Interesting. Ok, lets try and tackle this one piece-by-piece.
In the first half of the last century, the coffee barons of America were the financial equivalents of Bill Gates today. Names and Brands that still exist today- Maxwell House, Folgers, MJB, Arbuckles, Hill Bros, A&P, Jewel and even Post's (C.W Post started Post a a company producing an alternative to coffee...finally Post ended up as the massive General Foods group) all were very powerful companies, backed by powerful families, with enourmous political clout.
Brazil at this stage was producing more than half of the green beans that the American roasters and companie listed above were buying. In simple terms the Brazilians were producing more and more coffee, year by year. More coffe than they could infact sell. Since the early part of the century, the Braziian Government had been somewhat bailed out by American and European Banks through a system called "Valorization". Essentially coffee was stored and sold as the price rose (if there was crop failure). If the price dropped coffee was put into warehouse in Sao Paulo and stored. This system worked fairly well- for a while. The scheme was finally called "Coffee Retenton"...money was being borrowed based on the "theoretical" value of coffee being held. More warehouses were built. Just before the Wall Street crash 30 million (60kg) bags were in storage- 100 million new trees were beginning to produce cherries. This was more coffee thn the entire world consumed during 1 calendar year.
Then 2 weeks before the October 29th crash of 1929- the Global coffee market crashed, with Sao Paulo Coffee institute, which finacially managed the huge number of bags being brought (and not sold) going broke. Things eventally got s bad that- I quote from Mark Pendergast here "in 1937 Brazil burned 17.2 million (60kg) bags of coffee when the total world consumption was ony 26.4 million bags. Only 30% of what Brazil harvested, reached the world market that year"
Now- at the time New York was the home of the Coffee Exchange. New York was also a major port; the busiest port in the US- this was before containerisation so produce was often sent in Bales- that were sent in groupage configeration stored in ship holds. These bales were off loaded in Manhattan, not Newark Port in NJ where all major contaner traffic lands in NY today. For sure, at the time, a great deal of coffee was coming into NYC- but I suspect with the huge political clout ofthe families and brands I listed above...most of this coffee would of course be green (and probably purchased very cheaply!)
So I guess in theory- yes it is possible that the person in question could have been involved in off loading Bales of coffee in Port New York in the 1930's. Whether this could have been roasted coffee (from Brazil) is more of a difficult one to confirm. Hill Bros (on the West Coast) invented vacum packing in 1900. By the 1930's packaging was both very sophisticated for marketing and also designed to keep coffee fresh. I think roasted coffee arriving in sacks/bales without being prepacked, would be unlikely. Roasting and sending coffee from Brazil using tramp steamers would have likely have taken weeks- no direct sailings back then, steamers ff loaded-loaded cargo at many ports along the way. Also without decent protection, the roasted coffee would have become tainted by other cargo, salt spray, coal/coking smoke and of course oxyidization. And apart from these, and the political considerations- the financial reasons for bringing in greens over roasted means it seems very unlikely a businessman would follow this path.
Finally, of course, this is my views on the coffee trading of the past. I was not there - no where near being born as my parents were kids themselves. I do know that the Brazilian government at the time did do a lot of barter trade with companies and governments all around the world. There must have been some NY or eastern seaboard companies that could have done barter deals for roasted coffee. If this was the case, it is possible that roasted coffee was unloaded (although the smell may not have been as pleasant as it could have been if the coffee ws fresh).
