#147: The Mayaguez Incident: The Last American Casualties in Vietnam, Part VII

This week we finally see the end of the Mayaguez Incident play out but not before a chaotic evacuation causes Marines to be abandoned on the battlefield. An incident that still causes embarrassment today.

The introduction and transition music heard on the podcast is composed and recorded by the eldest Ghosts of Arlington, Jr. While the rest of his catalogue is quite different from what he's performed for me, you can find his music on bandcamp.com under the names Caladrius and Bloodfeather.

As always, a very special thanks to the Commando Pando Cap Company for its continued help to spread the word about the podcast on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/MountainUpCapCompany Climb to Glory!

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Transcript

Well, this is it. The relocation is finally complete. It took way longer than I thought it would between this episode and the last (partly because it took me a while to find which box my good microphone was in) but the new GoA head office has been established in Colorado and I am finally ready to begin releasing new podcasts. In the update I posted just before Memorial Day (about five months ago) I teased what my first story back would be, but wouldn’t you know it, we sadly lost yet another pioneer of space exploration and I would be remiss if I didn’t take the time to eulogize the amazing life of Jim Lovell, whose heroics as the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission were memorialized on film by Tom Hanks in 1995. There are also updates about the Harlem Hellfighters of World War I, and the Japanese-American Nisei soldiers of World War II, so without further ado - welcome back! To Ghosts of Arlington and thank you! For joining me for Episode 148 - The Life and Times of Astronaut Jim Lovell.

James Arthur Lovell, Jr. was born in Cleveland, Ohio on March 25, 1928. The only child of James Senior and Blanche Lovell, his father died in a car accident in 1933 when Lovell was five years old. For two years after the accident, he and his mother lived with a relative in Terre Haute, Indiana before they settled in Milwaukee, WI. Like many early astronauts, Lovell became interested in rocketry during his teenage years and built flying models. He was also active in the Boy Scouts of American, attaining that organization’s highest rank: Eagle Scout. Fun fact: At least 41 Eagle Scouts have flown in space (with 2 more currently awaiting their first space assignments), but Jim Lovell was the first.

After graduating from high school, Lovell attended the University of Wisconsin for two years. While there, he played football and studied engineering under the US Navy’s “flying midshipmen" program - one of the four programs the navy had at the time to train naval aviators. He later credited that program for giving him the opportunity to attend college, saying that without it he would not have had the money to attend. He supplemented his meager Navy stipend by working at a local restaurant washing dishes and bussing tables, and by caring for the university’s lab rats and mice on the weekends. 

In the summer of 1948, during his second year in the aviation program, the Navy began to make cutbacks, and cadets were under a great deal of pressure to transfer out. There were serious concerns that some or most of the students who graduated as naval aviators would not have pilot billets to fill. To avoid this, Lovell decided to apply to the US Naval Academy; he secured a slot and restarted college, this time at the academy, in the fall of 1948.

I wasn’t able to find out much about Lovell’s time at Annapolis, other than the fact that before his graduation in 1952, he wrote a treatise on the liquid-propellant rocket engine. Upon graduation, he received a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned an ensign in the United States Navy. 

Back at Juneau High School in Milwaukee, Lovell began dating Marilyn Gerlach. As a college student, she started her education attending the Wisconsin State Teachers College and then transferred to George Washington University in Washington, DC, in both cases to be closer to Jim. As midshipmen cannot be married while attending the academy, the couple was married on June 6, 1952, mere hours after the graduation ceremony. They would go on to have four children - Barbara, James III, Susan, and Jeffrey.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

Lovell was one of 50 members of his graduating class of 783 initially selected for naval aviation training. He went to flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida from October 1952 to February 1954. Upon completion of pilot training on February 1, he was designated a naval aviator, and was assigned to VC-3 - a squadron specializing in night attacks and fighter operations at Moffett Field near San Francisco, California. From 1954 to 1956 he flew McDonnell F2H Banshee night fighters. This assignment included a Western Pacific deployment aboard the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La. Lovell eventually completed 107 carrier deck landings. Upon his return to shore duty, he was reassigned to provide pilot transition training for three fighter airframes: the North American FJ-4 Fury, McDonnell F3H Demon, and Vought F8U Crusader.

