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DR. HENRY 5. HOUCHTON REDA CARMEL CALIFORNIA April 30, 1950 Dear Dr Andersson: Your kind letter of March 15 was duly forwarded to me by the Rockefeller Foundation. It gives me deep pleasure to hear from you after many intervening years, and to learn that your int- erest in paleoanthropology is undiminished. I trust also that your health is good, and that you are as active as you desire to be. I re...
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DR. HENRY 5. HOUCHTON REDA CARMEL CALIFORNIA April 30, 1950 Dear Dr Andersson: Your kind letter of March 15 was duly forwarded to me by the Rockefeller Foundation. It gives me deep pleasure to hear from you after many intervening years, and to learn that your int- erest in paleoanthropology is undiminished. I trust also that your health is good, and that you are as active as you desire to be. I remember vividly our least meeting in Peking: we spoke of having a rendez- vous later on, either in Stockholm or in New York, when we could have a good visit together. But the war, alas, intervened and everyone's plans and hopes disintegrated. Niss Pearce, the Secretary of the China Medical Board, has sent me a copy of her let- ter to Dr Karlgren, and has asked me to supplement in any way I can the information she gave him con- cerning the Sinanthropus fossils, There is little that I can add, unhappily, except to say that the upper cave material was not packed with the paleo- lithie specimens, and as far as I know is still in the laboratories of the RUMC. Perhaps by now you will have had a letter from Dr Pei, who presumably is in Peking although almost certainly not active in the cenozoic program, Perhaps I should add a word as to just what happened to the Sinanthropus specimens. In the spring of 1941 I had a letter from Dr Wong Wen-hao, who was then eoncurrently head of the Geo- logical Survey and Minister of Commerce & Industry in Chungking. The letter came through the American Embassy pouch, and asked me to try to find a way of sending the Sinanthropus fossils to some American institution for safe-keeping for a period of years. I had no choice but to attempt what he asked, although it did not seem to me either necessary nor wise. All of the important collections of the PUMC, ineluding librery, were kept in Peking during the war and there were no losses whatever. But since the fossils be- longed to the Chinese Government I had to follow in- structions. Aecordingly I had them carefully packed in two small trunks, and in place of the originals we put a full series of casts in their place in the College vault. The trunks were given to the Command- ant of the Marine Corps, who was to take them as part of his personal baggage when the Corps was recalled to the United States. All of the Marine's stores, equipment and personal effects were piled on the
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ORbe er dock at Chinwangtao waiting to be loaded onto the transport, when Japan declared war and everything was selzed. The Sinanthropus material was never found thereafter, and the probability is tha...
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ORbe er dock at Chinwangtao waiting to be loaded onto the transport, when Japan declared war and everything was selzed. The Sinanthropus material was never found thereafter, and the probability is that when Japanese soldiers opened the trunks only to find some old black broken bones, they klecked them off the wharf. Fortunately the studies of Black, Weiden- reich and others have preserved the scientific value of these finds, and a large series of excellent casts 1s availeble, so that while the loss of the originals 18 sentimentally irrepareble, the additions to our knowledge of ancient man are permanent. You may be interested to know that the Japanese did not discover thet the material left in the veults consisted only of casts, until a Japanese paleoanthropologist came over eighteen months later from the Imperisl Univers- ity in Tokyo to continue the studies of Sinanthropus. When he found the orginZals missing there was a great uproar. I was a political prisoner at the time, held in Peking, and I thought for a while that I would be shot, but they let me off for some reason still un- known to me. With warm greetings and all good wishes, Cordisally yours,
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