Rambling Reporter, Ernie Pyle (1941-42)

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 15, 1941)

Ernie’s on the road now, his column resumes soon

Rambling Reporter starts journeys again after long leave of absence due to wife’s illness

Here is good news for Pittsburgh Press readers who have been phoning and writing to ask when Ernie Pyle would be resuming his column.

The Roving Reporter is back on the road again. His wife is on the mend.

A few months ago, Ernie was in Edmonton, Alberta, ready to fly to Alaska via the new stepping-stone airports carved out of the Western Canadian wilderness. But word came that Mrs. Pyle had suffered a sudden and severe illness, so he flew to her bedside at Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Weeks later, when Mrs. Pyle was up and around, he made arrangements to go to the Orient – to Honolulu, Manila, Hong Kong, Chungking, over the Burma Road and down to Singapore, and on to Java and Australia and New Zealand.

But at the last minute the government cancelled the bookings of several Clipper passengers, including Ernie, to make room for some materials urgently needed in the Far East. That particular Clipper landed in Hawaii about the time the Japanese bombardment of Pearl Harbor was ending, and has now returned to the West Coast.

Today Ernie is in San Francisco. His first column will appear in a day or two in The Pittsburgh Press.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 16, 1941)

Ernie Pyle’s column starts again Friday!

In a world full to overflowing with grim and momentous events, we are glad to welcome back to this newspaper a columnist who is concerned more often than not with “the little things of life” – Ernie Pyle, the Roving Reporter.

Ernie isn’t all sweetness and light, by any means, as is well known to those who followed his memorable dispatches from London during the Battle of Britain. But his is the human touch.

Today he is in San Francisco. His experiences in the air raids and blackouts of London give him a splendid background for writing about the civil-defense preparations on the West Coast.

Ernie has been out of the paper for several months, because of his wife’s illness. She is convalescing now, and Ernie has hit the road again – a road that has taken him to England and Scotland, through Mexico and Central and South America, to Hawaii, to Alaska and the Bering Sea, through Canada, and into each of our own 48 states.

His first column will appear Friday in The Press – exclusively!

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 19, 1941)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SAN FRANCISCO – The long rest is over. All long rests are over, for everybody. A new vitality is abroad in our land, and even those of us who are wan and frail sense in ourselves an overpowering impulsion to flail and strike around, doing something.

For four months this column and its author have lain in hibernation. In a way it was a sweet repose, and we discovered that it is pleasant not to work or worry or feel the surge of worldly things. But war changes all these feelings. It makes a restlessness, and an eagerness to be up and about. Hence this column, a month ahead of its planned date, comes trumpeting back to life.

We are under no illusion that there is anything this space can contribute to the great force that America now must have. But we do know that the faintest of us must be active now, even if only for ourselves. It is impossible for hands or minds to lie in easy composure on days like these. Even mine must scramble anxiously back to work. For me, as for millions of others, things did not turn out as they had been planned.

Some six weeks ago That Girl grew definitely better (I will tell you about her in a later column), and I knew that sooner or later I must be on my way. We laid out an itinerary.

We decided upon a winter roaming around the Orient – the Philippines, Hongkong, Chungking, the Burma Road, Rangoon, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies.

All arrangements were made. The red tape was vanquished. Out came the old passport, and on its traveled pages there went more ink of many colors.

The Army takes his seat

Final things were done at home. Bags packed. Money drawn. Vaccination certificates looked up. Letters written. Bookings made. Priorities for travel confirmed.

I was booked to leave San Francisco for Manila on the Clipper of December 2 – the week before the new war came. But at the last minute my seat was taken away by the Army, to make room for supplies urgently needed in the Far East.

Then I found passage to Honolulu by boat, expecting to catch a later Clipper there. But once again the Army parried my thrust. It commandeered the entire boat.

As a last resort, I was arranging on a Saturday to cross the Pacific by bomber. And then came, next day, that shocking Sunday at Pearl Harbor.

Automatically everything was off. I was still in Albuquerque at that time. All that Sunday was a daze. The news seemed too horrible. Albuquerque took it hard – for in the Philippines there are 2,000 New Mexico boys. The jitters began to take hold of people.

