. After gaining independence from
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Spain in eighteen sixteen, Argentina, the fourth largest country in
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the Americas, produced a bounty of wheat, corn, beef, and wine,
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attracting massive investment and six million immigrants from across Europe.
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By the nineteen twenties, the country was richer than France
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or Germany. Buenos Aires became known as Paris on the Pampas,
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its avenues lined with elegant buildings such as the Cassa Risatta,
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the pink presidential Palace and the Teatro Cologne, a grand
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nineteen o eight opera house, But the world wide depression
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of the nineteen thirties and a succession of incompetent civilian
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and military regimes plunged the country into poverty. Juan Peron,
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a charismatic populist elected president in nineteen forty six, empowered
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labor unions and redistributed wealth. His wife, Eva Peron, who
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died from cancer at age thirty three, became an idol
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for the country's poor. But Paron's efforts to curb the
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political influence of the Catholic Church antagonize the military, and
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in September nineteen fifty five, Peron was deposed in a
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coup and forced into exile. After struggling to run the country,
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the military allowed him to return eighteen years later, and
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he was re elected president in nineteen seventy three. Peron
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died a year later and was succeeded by his third wife,
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the ineffectual Isabelle Paron. Are. Now the country was ripping apart.
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A government austerity program led to sharp wage losses, currency devaluation,
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and an increasingly unstable economy. Popular unrest grew and underground
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political movements organized, some including extremist factions of the Monteneros,
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made up of thousands of mostly middle class youths who
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believed the government's economic programs were perpetuating widespread inequality, carried
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out political assassination. It kidnapped wealthy Argentines for ransom. As
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the political situation deteriorated. The CIA predicted in nineteen seventy
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five that Argentina is probably destined for an army coups
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sooner rather than later. The tanks rolled through the streets
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on March twenty fourth, nineteen seventy six. The National Reorganization Process,
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as the regime called itself, responded to widespread unrest with kidnappings, torture, executions,
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and disappearances. The military targeted not only guerrillas, but also students, educators,
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trade unionists, writers, journalists, artists, left wing activists, members of
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the clergy, and alleged sympathizers. According to a declassified CIA
25:53
report from the time, they killed people who had no
25:57
links to the guerrillas Leuintomi. By the end of nineteen
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seventy seven, the ranks of the guerrilla groups had been
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largely wiped out, but the dictatorship's terror continued. Lewin was
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an eighteen year old student activist with the Monteneros political
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wing in Buenos Aires, known by the codename Gringa when
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the military seized power. I never had a gun and
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never committed any blood crimes, she told me recently. As
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we drank Cafe Cortados in the Park Centenario neighborhood of
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Buenos Aires. We handed out leaflets, we painted walls. We
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were thousands, and I felt like I was fighting for justice.
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Lewin is an animated, red haired woman who speaks fluent
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English and relates her story with the matter of fatness
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that belies its horror. Comrades began disappearing days after the
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coups dragged off by plainclothes men in Ford Falcons, soon
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known as the telltale car of military abductors. Lewin dropped
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out of university, took a job in a furniture factory,
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and kept a low profile. Determined not to betray her
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fellow activists under torture, she carried a cyanide capsule to
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swallow in the event she was captured. I thought it
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would be nice to save their lives, even if I died,
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She told me. Every comrade I lost made my commitments stronger.
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In May nineteen seventy seven, half a dozen men surrounded
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her as she walked home from work. Lewin slipped the
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poison pill into her mouth, but the assailants choked her
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and removed the capsule. For months, she was moved among
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clandestine torture centers. Her interrogators demanded that she give up
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the whereabouts of Patricia Palizuelos, a friend since high school,
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suspected of planting a bomb in Air Force headquarters. Palezuelo's
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father was a top Air Force officer. This concludes readings
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from the Smithsonian magazine for today. Your reader has been
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Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have a great day.