In January 1958, Lovell entered a six-month test pilot training course at what is today called the United States Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. His class also included future astronauts Wally Schirra and Pete Conrad. Lovell graduated at the top of the class. Usually, the top graduate was assigned to flight test on graduation but the head of electronics test had complained about never getting the top graduate, so Lovell was assigned there, where he worked with radar sets.

Later that year, Lovell, Conrad, and Schirra were among 110 military test pilots selected as potential astronaut candidates for Project Mercury. Schirra went on to become one of the Mercury Seven - NASA’s initial batch of astronauts - but Lovell was not selected because of a temporarily high bilirubin count. If, like me, you have no idea what the means, you’re in luck. Bilirubin is a yellow pigment produced during the normal breakdown of red blood cells. Elevated bilirubin can lead to jaundice, characterized by yellowing of the skin and eyes. When he was rejected from astronaut training, Pete Conrad gave Lovell the nickname “Shakey.” The nickname was not related to any physical condition or performance issue, but rather a playful jab by Conrad after Lovell's initial medical setback.

In 1960, while still testing radars, electronics test and armaments test were combined and became weapons test, and Lovell became the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II program manager. During this assignment future astronaut John Young served under him. In 1961 Lovell received orders for VF-101 "Detachment Alpha" at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia, as a flight instructor and safety engineering officer.Before arriving in Virginia, and completed Aviation Safety School at the University of Southern California.

In 1962, NASA began recruiting its second group of astronauts, intended to fly during the Gemini and Apollo programs. As you know if you have listened to Episode XX, Lovell again applied and this time was found fit to enter the astronaut program. 

Because I have already gone in depth with his NASA career I am not going to delve into the weeds again, but as a quick recap, Lovell flew with four NASA missions. He was part of Gemini 7 with Frank Borman, which blasted off on December 4, 1965. This mission was important for two reasons. First, this mission was scheduled for fourteen days - by far the longest manned space mission to date. It was determined that any manned missions to the moon would take less than fourteen days so if astronauts could survive in space for two weeks without ill effects they should have no issues physically traveling to the moon and back. The second goal of Gemini 7 was to perform a space rendezvous with Wally Shirra and Tom Stafford in Gemini 6. The ability to perform a space rendezvous would eventually lead to two objects docking in space which  was an essential aspect of the future planned Apollo missions. On December 18, after a then-record 206 orbits of Earth, Gemini 7 successfully touched down.

Lovell’s next mission was in Gemini 12 with Buzz Aldrin. This final Gemini mission was initially ill-defined. Lovell later recalled [QUOTE] “Essentially, Gemini 12 didn’t have a mission. It was, I guess, be default… supposed to wind up the Gemini program and catch all those items that were not caught on previous flights." By July 1966, its mission had become to master extravehicular activity (aka space walks), something that had proven problematic on earlier Gemini missions, as they had been more strenuous than expected and performing simple tasks had been more complicated. Gemini 12 launched on November 11, 1966 and returned on November 15 after 59 orbits and a successful mission which not only included three space walks but a docking with another object already in orbit.

On December 21, 1968, Lovell, Frank Borman, and Bill Anders lifted off in Apollo 8, becoming the first astronauts to ride the new, and enormous, Saturn V rocket into orbit and became the first to travel to the moon and back. While they did not land, they entered lunar orbit on December 24th, broadcast black-and-white images of the lunar surface back to Earth and over the next 20 hours, orbited the moon 10 times. They began their return trip to Earth on December 25th, Christmas Day. They made their initial rocket burn on the far side of the moon - out of radio contact with Earth. When contact was re-established, Lovell broadcast, "Please be informed, there is a Santa Claus."

During this flight, Lovell named a feature on the lunar surface Mount Marilyn in honor of his wife. Apollo 8 returned to Earth on December 27th after a 580,000-mile or 933,000-kilometer trip.