Monday was just the same. I don’t remember at all what I did on Monday. I only remember that all that day people were talking, talking, talking, and that nobody knew what he was saying or what he was thinking.

And just after dark came the then frightful rumor that two Japanese carriers were off San Francisco, and that the entire coast was to be blacked out.

That was enough for me. It was definitely some place to go, something you could tie your emotions to. So I went to the phone and asked how soon I could get a plane. They said at 5 the next morning.

Even the flight was warlike. When we left Albuquerque before dawn, we had clearance from the Army only as far as Dagget, Cal. We were over Dagget by 8 a.m. and still no clearance. So we waited up there over the bare Mojave Desert, waited in gigantic circlings in the air until word did come.

Then they cleared us to Palmdale, and again over Palmdale we circled and circled, waiting on the war. Finally they ordered us on, but we did not land at the great air terminal at Burbank. No, we went down in a pasture-like place many miles away and they took us on in by bus. The Army was running things now.

There were gulls in Dover, too

Late that afternoon we did get to San Francisco. The sun was shining, and I’ll always remember the thousands of seagulls sitting alongside the runway as we landed. I remember the gulls off Dover, too, in England.

There were two odd little coincidences for me in this arrival in bomb-expectant San Francisco. For one thing it was exactly a year, to the day, from my arrival in London. For another, San Francisco did have an alarm and a blackout that night, and I slept serenely through it, just as I had slept through my first real air raid on my first night in London. A man with a conscience as clear as that ought to be put in jail on suspicion.

So now we are in San Francisco – looking with deep curiosity into the hours ahead. Nothing has happened here yet, but one is an ostrich to declare that nothing ever will. We shall wait a little while and see.

San Francisco is exciting these days. For there is suspense here, and wonderment of what the night will bring, and a feeling of drastic urgency. Several times I’ve heard these words, said not in braggadocio, but more in a fateful resignation:

“Well, if it comes it’ll be bad here, but I guess we can take it, too.”

Yes, I guess we can.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 20, 1941)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SAN FRANCISCO – To the people of San Francisco the blackout is variously frightening, grim, exciting or a nuisance. To me it is something warm and tingling, as from an old book of good memories.

All last winter I lived in the darkness of England. I didn’t mind it – in fact, I liked it. But in no stretch of the imagination did I ever then picture myself walking the streets of one of our own American cities in aboriginal darkness – blindfolded by Nature and learning again to move by the outstretched feeling tips of my toes. But here it is.

We were at the home of friends in the Pacific Heights section when the sirens sounded for my first American blackout. It was early in the evening. We had not yet eaten. San Francisco had had several previous blackouts, but people still were only learning what to do and how to act under peril.

We turned our electric switches and then watched from the window as the light of this lovely, hilly city gradually – and it seemed so awfully reluctantly – went out. Then we threw a pitcher of water on the burning fireplace, got our shielded flashlights, and went outdoors to let the night take us in. We felt our way up into a little park, from where we could look down over the city. All around us there was nothing now but Nature’s own night.

City is serious now

I had never before seen on this certain hill from where we watched. I kept complaining and asking if we couldn’t get to a higher place, where we could look down on the city. And my friends assured me that we WERE looking down on the city. It was incredible.

In the darkness of the grassy park, we bumped into a man with a dog. The dog kept rubbing against my knee, and I reached down and petted it.

“What kind is it?” I asked, for I couldn’t see the dog I was petting. “A young Airdale,” he said. And then he said something that really described the spirit of San Francisco that night. He said:

“I ran up here right after the first alarm. There were still lights all over town. And all over town I could hear people shouting ‘Turn out those lights!’ Hundreds of voices in every direction were shouting it. It was like an angry growl washing over the city.”

And so it was. We heard that angry growl all through the hours that we walked the streets. San Francisco is serious now. The people aren’t making-believe any more.

The greatest difference between San Francisco and Londen in blackout is that all traffic stops here. Only police cars and ambulances, with lights out, dare move. The streets might be dusty remnants of a city dead and uninhabited for a hundred years.

