Did Japan really offer Portugal US$100 million for Macau in 1935?
The Portuguese colony’s potential as a hub for transpacific flights came to light in the 1930s – as did a mystery bid to buy it outright
In the 1930s, Western newspapers were in the habit of portraying Macau as a haven of pirates, scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells, gambling the days away and smoking opium by night. Bestselling French writer of the interwar years Maurice Dekobra had a hit with his 1938 novel, Macao, enfer du jeu (Macao, Gambling Hell), which became an equally sensationalist film starring Erich von Stroheim, Parisian starlet of the day Mireille Balin and the first Japanese actor to conquer both Hollywood and European cinema, Sessue Hayakawa.
Lacking Peking’s bohemianism, Shanghai’s modernity or Hong Kong’s dynamism, Macau sat in the South China Sea, fanning itself in the heat, a decaying relic of the diminished Portuguese empire. The economy was hurting thanks to the British Royal Navy’s suppression of piracy and smuggling. Officially, it was good news, but not for Macau’s illicit cash flows, as offenders were arrested, beheaded or stayed away. And until-then reliable opium sales, a colonial government monopoly fuelling Lisbon’s treasury, were no longer yielding the same gains.
Previously, concessions for the game of fan-tan had brought in US$5,000 a day for the Portuguese administration – equivalent to US$100,000 a day, or US$35 million a year, in modern money – peanuts by the standards of today’s casino economy, but a large chunk of the Portuguese administration’s budget at the time. Worried that Macau would become a major drain on Portugal’s far-from-fecund coffers, Lisbon ordered officials in its southern China colony to dream up new revenue streams, which led to some serious head scratching in the enclave’s finance ministry.
Hong Kong had long eclipsed the Portuguese colony as a trading port. Traditional local industries of fishing, firecrackers and incense, as well as tea and tobacco processing, were all small scale. Options for new industries were also limited by a population of fewer than 200,000. But there was one avenue that didn’t require a large workforce or much local investment, and that would not only be lucrative for Macau and Lisbon, but also put the colony on the map as an important hub: transpacific flights.
New York-based Pan American Airways was desperate to start a Pacific Clipper service from the United States west coast to south China, via its seaplane base on Oahu, Hawaii, and Manila, in the Philippines. The now-defunct aircraft company Glenn L. Martin, based in Baltimore, had built three Martin M-130 flying boats, which were named the Hawaii Clipper, the Philippines Clipper and the China Clipper after the 19th century sailing ships that raced across the Pacific taking tea to North America. Debuting in 1934, the M-130 was an all-metal aircraft with streamlined aerodynamics and engines powerful enough to fly passengers and cargo from the US to China. Crucially, the M-130 could take off and land on water.
The US Post Office (USPO) was also determined to initiate a transpacific crossing, from San Francisco via Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines to China. The post office was already working with Pan Am and had awarded the airline its airmail delivery contract, and the two had begun air services to New Zealand and Australia via American Samoa. They hoped postal services would grow into additional freight revenue streams, and then paying passengers.