Jim Lovell is best known for the heroics of his final space mission, in command of Apollo 13. After coming so close to the moon in Apollo 8, this was supposed to be his triumphant return, this time to set foot on the lunar surface. But as many of you undoubtedly know, it was not to be. On April 11, 1970, Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise. Two days into the mission, during a routine liquid oxygen tank stir, a fire started inside an oxygen tank, which caused an explosion, which turned Apollo 13’s from a lunar landing into simple survival in an environment where everything around the astronauts wanted to kill them. Thanks to the efforts of more people than I can name today (Episode 68) the Apollo 13 crew miraculously returned safely to Earth on April 17, 1970. Speaking of this miracle in 2020 on NASA’s "Houston we Have a Podcast" Lovel said: "You can't suddenly have a problem, and then just you know, close your eyes and then hope there's a miracle coming on, because a miracle is something you have to do yourself, or having people to help you."

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

As seems to always be the case, Lovell stayed busy after his NASA career. He retired from the Navy and the space program on March 1, 1973. He is one of one three people to travel to the moon twice, but until the other two, John Young and Gene Cernan, he never walked on it. Between his Gemini and Apollo flights, he accrued 715 hours and 5 minutes in space, a personal record that stood until the Skylab 3 mission in 1973 (episode XX).

After his time in the military, Lovell went to work at the Bay-Houston Towing Company in Houston, Texas, becoming CEO in 1975. He was president of Fisk Telephone Systems in 1977, and later worked for Centel Corporation in Chicago, retiring as an executive vice president on January 1, 1991. Lovell served on the board of directors for several other organizations, including the Astronautics Corporation of America in his hometown of Milwaukee from 1990 to 1999, and Federal Signal Corporation in Chicago from 1984 to 2003. 

In 1999, the Lovell family opened a restaurant in Lake Forest, Illinois, "Lovell's of Lake Forest". The restaurant displayed memorabilia from Lovell's time with NASA and the filming of Apollo 13. The restaurant was sold to son and executive chef James (who goes by “Jay") in 2006, who ran it for another nine years before closing in 2015.

Like many of his astronaut colleagues, Lovell received a slew of awards and honors in his lifetime. Including the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Space Medal of Honor.

In 1969, he received the General Henry “Hap” Arnold Award from the AIr Force Association, and the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Award. In 1970, Lovell, along with  Jack Seigert and Fred Haise, were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon for their Apollo 13 mission.

Lovell was also active in the Boy Scouts throughout his life. In addition to being an Eagle Scout, he was also a member of the Mikano Lodge Order of the Arrow - a scouting honor society composed of those who best exemplify the Scout Oath and Law in their daily lives. During the Apollo 13 mission, Lovell brought a Mikano Lodge Flap (a patch goes on lodge member’s left uniform pocket) into space with him as one of his personal items. The intent was to take it onto the lunar surface with him and coat it in lunar dust but obviously that was not to be. He did still donate the lodge flap to the national Order of the Arrow office where it was put on display.

In 1990, Lovell received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award, which is awarded to Eagle Scouts who have achieved extraordinary national-level recognition, fame, or eminence within their profession and/or service to the nation and who have strong records of service to their communities. It is one of only two BSA awards presented to adults dependent on the recipient having earned the rank of Eagle Scout as a youth.

In 1992, he was further recognized by the Boy Scouts of America with their Silver Buffalo Award - the organization’s national-level distinguished service award. It is presented for noteworthy and extraordinary service to youth on a national basis, either as part of, or independent of the Scouting program. The award is made by the National Court of Honor and the recipient need not be a registered member of Scouting America. Two other early NASA astronauts - John Glenn and Neil Armstrong - were also recipients of the Silver Buffalo.

In 2003, he received the Space Foundation’s General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement award; in 2009, the NASA Ambassadors of Exploration Award; in 2012, the Laureate of the Order of Lincoln - the highest honor awarded by the state of Illinois; and in 2013, The Honourable Company of Air Pilots Award of Honour, presented by the Duke of York.

In 1970, At a parade attended by 500,000 people, Lovell was presented with Chicago’s Medal of Merit. Later that same year, the entire crew of Apollo 13 was awarded the City of New York Gold Medal. Lovell had already received that medal for the Apollo 8 mission. In lieu of a second medal, the mayor of New York gifted him a crystal paperweight that he "invented for the occasion". Lovell was also awarded the 1970 City of Houston Medal for Valor for his exploits on Apollo 13. 

