This day, 56 years ago, a remarkable photograph was taken. The photographer was a man who’d spent time in Nanjing as a 4 year old as war raged. The image came to be known as “Earthrise”; it kicked started the environmental movement.
The snapping of that first pic to show our entire world from afar in glorious technicolour also coincided with an important moment in Chinese history; the opening of the Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing. A bridge on one hand, a spacecraft on the other; united by two nations and a world war.
Responsible for the photo was Willian Anders, one of the three astronauts aboard Apollo 8, the first crewed spaceship to make a voyage around the moon. The shutter on Anders’ modified Hasselblad camera snapped open and closed at 15:40 UST on 24 December, 1968, and history was made.
But what was young William doing in Nanjing that would later lead him to take that photo as a 35-year old pioneer of the American space program?
Not faraway, the US Navy’s Yangtze River Patrol was on guard along the River to protect Western interests after attacks on American individuals and Chinese working for US firms.
Built in Shanghai and launched in 1927, the USS Panay had William’s father, Lt. Arthur Anders, for Executive Officer. But then, as the crew and civilians aboard watched the sacking of Nanjing under a bright red sky on 12 December, 1937, the Panay was dive bombed by Japanese aircraft. Three men died in the attack, while 43 sailors and five civilians were wounded.
Historians will argue that this should have brought America in to the War, rather than it waiting to be attacked again at Pearl Harbour 4 years later. For the Anders family, however, it was the moment William’s father was hit in the throat by shrapnel. As KSL News Radio reveals, he was left unable to speak and gave the order to abandon ship by writing in pencil on blood-stained paper.
The Panay quickly sank into the Yangtze’s depths and details of the wreck have never been forthcoming, but this publication’s research leads it to believe the ship’s location to be between the islet of Quan Zhou and the Yangtze’s northern bank, north of Jiangxin Zhou and southwest of that Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. The River at this point runs up to 50 metres deep.
That same day the Nanking Safety Zone was established, with young William Anders likely one of the first to be brought under its protection, before he and his mother fled by train to Guangzhou. After Hell had come and gone, the boy would go on to graduate from the US Naval Academy. He became a pilot, an astronaut and once again a part of history with the capturing of Earthrise.
Anders then spoke on the photograph’s 50th anniversary, saying, “We set out to explore the moon and instead discovered the Earth”.
For the photography enthusiasts interested in the details of Earthrise, NASA makes clear that, “The horizon, about 570 kilometres from the spacecraft, is near the eastern limb of the moon as viewed from Earth. Width of the view at the horizon is about 150 kilometres. On Earth… the sunset terminator crosses Africa”.
