Pan Am's clipper Sam Houston landed at 6:10 p.m. at Florida's Homestead Air Force Base. A dozen ambulances waited near by. Dr. Lee C. Watkins, chief of the U.S. Quarantine Station in Miami, ran up the ramp, peered in at the plane's 107 passengers, and groaned: "My God, yellow jaundice—all of them." Then he realized that the lights bathing the area made everyone appear a sickly yellow. The passengers filed stiffly out of the aircraft, then melted in the laughing, tearful, incredulous realization of freedom. Cried Carlos Leon, the first off: "I just don't believe I'm alive."
The Sam Houston carried the first of the 1,113 survivors of Brigade 2506, the forlorn-hope band of Cuban exiles who suffered catastrophe at the Bay of Pigs. For their release, the U.S. had agreed to pay Fidel Castro a ransom of $53 million in drugs, medical equipment and other goodies (see following story). As the planes bringing back the prisoners prepared to take off from Havana's San Antonio airport, Castro delayed their departure by demanding to inspect the first shipment of drugs. Then he watched a demonstration of Soviet MIGs in the air space required for the prisoners'-take-off. At last, beaming like a black-bearded Santa Claus, Castro waved the prisoners toward freedom. One pilot got a vicarious sort of revenge: he gunned his plane in such a way that Fidel's cap almost flew off in the prop wash.
"These Are My Sons." On their flight to the U.S., the prisoners were briefed about what they should and should not say after their arrival in Florida; they were particularly instructed to stay silent about the last-minute U.S. refusal to provide expected air cover over the Bay of Pigs. Awaiting them when they arrived was Jose Miro Cardona, president of the Cuban Revolutionary Council. Cried Miro: "All these are my sons. All my sons." In fact, his blood son, Jose ("Pepito") Miro Torra, arrived on the final plane.
Miro was one of the few Cubans permitted to meet the planes. Most of the prisoners' relatives had spent the day in Miami's Dinner Key Auditorium, about 30 miles from Homestead. They gathered, about 10,000 of them, in a joyous mood. They waited and waited. Almost twelve hours passed while Castro stalled. Even after landing at Homestead, the ex-prisoners were kept from their kinfolk while being fitted for fresh khakis and given a roast beef dinner.
"He Is My Son." In the auditorium, a U.S. Army honor guard formed a double file on the stage. One after another, the members of Brigade 2506 marched between the files. In the audience, faces contorted as mothers and wives, fathers and brothers saw their loved ones. Cubans are a passionate people—passionate in their hopes and their hungers, in their politics, their patriotism and their personal relationships. They stood tensely at attention for The Star-Spangled Banner —and then came delirium, as prisoners and families rushed together in a frenzy of love. One elderly woman said it for all. "See," she cried as she clung to a young man. "He is my son. He is my son, and I am embracing and kissing him."