"It Can't Be Helped"

At 11:19 P-m., the search and rescue unit of the Hawaiian Sea Frontier picked up the distress signal. A converted Army B17, Honolulu-bound from Kwajalein, was running out of fuel 100 miles west of Barbers Point. In the control tower on Oahu, controlmen listened to the calm voice of disaster: "Number Three Engine is out at 2,200 feet. . . . Two and Three Engines dead at 1,400 feet . . . losing altitude. ... I'd better go ahead and set down while I have two engines. . . ." There was a pause. Then, "Now ditching." At 11:46, the radio went off the air.

Minutes later the first search planes headed out. Navy and Coast Guard patrol craft steamed out of Pearl Harbor. A destroyer squadron en route from the West Coast was ordered to the scene at flank speed. Aboard the ditched B-17 was a contingent of top officers from General Douglas MacArthur's Tokyo headquarters. Among them: Political Adviser (and Ambassador) George Atcheson Jr., chairman of the Allied -Council for Japan.

Despite flares and a pinpoint, radar-controlled search pattern, rescue planes crisscrossed the area in vain all night. At 7 the next morning, a Marine fighter pilot sighted an overturned life raft. A following B-iy spotted three survivors floating in the shark-infested water. An hour later the Coast Guard cutter Hermes picked them up.

They were the only survivors. In the floating wreckage, dotted with empty Mae Wests, abandoned flight jackets and gaudy, souvenir kimonos, five bodies were recovered, a sixth sank just as the Hermes came alongside. George Atcheson was among the four passengers and crewmen still missing.

As the rescue teams pressed their search into the second night the survivors remembered what they could of the final minutes. One recalled his last words to Ambassador Atcheson as the B-17 glided closer to the tossing waves: "I'm sorry it had to end this way." Smiling a little, Atcheson had replied calmly: "Well, it can't be helped."

Denver-born George Atcheson Jr., 50, entered the State Department 27 years ago as a student interpreter at the Peiping Legation, had specialized in Far Eastern affairs ever since. As second secretary of the Nanking Embassy, he was aboard the gunboat Panay when it was bombed and sunk by the Japanese in 1937. Two years later he was recalled to Washington for a stint on State's Far Eastern desk, returned to China as embassy counselor in Chungking in 1943.

In 1945, as Charge d'Affaires in Chungking, Atcheson was charged with insubordination by his superior, Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley, because he had recommended U.S. Lend-Lease aid to the Chi nese Communists in the face of the avowed U.S. policy of helping the Nationalist Government. Atcheson along with such other Foreign Service hands as John Carter Vincent, thought and urged that the U.S. could get along with the Chinese Communists. Although he was later defended by Secretary of State Byrnes, he was called home at Hurley's request.

By the time the Hurley-burly fizzled out, Atcheson had been appointed political adviser to General MacArthur. In Tokyo he spent a hard few weeks before he overcame suspicions in MacArthur's headquarters of his political views. But career man Atcheson, like many another

U.S. citizen, had learned the impossibility of dealing with Communists. He became one of the most determined and able opponents of Soviet meddling and delay in Japan. MacArthur appointed him chairman of the Allied Council for Japan and recommended him for the rank of Ambassador. George Atcheson's major job on the day his plane crashed: pushing through a Japanese peace treaty despite Russian obstructionism.

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