WAR, WASPS & ALL THAT JAZZ

Sunday, December 7, 1941 is just another workday for me.  Cold, clear, sunny, not a cloud in the sky.  I arrive in the office, as I usually do, around nine A.M.  One of my duties every morning is to tear off all the copy that comes over the teletype machines throughout the night and distribute the individual stories to the proper writer or researcher.  This chore usually takes the better part of one hour to complete.  Since it is Sunday, I mistakenly assume that there will be no important stories breaking and pay no more attention to the machines in the teletype room.  I go to lunch with my good friend Bob Green around noon.

After a rather lengthy lunch at our favorite local pub, I return to the aforementioned teletype room, and immediately sense that something is wrong.  It takes me a while to ascertain what is disturbing me.  It is the silence.  There are six machines in the tiny soundproofed room.  Four are Associated Press Wires and the remaining two are CBS Wires.  Except for the humming of the motors that drives the machines, all is quiet.  Always at least one of these machines would be chattering away and usually all six at the same time.  Suddenly all the machines start chattering with their bells clanging.  They seem particularly alive, as if they have something important to say, but are too nervous to say it.

The Associated Press “A Wire”, which normally carries what the Associated Press Editor considers to be the most important stories, keeps clanging its bell and printing a series of “flashes” but no message.  In what seems an eternity, I wait.  Somewhere I had read that the A.P. teletype machines had used the word “Flash” only twice in their history.  I feel a nervous twinge that something important is about to break.  I remain still.  Eventually the message comes:  “Japs invade Pearl Harbor ------.More Koming [sic].”

Not having the slightest notion where Pearl Harbor is, but realizing that the  “A Wire” has flashed, I tear the copy off the machine and begin running around the twenty-ninth floor, Time Magazine’s editorial floor in the old Time & Life Building, in search of a writer.  Time editorial writers are never easy to find on a Sunday afternoon, but fortunately I am able to locate the then Far Eastern Correspondent, Theodore White, sitting at his desk.  White glances at the copy and mutters, “So the yellow bastards finally did it, eh?”

From Chapter "Misadventures at Sea"

Her name is the S.S. Cape Henlopen. She is to be our "Love Boat" for some sixty-three days from Newport News, Virginia down the Atlantic Coast through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific.

She is a cranky old banana boat, commandeered from the United Fruit Line and not at all happy with her new cargo.  The cargo is us.  Thousands of us.  Enough of us so that the chow line never ends.  It runs twenty four hours a day, every day.  

We board the "Love Boat" convinced we are going to the European theater.  Our duffel bags are loaded with winter clothing, our officers have told us we are going to Europe, and we are leaving from the East Coast.  Shortly after boarding, however, our duffel bags are taken away from us and new ones issued with warm weather equipment.  Lo and behold, we are destined for the Pacific.