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Show I I'Pj tliL r .,1 i, 3 Private Papers of a Cub Reporter: The scene Is Honolulu, and the dialogue begins: "Listen!" The increasing roar sounded like the surging swell of voices from a distant stadium. "Planes," he said. "Our patrol pa-trol . . ." He shook his head. "Too many." In the distance there were sharp explosions like vicious blasts of thunder. They rolled and cracked and echoed. A blinding, jagged sheet of yellow flame rose and spread. ". . . Well, it's come at last . . ." ". . . What happened, sir? Was it bad?" "Very bad. They caught us flat-footed. flat-footed. Approached very high. Twenty, maybe thirty thousand feet . . . The anti-aircraft boys held up their fire . . ." "... They knew just where to strike and what to strike with." "They hit us with incendiaries the first time over . . . They caught the hangars at Hickam . . . and everi went out of their way to set fire to Rogers Airport buildings and the barracks." ". . . The enemy gave us three blasts . . . It'll be days before we can patch up." ", . . Casualties heavy, sir?" ". . . They scored a direct hit on Schofield Barracks." ". . . Clipper service, of course, has been suspended. The Japs are reputed fond of shooting down unarmed un-armed transport planes." s ... It was Japan that the United States was at war with. "And Pearl Harbor, sir?" - "A mess . . . They scored direct hits on the foundries and on the pumping plant near the drydock. They burned the air station hangars . . . The hospital's all right, and they didn't hit any of the fuel oil tanks . . ." "Pearl Harbor was a cinch . . . All they had to do was follow the coast line and blast away . . ." "But how could they get several hundred planes here?" "God knows. Japan . . . wouldn't have enough aircraft carriers . . . My guess is that they got a couple of carriers through by traveling away from the regular shipping lanes. That ... put 100 to 150 little shipboard fighters in striking distance dis-tance . . ." "The raid occurred at eleven forty-two ..." The bombing of trie Island of Oahu had occurred at 11:42 . . . The President of the United States announced by radio to the country that America was at war with . . . Japan, whose fleets, even then, were, headed eastward . . . "Our country has known some black days, but none so black as this one. God help us all!" The above are excerpts from "Lightning in the Night," by Fred Allhoff, which appeared in Liberty Magazine. Sept. 7. 1940. Buy Defense Bonds When Nazi agent Geo. S. Viereck was recently indicted in Washington Washing-ton he was temporarily taken to the police station. When he registered there he was asked (among other queries) to give personal references. He gave the names of two individuals individ-uals high up in our gov't. One is high in the State Dep't the other is a U. S. Ambassador . . . Anyone consulting the Washington (DC) police po-lice records can obtain these names. Buy Defense Bonds Letters from the movie colony these days all-read as though everybody every-body out there had their options dropped . . . Errol Flynn got his final American citizenship papers last week . . . Dorothy Di Frasso allegedly won. $25,000 from ex-King Carol of Rumania in a gin rummy orgy in Mexico . . . Irving Berlin's Ber-lin's latest song is called "Pearl Harbor" . . . Willis Hunt, who just got his divorce from Carol Lan-dis. Lan-dis. will soon marry Elise Curtis. He leaves soon to fly for the R.A.F. . . . Jimmy Durante says the Japs are sure to wind up on their Tokyos ... A tire firm uses this honey of a slogan: VDon't be a skidiot!" . . . America is like this: Mario Gallo, manager of the San Carlo Opera company, was married here last week to Hizi Koy Ke, Japanese soprano. so-prano. Buy Defense Bonds Terrific feud. going on in the U. S. Supreme court. Justices Douglas, Murphy, Black and Frankfurter are the principals involved . . . San Francisco newspaper man Paul Smith (a Lieut. Comdr. in Navy Public Relations), has received the Green Light from Sec'y Knox . . . To drop the traditional silence and keep the public informed. Mr. Knox feels that unlike other wars, this is "a people's war" and they should " know all. etc. Buy Defense Bonds Jimmy Dorsey says the Jap Emperor Em-peror should be called: "Hirohito-Below-The-Belto" . . . Because they've been caught accepting adverts ad-verts from shows containing smut and double entendre, the Christian Science Monitor will no longer take play ads in Boston until they've first studied the manuscript ... If you don't have to use the long distance phone (for mush, frinstance) please don't! Gov't agencies and officials are incessantly on them and unless yours is life and death stuff you are urged to use the mails. |