Another difference is that in London there is some faint light on the streets, while here there is none. Over there autos move with one very dim and hooded headlight. Vague little oases of light tinge the street corners, from heavily hooded street lights.

Of course the London blackout is permanent, from dusk till dawn. But here, and in other coast cities, the blackout goes on only during the actual danger periods of the alert.

San Franciscans still have much to learn in the ways and habits of the blackout, I was amused at the fervor of some of the citizens. One of our party made a tent of his coat and lit a cigarette. And several times, as we walked along, people angrily told him to put it out.

Eat in the darkness

Actually, it’s all right to carry a cigarette. In London you dare not light one on the street. But if you light it inside, and then go out, it’s even advisable to carry a cigarette. Its glowing end serves as a tiny torch and keeps people from running into you. And a burning cigarette end cannot be seen from a plane.

To my chagrin, these neophyte San Franciscans seemed to get about in the dark just as well as I did. We walked for an hour and a half, but none of our party stumbled or fell. There were two little girls of 13 with us, and they laughed and enjoyed it all.

When we got home, we experienced one thing that I never knew in England – darkness inside a house. Few people here have had time to put up blackout curtains, so they dare not turn on a light in a room with a window.

So our host, by a dim flashlight, put the fried chicken on the plates and put the plates into the laps of each individual guest. Such fritter things as salad, vegetables, knives and forks were left in the kitchen.

We all ate with our hands. We couldn’t even see the chicken – just had to feel what piece it was and then hunt where to bite. It was swell. Made us feel vital or something.

I think London would have been proud of San Francisco in its blackout. I know I was.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 22, 1941)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SAN FRANCISCO – The war and that first Japanese plane scare caught San Francisco with its pants down.

But now that the first jitters are over San Francisco is pulling its pants on fast.

At first there was a terrible confusion of mind all over town. Some people were scared stiff; some refused to believe there was any danger at all; the majority didn’t even know what they thought.

But since then, the public mind has settled down, the people in charge have fired up their boilers, and the business of creating a system whereby San Francisco will care for itself if the bombers come is well under way.

This city began studying its civil defense last spring. By August it had formulated an all-inclusive plan, and had it printed in booklet form. People tell me it is one of the best plans in the country.

But it was just a paper plan, and nothing more. No new fire equipment was bought, no uniforms or tools for air raid wardens were ordered, no shelter sites were picked. It was just like a guy, with a sure-fire scheme for making a million dollars, who sits around a hash-house talking about it instead of going out and making it.

They put out a call for volunteers for civil defense in November, but only 3,000 registered, when actually 100,000 will be needed. There was apathy everywhere. San Franciscans just weren’t interested.

42,000 sign up in first week

All that has changed. There is action everywhere. Within a week after the war started, 40,000 people had signed up for civil defense.

Even if the raiders should come before this new defense organization is all hung together and running smoothly, it wouldn’t be such a debacle as it might have been.

For the Red Cross has not been asleep. It has its whole organization trained and equipped and spotted all over the city. They say that, if the bombers had come that first night, the Red Cross and medical set-ups could have handled 10,000 casualties.

The slow start in civil defense here just seems to be an old English-speaking trait. England was and is magnificent in her civil defense, but she was just about as slow as San Francisco to get started.

For example, London had been bombed constantly for four months before the great “fire night” of last December 29. Yet, despite those months of experience and warning, the British weren’t ready for an all-out fire raid, and if the weather hadn’t turned bad that night the Germans might have burned London down.

But you learn fast under direct peril, and before the winter was over old British grandmas and tiny British children were putting out incendiaries as casually and unheroically as though they were blowing out matches.

They think bombs will come

The first two nights of blackout here, most people were convinced that Japanese planes actually were over the city. But by the time the third blackout came along, six days after the war began, people began figuring this way – well, if there were Japanese planes, why hasn’t the Navy found the carrier and sunk it by this time?

So now many people believe there are no Japanese planes around, and that there never were any. The public agrees that the Army did a wise thing in making the scare real at first, and in taking no chances.

Most San Franciscans are thoroughly convinced, however, that the Japanese bombers will come sooner or later, and so they’re going about their civil defense preparations with the greatest seriousness.

