by Trevor K. Plante Published in Prologue, Summer 2001, Vol. 33, No. 2 Four years before Pearl Harbor, the United States and Japan were involved in an incident that could have led to war between the two nations. On December 12, 1937, the American navy gunboat Panay was bombed and sunk by Japanese aircraft. A flat-bottomed craft built in Shanghai specifically for river duty, USS Panay served as part of the U.S. Navy's Yangtze Patrol in the Asiatic Fleet, which was responsible for patrolling the Yangtze River to protect American lives and property. After invading China in the summer of 1937, Japanese forces moved on the city of Nanking in December. Panay evacuated the remaining Americans from the city on December 11, bringing the number of people on board to five officers, fifty-four enlisted men, four U.S. embassy staff, and ten civilians. The following day, while upstream from Nanking, Panay and three Standard Oil tankers, Mei Ping, Mei An, and Mei Hsia, came under attack f...