In 1982, Lovell was one of ten Gemini astronauts inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame. In 1993, Lovell and all of the other 12 Gemini astronauts were inducted into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame as that body’s second class. 

In 1994, Lovell and author Jeffery Kluger wrote a book about the Apollo 13 mission, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, which is what director Ron Howard based his 1995 film Apollo 13. Lovell's first impression on being approached about the film was that Kevin Costner would be a good choice to portray him, given the physical resemblance, but Tom Hanks was cast in the role. To prepare, Hanks visited James and Marilyn Lovell at their home in Texas and flew with Lovell in his private airplane. Kathleen Quinlan was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar for her performance as Marilyn.

Lovell has a cameo in the movie. He played the captain of USS Iwo Jima - the amphibious assault ship that recovered Apollo 13 after its safe return to Earth. He can be seen as the naval officer shaking Hanks' hand, as Hanks speaks in voice-over, in the scene where the astronauts come aboard the Iwo Jima. The filmmakers offered to make Lovell's character an admiral aboard the ship, but Lovell said: "I retired as a captain and a captain I will be." He was cast as the ship's skipper, Captain Leland Kirkemo. Lovell and his wife, who also has a cameo in the film, provided a commentary track on both the single disc and the two-disc special edition DVD.

Tim Daly portrayed Lovell in the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, which I have somehow still managed to not see despite my HBO streaming subscription, and Pablo Schreiber played him in the 2018 Ryan Gosling film and Neil Armstrong bio-pict, First Man.

US Navy Captain James Arthur Lovell, Jr. passed away at his home in Lake Forest, Illinois on August 7, 2025. He was 97 years-old. Captain Lovell was preceded in death by his wife, Marilyn, who died on August 27, 2023 at age 93. She is interred at the US Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, Maryland, where her husband will join her in the near future.

Following Lovell’s death, Tom Hanks posted his personal tribute to the man he brought to the silver screen on his social media pages. He wrote in part, QUOTE, “There are people who dare, who dream, and who lead others to places we would not go on our own. Jim Lovell [...] was that kind of guy." Interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy attributed Lovell's "calm strength under pressure" as having helped the Apollo 13 crew return safely to Earth.”

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

In addition to the passing of Captain Lovell, I also wanted to share one more update about a group of Soldiers I highlighted a few years ago. On September 3, 2025 ceremony at the US Capitol building, the Congressional Gold Medal was presented to descendants of some of the 4000 Soldiers who served in the 369th Infantry Regiment during World War I - Soldiers who were nicknamed “Hellfighters” by the Germans who faced them on the battlefield.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson this medal, bestowed on these black New York National Guardsmen - known to history as the Harlem Hellfighters - is <<QUOTE>> “the highest honor [congress] can bestow on any group or individual… [and allows the House and Senate] to show our appreciation for the achievements and contributions of truly great Americans.”

In a ceremony attended by the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, just to name a few, Colonel Bryon Linnehan, the commanders of today’s Hellfighters - the New York Army National Guard’s 369th Sustainment Brigade - said the official recognition of Harlem Hellfighter heroism made the event a “joyous occasion.”

The 369th Infantry got its start in 1916 as the 15th New York, a National Guard unit for Black Americans who wanted to serve in the segregated Army of the time in the days before World War I.

While the unit was based in Harlem, it eventually expanded to include Black Americans from across the country after the United States entered World War I in 1917.

When the Soldiers left for France in 1917, they got a new regimental number. They were denied combat duty with the American Army, but fought with the French Army.

The 369th Infantry Soldiers served in combat for 191 days, took 1,400 casualties, earned 171 Croix de Guerre medals --France’s highest award for valor-- and were the first Americans to march into Germany at the war’s end. One Hellfighter - Sergeant Henry Johnson - was dubbed the Black Death by the US media for his exploits in combat.