The blackout regulations are plenty strict. They forbid any private vehicle to move after the sirens sound. They forbid the showing of any light whatever, even cigarettes or flashlights. Violators can get up to six months in jail and a $500 fine. (In England, as I told you yesterday, it’s all right to smoke cigarettes on the street and to use dim flashlights, pointed downward.)

It won’t take long for blackouts to be running smoothly here. Already I can sense how naturally and easily people are falling into the new blackout life. They’ll soon be able to live in it, just as Londoners do. And from what I’ve seen of them, I think they will take actual bombings in just the same stoic way the British have.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 23, 1941)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco is gradually taking on the outward signs of a city at war.

When I arrived, the city looked the same as usual. I rode in from the airport with a man who lives here and had been away for a week. “Why,” he said with surprise, “it looks just like it did when I left.”

But day by day things are changing. The warlike effect isn’t great yet, but there are touches here and there.

There are piles of sand on the streets, and you see buckets of sand in apartment houses and public buildings. Permanent air-raid sirens are being installed. Bars and other public places are blacking out their windows. Hundreds of Neon signs have been turned off for the duration, and the city has lost some of its Christmas-tree color.

So far, only one building in town has been sandbagged. That is the telephone building. It probably was done at the Army’s request. Two helmeted sentries stand guard.

The sandbags are stacked in a pyramid-like slope clear up to the second story. Whoever supervised the job must have visited England, for it has been done well. And as soon as the bags were in place, carpenters built a board framework over them, to prevent weathering.

That is one thing that often makes London look ratty. In a damp climate the bags will weather and fall apart in less than six months. The sand dribbles cut and gives a moth-eaten effect. The English have boxed in many of their sandbagged places.

War hits Christmas shopping

Typical war placards are beginning to spring up. You see the famous “Open for Business as Usual” sign that became so popular in England.

When I first saw these signs here I thought, “Aren’t they a little premature? There haven’t been any bombs yet.” Then I discovered that the signs had been up for some time, and they don’t mean business as usual despite the bombers. They mean business as usual despite the strike.

A hotel and restaurant strike has been going on here for months. The hotels are operating anyway, and that’s what the signs mean. When the bombing do come they don’t have to get new signs.

In Chinatown all the stores left open have signs saying, “This Is a Chinese Store.”

And the discovery that knocked me cold is that about two-thirds of the stores in Chinatown are closed and padlocked by the Government – because they were owned by Japanese!

The opening of war hit Christmas shopping an awful smack. People apparently were afraid to venture from their homes. But city officials and the papers have been drumming it into the public that the best way to conduct the war is to keep on going about your natural business. The first scare is over now and people are coming out again. You can hardly get through the streets.

The big stores, incidentally, have all put in new wartime hours – 8:45 to 4:45 – in order to give people time to get home before dark in case of a blackout.

Authentic ‘war face’ appears

There are no barrage balloons over San Francisco. Yet there is something else that gives vaguely the same effect. I just happened to notice it today when I looked out the window.

The day is clear and the wind is blowing. And from the flagpole of every high building in town there flies a huge American flag. The wind blows them out straight, and they make quite a startling picture against the whitish sky. I stood at my window and counted more than 40, just as I used to count barrage balloons from my window in London.

You seldom see an airplane over San Francisco now. There are no guns on rooftops, as you see in London. But on some of the grassy hilltops you can see sound detectors and guns.

There are no gas masks for the public. You don’t see many uniforms on the streets – probably because nobody is getting leave these days. Occasionally you see a soldier in a tin hat.

There are no barbed-wire entanglements here. From high office buildings, looking down on the docks, you can see a white ocean liner painted completely black in one day. And then in another day or two it has disappeared. The public has been barred from the Embarcadero, or waterfront.

There are no crisscrossed strips of paper on windows to prevent shattering, but there probably will be soon. There is one big building here whose front is entirely of glass. I’ll bet passerby in the last week have remarked 20,000 times, “Boy, what wouldn’t a bomb do to that!”

