Combat· Banana Wars
Dominican Republic 1903
An early protective landing, a precursor to the great occupation more than a decade later.
In the spring of 1903, during one of the chronic bouts of Dominican political instability, Marines and sailors from the USS Yankee and other American warships landed at Santo Domingo and Puerto Plata to protect American lives and interests amid the fighting between rival factions. The landings were brief and protective, but not bloodless: at Santo Domingo on 1 April a seaman of the Yankee was killed by insurgents, the one American death of the affair. The Marines withdrew once the immediate danger passed. The 1903 landing was a small foretaste of the far larger intervention to come: thirteen years later, the United States would occupy the whole country and hold it for eight years. This early deployment was one of the recurring brief interventions by which American forces repeatedly touched the troubled republic before the full occupation of 1916.
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Record no. 512