While racism of the day kept Johnson from US Army valor awards he clearly deserved, in 1996 he was awarded the Purple Heart with one oak leaf cluster by President Bill Clinton; in 2003 the Army awarded Johnson the Distinguished Service Cross, and in 2015, that award was upgraded to the Medal of Honor at a White House ceremony presided over by President Barack Obama

When they came home in 1919, 3,000 Hellfighters marched up New York’s Fifth Avenue, cheered on by hundreds of thousands. But despite their fame, veterans of the 369th faced prejudice as they went about their lives. Few enjoyed to freedom they traveled to Europe and fought and bleed for, but they did plant the idea in many of their white countrymen that segregation was unjust and wrong; they were one of several groups cited when the Civil Rights Act was eventually signed into law in 1964.

As Staff Sergeant Jodian Beckford,  a member of the 369th Sustainment Brigade’s 1501st Field Feeding Company who attended the ceremony, said, the Gold Medal ceremony was particularly poignant because “they were being embraced not by families only, but America as a whole… They were fighting for more than just for the U.S. They were fighting for themselves, to be a part of America.” Today, they truly are.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

And finally, about two weeks ago I read a report that back in September, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll - in an attempt to right an eight-decade wrong - promoted seven Nisei soldiers to the rank of second lieutenant. The men were all former University of Hawaii Army ROTC cadets working toward their commissions when they were expelled from the program following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The seven cadets posthumously promoted - Staff Sergeant Grover Nagaji, Sergeant Howard Urabe, Sergeant Robert Murata, Sergeant Jenhatsu Chinen, Sergeant Daniel Betsui, Private First Class Hiroichi Tomita, and Private Akio Nishikawa - were part of the 11,000 Hawaiian Nisei to join the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Each enlisted in the 100th Infantry Battalion and each was killed in action in Europe. 

“These young men wanted to serve as leaders in the US Army. They trained for it, they earned it, and they were denied the chance because of wartime prejudice. But they still put on the uniform and gave their lives in defense of the country. Today, we finally recognize them as the officers they were meant to be,” said US Representative Jill Tokuda. “This is about acknowledging the history of our Nisei veterans and honoring their sacrifice the way it should have been honored eighty years ago. I am grateful to the University of Hawaii ROTC program, the Army, and the many who supported this long-overdue recognition.”

The University of Hawaii awarded all seven men posthumous bachelor’s degrees in 2012. They were not commissioned as officers at the time of their deaths due to their earlier expulsion from the ROTC program. The Army’s decision to grant these promotions was based on documentation and research provided by the University of Hawaiʻi Army ROTC program and the review process requested by the Hawai’i Congressional Delegation. The request was supported by the University of Hawaiʻi Army ROTC program, current cadets and alumni, the U.S. Army Pacific, and the Governor of Hawaiʻi.

Representative Ed Chase said, “The awarding of these gold bars three generations later means far more than final and just achievement of the rank of Second Lieutenant. It stands as still another in a long line of testaments to the commitment of Japanese Americans willing to fight and die to preserve and protect the values of democracy and freedom for a country that had not returned their loyalty.”

While I still have a brief announcement about the next few months of the podcast, I’d say those seven promotions deserve their unit song first.

[Play 442nd UNIT SONG]

Before I end today, I just wanted to take a minute to manage expectations about the podcast for the rest of the year. First, I am still digging out from a mountain of boxes and getting the house in order, which is my priority at this time. Second,part of the reason for the move west was to get closer to family so, as we will be entering the busy end-of-year holiday season, I am taking advantage of being close to my loved ones and will be gathering with them for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year which is also going to take up plenty of time. 

I will endeavor to post as often as possible during this time but it will likely not be the weekly posts I was doing before. I hope to get back to a more regular posting schedule after the new year, but you know what they say about best laid plans…

And while I would usually end today’s episode with Taps, I am going to play Hellfighter bandmaster First Lieutenant James Reese Europe’s version of La Marseillaise. Dubbed the Martin Luther King, Jr. of music by pianist and composer Eubie Blake - Europe is one of the few Hellfighters truly embraced by the American public both before and after the war until his untimely death in 1919 at age 39. One for the few African American officers in World War I, this song, played as the 369th disembarked their transport ship in France, is credited with introducing jazz to that country.