Chapter 22
PRISONERS IN A GILDED CAGE
As the Junkers transport bearing Ben and his fellow detainees flew northward across the Mediterranean to an unknown destination, Spain was a smoldering preoccupation of US president Franklin Roosevelt. Since 1939, the country had been ruled by Francisco Franco, the military strongman who led Nationalist forces to victory in a four-year civil war that overthrew the elected Republican government. Hitler and Mussolini had forged close ties with Franco, providing men and materiel to his army throughout the civil war. In the spring of 1940, when Germany stood poised to defeat Britain and France in Hitler’s broader European war, the Nazi dictator had assumed that Franco would join the Axis cause, but Franco had demurred—much to Hitler’s annoyance.
Franco needed a source of oil and other economic aid that exceeded the means of the Axis powers, and so, while assuring Hitler of his ideological sympathies, the Spanish caudillo staked out an official policy of neutrality. Increasingly frustrated by Franco’s reticence, Hitler secretly drew up plans to invade Spain, which the German leader viewed as a steppingstone to the conquest of Gibraltar, Britain’s Mediterranean stronghold at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. Twice in the eighteen months prior to America’s entry into the war, Hitler considered overrunning Spain, but both times stopped short.1
Spain’s status took on even greater urgency for President Roosevelt after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor triggered an Axis declaration of war on the United States. Roosevelt now made keeping Spain out of the war a diplomatic priority. In March 1942, Roosevelt set in motion his plan to achieve this goal by carefully handpicking his ambassador to Madrid.
The envoy was Carlton Joseph Huntley Hayes, a fifty-nine-year-old Columbia University historian. Born and raised in upstate New York, Hayes had majored in history at Columbia at the turn of the century. In 1904, around the time of his graduation, Hayes broke with his Baptist upbringing to convert to Catholicism. In the years that followed, his Catholic faith became a bedrock of his scholarly life. Hayes made a name for himself as an expert on modern European history and nationalism. He concluded that the senseless slaughter of the First World War had been an outgrowth of three destructive threads of modern life: nationalism, militarism, and imperialism. In the great global ideological struggle between left and right that followed the war, Hayes ardently denounced totalitarianism and American isolationism.
The Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s created deep fault lines in American and British political, cultural, and academic life. The cause of Spain’s beleaguered Republican government was championed by the political left in the United States and the United Kingdom. Some twenty-eight hundred Americans fought for the Republican cause with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and 681 died from battle injuries or illness. Throughout the conflict, Roosevelt maintained ties with both the Republican government and Franco’s Nationalist rebels. When Franco entered Madrid and declared victory on April 1, 1939, Roosevelt ignored pressure from the American left to cut diplomatic relations with the new Nationalist government.
In the aftermath of America’s entry into Hitler’s war, Roosevelt’s appointment of Hayes as ambassador to Spain was a shrewd political stroke. By appointing a Catholic of moderate political views, Roosevelt had signaled to Franco his desire for closer relations with Spain. Hayes was no closet fascist, but rather he viewed Franco through a lens of pragmatism: The Spanish leader was an authoritarian, but not a totalitarian in the vein of Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini, Hayes concluded. In his view, America could do business with Franco.
Arriving in Madrid in the late spring of 1942, Hayes set to work shoring up America’s relationship with Spain. He built relationships with Franco and his foreign minister. To win the sympathies of the Spanish elite, he hosted cultural programs that stressed the shared values of the two countries. Balding and bespectacled, with a large nose and stern face, Hayes proved to be a warm and gracious host. One of the most popular events he hosted was a screening of the Hollywood film Gone with the Wind. High government officials and even members of Spain’s Catholic hierarchy turned out for the event.2
Hayes found common ground with Franco in other areas. A trickle of Europeans fleeing Hitler’s depredations had found safe haven in Spain early in the war. After Hayes arrived, the trickle became a torrent. Jews and other displaced people as well as downed Allied airmen made their way from Vichy France through the Pyrenees mountains into Spain and on to safety in Allied-occupied North Africa. By war’s end, Hayes—with Franco’s acquiescence—had aided the escape of forty thousand refugees.
A more urgent concern for Roosevelt was the question of Franco’s commitment to military neutrality—an issue that loomed ever larger as 1943 began. Based on months of conversations with Franco and Foreign Ministry officials in Madrid, Hayes communicated to Washington his optimism that Franco intended to remain on the sidelines. But he was far less convinced Hitler would respect Spain’s continued neutrality. In a January 15, 1943, cable to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Hayes reported steady improvement in US relations with Spain following the Operation TORCH landings in North Africa, and he urged the US to offer “military assistance to Spain in the event of German aggression.” Furthermore, he suggested a German invasion might occur “between the latter part of February and May.”3
As part of Roosevelt’s intensifying efforts to keep Franco out of the war, the powerful Catholic archbishop of New York, Francis Spellman, arrived in Madrid in early February 1943. During his week in Spain, Spellman met privately with Franco and reported to Roosevelt that the Spanish strongman did indeed appear committed to neutrality.
