The Puerto Ricans sat stolidly on the cramped bucket seats as the potbellied plane rolled down the San Juan strip and took off into the twilight. There were 62 of them, crowded into a converted C46 Curtiss Commando, on the way to the mainland for seasonal work on sugar beet farms in Michigan. Three and a half hours out, an engine sputtered and died. At 10:06 p.m. Pilot Joseph Halsey radioed laconically: "It looks as if I'm going into the drink." Steward Hector Medina, a Puerto Rican, tried hastily to explain about the...
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