Photo courtesy of Nicholas Daniloff.
USAT MERRITT 1923 ... On July 1, 1923, the army transport ship USAT Merritt out of Manila, Philippines, docked at Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. It carried five hundred and twenty-six Russia "boat people" survivors of some seven thousand who had fled Vladivostok eight months previously as victorious Communist forces advanced on the last out post of resistance to the Bolshevik revolution.
Monday, October 17, 2016
July 1, 1923
On July 1, 1923, a special group of refugees on the American transport U.S.A.T. Merritt arrived at San Francisco. These 526 Russian men, women, and children had been part of a flotilla of some twenty Russian vessels, under the command of Rear Admiral Yuri Stark, which left Vladivostok in October 1922 when the city fell to the Bolsheviks. After a harrowing journey plagued by inhospitable governments, poor shipboard conditions, and typhoons which sank two of the not-very-seaworthy vessels and their passengers; a remnant of the original 7,000 refugees managed to make it to Manila in the Philippine Islands, where the American government had guaranteed asylum. Consultation by Governor General Leonard Wood with President Harding and the Secretaries of War and Labor enabled the homeless and stateless Russians to come to the United States under the terms of the recently enacted quota law. The American Red Cross helped to finance the trip.
Photo courtesy of Nicholas Daniloff.
Photo courtesy of Nicholas Daniloff.
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