Despite the encouraging cables arriving in Washington from Hayes and his top diplomats in Madrid, Spain remained a potentially game-changing wild card in the European war. If Franco cast his lot with Hitler and attacked the British stronghold at Gibraltar, or allowed Hitler to invade Spain and control access to the Mediterranean, the Allied summer plans to invade Sicily would be jeopardized.
It was against this backdrop of high-stakes Allied and Axis intrigue that Ben and thirteen 93rd Bomb Group comrades arrived in Spain in early March 1943.
BEN AND THE OTHER AMERICANS EMERGED from the Junkers into the sunlight of Zaragoza, a provincial capital in Spain’s northeast Aragon region. They were herded aboard a bus and driven southwest into the mountains. After a journey of about ninety minutes, the bus stopped and the Americans were ushered into a luxury hotel in the spa town of Alhama de Aragon.
The past year of war had seen the town play host to a small colony of about twenty-five interned Allied air personnel from the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Palestine, and South Africa. Confined to hotels paid for by their governments, the Americans were among more than one hundred US military personnel interned by Spain at that point in the war.
Ben’s place of “confinement” was the Hotel Termas de Pallares, a popular spa and casino opened in 1863. The four-story brick structure had been constructed in the Romanesque Mudéjar style popular in Aragon, blending Moorish tastes with traditional Roman and Christian architecture. Marble statues adorned the entrance and a tiled patio overlooked lush gardens with strutting peacocks and a thermal lake where guests could bathe or sun themselves while lying in lounge chairs on a sandy beach.
Beyond the cavernous marble-tiled lobby lay a genteel world of dark-paneled salons, chandeliers, and high-ceilinged hallways. The main dining room could seat two hundred guests, and an al fresco dining area decorated with Moorish tile mosaic a hundred more. Guests could soak in soothing mineral waters in the hotel’s communal spa in the basement or in claw-footed porcelain tubs in the privacy of their elegant rooms. The Americans were technically prisoners, yet they had the privileges of a paying guest. For Ben and the other internees of modest origins, the Termas de Pallares transported them into a world of Gatsby-like luxury and excess.
Each day for the internees began with a knock at the door and breakfast served in bed. From 8:00 to 10:00 a.m., the men swam and bathed in the clear thermal lake a short walk from the hotel building. At 1300 hours, they gathered in the dining room for a hearty lunch of meat, potatoes, peas, salad, red wine, and bread made from flour supplied by the US Embassy. Afterward, the men adjourned to a large salon to gaze out on the National Highway and the well-manicured park beyond. Games of bridge (sometimes joined by an English-speaking Spanish gentleman), chess, checkers, and Ping-Pong ensued. The activities paused for a midafternoon snack of tea, coffee, and olives, followed by another two hours at the lake.
Back at the hotel, the airmen gathered around a shortwave radio in the lobby to catch the evening BBC news broadcast from London. They spent much time at the bar, drinking wine and nibbling shrimp. They attended evening dances in the casino and screenings of French, Italian, German, and American films. The hotel’s daily activities culminated with a late dinner.4
As Ben and the others soon discovered, Alhama de Aragon was a compact town of about a thousand inhabitants, tucked into a limestone gorge carved by the ribbon-like Rio Jalón as it threaded its way northeast through the mountains. Some of the most prominent buildings, including the town hall, echoed Aragon’s Moorish influence.
Representatives of the US Embassy in Madrid, 110 miles to the southwest, regularly made the drive up the National Road to visit the American airmen. The embassy air attaché brought mail, sweaters, chocolates, cigarettes, and a stipend paid in pesetas on his weekly visits. The airmen were allowed to wear their uniforms around the hotel, but not outside, so the embassy’s first secretary brought Ben and his comrades civilian clothes and a skilled tailor to take their measurements. Within a matter of days, the Americans upgraded their desert wardrobes to include business suits and ties. Ben took to wearing a fedora.
Their circle of friends included a colorful cast of airmen who had been shot down over France and found refuge in Spain with the courageous assistance of the French underground. Among them were a half-dozen British airmen, a US P-38 pilot, and an Australian flier who had reached Spain on his second escape attempt after thirty months as a German prisoner of war.