The people of San Francisco must have read pretty thoroughly about England, for they seem to know how to talk correctly, and how to put an authentic “war face” on their still peaceful city.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 24, 1941)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SAN FRANCISCO – The war blackouts in San Francisco are much stricter and much darker than England’s.

For in England some tiny bit of light is allowed – such as dim headlights, diffused and hooded street lights, and dimmed flashlights.

But here no light of any kind is permitted. It is against the law now to use even a dimmed flashlight, or to smoke a cigarette on the street. When the blackout goes on, this city goes back to the darkness of a million years ago, and it is truly as black as the inside of the well-known goat.

The justification for this strictness is that San Franciscans aren’t blacked out all night long, every night, as England is. These coastal cities are blacked out only when the warning sirens blow, and the alerts are usually not very long. Consequently it is possible just to stop everything.

In the first few days of the war, that happened two or three times a night. But now that the people have been scared into taking their blackouts seriously, and now that Jap planes are not believed around, we go for a week at a time without any blackouts at all.

But there will undoubtedly be frequent practice ones for the duration of the war, and people know they must be prepared to live in a blackout at any moment, so everybody is getting ready and trying to adjust himself to it.

Everyone wants flashlights

There has been a terrific run on flashlights. The first day I was here there were long lines of people waiting in front of the flashlight counters. Today most of the stores are sold out. And now flashlights can’t be used after all.

Material for blacking out windows is getting the big run now. But no really definite advice has been issued about how to black out windows, so people are buying a lot of stuff they’ll have to throw away as soon as they discover that light will show through it.

Getting in the groove of blackout living takes considerable cutting and trying. For example, when I arrived my favorite hotel, the Californian, had a red candle in each room, and alongside it a card of instructions (just as in London).

The card said: “Blackouts and What to Do: Turn off all lights in rooms and bathrooms. Light candle on dresser and place it on bottom of bathtub. Leave bathroom door open – enough light will be provided. Pull down all shads. Open one window slightly.”

But now the candles and cards have disappeared, for they found that even a candle in the bathtub would make a glow through the window.

Since the blackouts aren’t permanent, the hotel does not intend to put blackout curtains on the room windows. But it has blacked out the dining room and the lobby, completely.

The dining room now has heavy black satin taped over the windows. It stays there in the daytime, too. As in London’s nicer places, it is pleated and done so neatly that it is actually attractive. On the inside hang two huge Christmas wreaths.

The front lobby windows have been hung with enormously heavy black drapes, which can be pulled the second the sirens sound.

All lights ordered out

And just this afternoon a new sign, printed in black letters on yellow cardboard, appeared in each room. It said:

“Blackout Notice: All room lights to be turned out at once. Candles and flashlights prohibited in rooms. All halls, lobby and dining room lighted. When leaving your room shut all windows. Close hall door and take your key. Elevators will be in operation. Remain calm, but follow these rules. Hotel Californian is of steel and concrete construction, so remain inside of the building.”

Since the blackouts here aren’t night-long affairs, few resident owners are blacking out their entire homes. The favorite, and sensible, custom is to equip one room for complete blackout, and then just sit in that one room until the “all clear” sounds.

As in London, each person blacks out according to his own choice of material. You can use anything you want so long as it works. Here the run is on heavy drapes, black paper put on with stickum tape, black paint on the windows, and beaverboard coverings which can be set in when the sirens blow.

So far, the city has not built any public shelters, and it is doubtful if any will be built. A survey has been made of downtown basements that would make good shelters, and soon signs will go up along the street designating the spots for shoppers or workers who get caught in a raid. They have exactly the same thing in London.

Lots of owners of private residences here are thinking about family shelters. Before many weeks, I expect a good many thousand San Francisco families will have their own private dungeons to burrow into if the bombers come.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 26, 1941)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SAN FRANCISCO – It happens, in this time of national peril, that I have one good friend in San Francisco who is Japanese.

Or rather I should say American-Japanese. For although this girl looks as Japanese as Hirohito, she was born in California, has never been to Japan, has never wanted to go, doesn’t know anybody there, and speaks very poor Japanese. She is 23.

She is as loyal to America as anybody, not because she is consciously and mechanically patriotic but because, hell, this is her country the same as mine, and always has been.

