Tsingtao, China - USS Finch (AM-9). We're gonna party like it's 1936.

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Tsingtao means beer. And beer means party time. 80 years ago, July 17, 1936, fell on a Friday. And it was party time at the Kismet Cafe, in Old Tsingtao for the crew of the WWI era minesweeper, USS Finch (AM-9), of the Asiatic Fleet. If the building's interior and exterior look European, it's because German troops seized and occupied the city's fortification in 1897 shortly after surveying the coast. China conceded the area to Germany the following year, and the Kiautschou Bay concession, as it became known, existed from 1898 to 1914. The Germans contributed European architecture and the brewer's art, before the Japanese took over from 1914-1922, after which the ROC held it until 1938, and we know who occupied it after that.

 

But in July 1936, the Battle of Shanghai was a year off and liberty for the China sailor still meant good times. This photo hangs in my cave and it's one of my favorite China sailor pictures from the albums of Hank Norwood, a Navy mustang that served from 1923-49, China from '29-'37. Hank's the guy in the center foreground that looks like a pasha in some harem. He was the ship's Bosun and gunnery officer. Off his right shoulder at about 1000 is the ship's XO, Robert Trower and his wife, and in a straight line off his right shoulder, I'm pretty sure, is the CO, Lt. Joseph Rockwell and his wife. Hank's wife had just given birth to their first child in the Philippines four months earlier, so she was home with the baby. But being a good Navy wife, she realized that Hank had to do his duty as ship's morale officer that Friday night 80 years ago. Ironically, exactly one year later, on Saturday, July 17, 1937, Lt. Hyman Rickover, the future "Father of the Nuclear Navy" and longest serving US Naval officer (1918-1982) relieved Rockwell as CO and assumed the only ship command of his career. A command that lasted only three months before Rickover detached from the Finch and line officer duty to become an engineering officer, during the last month of the Battle of Shanghai. Needless to say, there are no pictures of Hyman Rickover partying with the crew during his short time on the Finch.

 

Left click twice to see enlarged format.

 

Ganbei and Prost!

[Dirk]

Some great research and an interesting thread!