On festival days, the streets of Alhama de Aragon teemed with local residents dancing the jota, a traditional Aragonese dance—men in knee breeches, white stockings, and broad-brimmed hats; women in red skirts, embroidered white blouses, and red roses pinned to their hair. Young women with long black hair, brown eyes, and delicate features began to frequent the hotel to catch a glimpse of the Americans, but they were good Catholic girls who shyly deflected the amorous advances of the sex-starved airmen. A Spanish girl gave one American enlisted man a silver band that he wore on his little finger, yet he grumbled to his comrades, “She won’t even let me hold her hand.”5
The Spanish Air Force officers responsible for the internees imposed few rules, aside from punctuality for meals and mandatory room check and roll call at 2300 each evening. For the most part, the Americans behaved themselves. Epting and his officers had befriended their Spanish counterparts, and so the occasional infraction went unpunished.
The presence of mysterious German-speaking visitors who claimed to be businessmen or tourists added an air of intrigue to their stay. The visitors were suspected to be agents of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence branch, and so the Americans steered clear of them.
It was the most civilized captivity imaginable, yet the passing days weighed on Ben. He didn’t have to be reminded that his comrades were back in England, fighting and dying in raids against Nazi Germany. Every time a new airman shot down in France arrived in Alhama de Aragon, the Americans were reminded of their 93rd brothers.
But what could they do about it? The men began to discuss their options.
Unbeknownst to Ben and his comrades, diplomatic negotiations to secure their release had taken on added urgency by mid-March. Cables from the US State Department marked “TOP SECRET” were arriving daily at the US Embassy in Madrid, warning that five hundred Nazi troop trains were supposedly headed toward the border with France.6
Hitler, the cables advised, was poised to invade Spain. If the Americans were still there when the Germans arrived, they could expect a harsh conclusion to their gilded captivity.
AS FEARS OF A GERMAN INVASION HUNG over the secret negotiations, a deal was struck to release the Americans in small groups to avoid the attention of German spies. The military attaché from the US Embassy in Madrid gave the men passports that had been so hastily prepared that they bore little relation to the men’s actual personal details.7
On March 22, 1943, an automobile pulled up to the Termas de Pallares to begin the first transfer. Six Americans—pilots Jake Epting, Hap Kendall, and Homer Moran, bombardier Al Naum, and ground crew chiefs George Metcalf and Lyman L. Dulin—climbed inside. The men were driven to the local train station for the first leg of their journey back to England.
Later that day, Ben and the remaining eight Americans interned as a result of the Red Ass mishap and six British and French internees posed for a photo outside their hotel. They looked like college boys in their civilian attire. Ben knelt in the front row, his fedora atop his head, and the right arm of one of his new friends draped around his neck.
The departure of the first group raised Ben’s hopes that his freedom would soon follow. Another month passed before he and three other men were whisked away from the Termas de Pallares in a car driven by a US diplomat. From Gibraltar, Ben flew to London.
As if the Spanish sojourn had not been surreal enough, Ben and his three comrades were driven to the London flat of two expatriate American film stars and quartered there until they could be debriefed by US intelligence officers. Ben Lyon and his wife, Bebe Daniels, had starred in Hollywood silent films and “talkies” in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the highlights of Lyon’s career had been playing a heroic World War I aviator in the 1930 film Hell’s Angels, starring Jean Harlow. In the film’s aftermath, Lyon had served as a pilot with the US Army Air Corps 322nd Pursuit Squadron in the southwest US.
In 1936, the couple moved to London following a kidnapping scare involving their daughter and Daniels’s repeated encounters with a mentally ill stalker. In 1940, the former Hollywood power couple launched a hugely popular BBC Radio comedy series. Now they produced and hosted a radio interview show called Stars and Stripes in Britain, in which the couple took turns interviewing US military personnel in England. It had become a big hit in America in recent months by featuring the stories of Eighth Air Force bomber boys.
Lyon and Daniels were moved by Ben Kuroki’s saga of overcoming bigotry to prove himself in combat with a B-24 bomber crew, and they asked if they could interview him for their show. He agreed. Under Lyon’s gentle questioning, the soft-spoken Nebraska farm boy recalled the prejudice he had encountered in his quest to fight for his country, his months of combat, and his Spanish captivity. Ben’s story was beamed across America.
As thrilling as the interview was for Ben, he was ready to rejoin his comrades. His debriefing finally complete, he and his three companions bade farewell to their gracious London hosts and boarded a train to the east of England. As luck would have it, Ben’s return to the 93rd came at an especially fraught moment in the escalating air war against Nazi Germany.