exposure and saved many lives as a result. He also preserved many tissue samples from autopsied victims at Bari. After World War II, these samples would result in the development of an early form of chemotherapy based on mustard, Mustine. On the orders of Allied leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Eisenhower, records were destroyed and the whole affair was kept secret for many years after the war. The U.S. records of the attack were declassified in 1959, but the episode remained obscure until 1967, when writer Glenn B. Infield exposed the story in his book Disaster at Bari. Additionally, there is considerable dispute as to the exact number of fatalities. In one account: "[S]ixty-nine deaths were attributed in whole or in part to the mustard gas, most of them American merchant seamen". Others put the count as high as "more than one thousand Allied servicemen and more than one thousand Italian civilians". Part of the confusion and controversy derives from the fact that the German attack, which became nicknamed "The Little Pearl Harbor" after the Japanese air attack on the American naval base in Hawaii, was highly destructive in itself, apart from the effects of the gas. Attribution of the causes of death to the gas, as distinct from the direct effects of the German attack, has proved far from easy. The affair is the subject of two books: the aforementioned Disaster at Bari, by Glenn B. Infield, and Nightmare in Bari: The World War II Liberty Ship Poison Gas Disaster and Coverup, by Gerald Reminick. In 1988 through the efforts of Nick T. Spark, U.S. Senators Dennis DeConcini and Bill Bradley, Dr. Stewart Alexander received recognition from the Surgeon General of the United States Army for his actions during the Bari disaster. Charles Henderson explosion The port of Bari was again struck by disaster on 9 April 1945 when the Liberty ship Charles Henderson exploded in the harbour while offloading 2000 tons of aerial bombs (half of that amount had been offloaded when the explosion occurred). Three hundred and sixty people were killed and 1730 were wounded. The harbour was again rendered nonoperational, this time for a month. Geography Bari is the largest urban and metro area on the Adriatic. It is located in Southern Italy, at a more northerly latitude than Naples, further south than Rome. Climate Bari has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa) with mild