So I thought it would be interesting to chat with her, and see how the thousands of perfectly loyal American-Japanese like herself are faring these days.

Well, to tell the truth, they aren’t faring so badly. In fact, I’ve been sort of proud of the general attitude of Californians toward the local Japanese. I’ve seen very little display of dangerous fanaticism.

Goes about as she always did

But to get on with our girl friend. This is what she says:

She goes about the city just as she always did. She holds her head up and walks down the street and looks people in the face, because she is American. She was downtown every day in the Christmas rush, and nobody looked mean at her or said anything nasty to her.

Two days after war was declared, she called up two or three of the big downtown stores and asked if she could still use her charge accounts. They said, “Sure.”

My girl’s husband – they have been marred just two months – owns a store here. In the first two days of war, the Treasury Department closed every store in San Francisco that even employed an alien Japanese. But our couple had no alien employees, so they stayed open.

My girl’s store is being made a first-aid station in San Francisco’s defense scheme. And she herself has registered for civil defense. She doesn’t know what they’ll assign her to, but she can roll bandages and do lots of handy little things.

My girl has no accent at all. It sometimes seems incongruous to hear such wholly American speech coming from such a wholly Japanese face. She uses such phrases as “that hysterically hectic Sunday,” and “give the devil his due.”

She says she speaks Japanese only when she has to. She says the younger people hate to visit the older ones, because then they have to speak Japanese and they don’t speak it well.

She says the Government doesn’t have to work very hard to find out who are the disloyal Japanese in California, because they are turned in by the Japanese themselves.

My girl has considerable feeling against the Chinese. Not as between the two nations and their war, but just locally. She says the local Chinese have sure traded on America’s kind feeling toward China in the last few years.

Japs prepare ‘I am American’ pins

At one school here the Chinese children all showed up one morning with badges saying “I am Chinese.” So now the Japanese, in indignation, are preparing buttons for their children saying “I am an American.”

Financially, it is going to go hard with most of the American Japanese out here. Because many Americans who hire Japanese or patronize Japanese are going to quit. Not because they especially want to, but because they’re afraid they’ll be suspected if they keep on having Japanese in their homes or are seen taking clothes to a Japanese cleaner.

Thus poverty has already, in these few short weeks, begun to work itself upon the Japanese of California. And accentuating that poverty is the terrific Japanese pride.

The night I talked with my girl, she and her husband were making a tour distributing food and clothes to friends who were hard up. She said they had to be tactful about it, and under no circumstances could they offer money. She said some of the older people were so proud they’d had to send their gifts through the mail, anonymously.

At the end I asked my girl what conflict went on inside of people like her at this moment, for although they are Americans, pure Japanese blood does run in their veins.

And she said that most of them felt only a terrible shame. “We just feel that we must apologize to everybody for our ancestral people having done this awful thing,” she says.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 27, 1941)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SAN FRANCISCO – This city is grave about the war, but like London it still must have its little war jokes, which is as it should be.

For example, I have a friend here who has registered for civil defense, and when people ask her what branch she applied for, she says she signed up to be a “victim.” She says that with everybody else in town signed up to be rescuers, there won’t be anybody left for the bombs to hit, so she has decided, like Barbara Fritchie, to stick out her neck in the name of patriotism.

Another thing – the Government in wartime is always giving you dire warnings not to repeat rumors. Of course the theory is good, but as far as I’ve been able to see the Government is wasting its breath.

It’s simply human nature to gossip. People have to talk in a tense period or they go crazy. I sort of doubt that people can be preached out of rumor-mongering. The best way, it seems to me, is to handle rumors as one hero here handled the submarine story.

On that first night’s bad scare there was a wild rumor abroad that a Jap submarine was lying right under the Golden Gate Bridge, just lying there like a porpoise, looking around.

Well, an awful lot of people really believe it. And to one of these believers our man the next morning spoke as follows:

“Well, they’ve caught the submarine.”

“Oh, wonderful,” was the answer. “I’m so relieved. How did they catch it?”

“Why they caught it in a fish net. In fact, Joe DiMaggio’s father caught it, and they’ve got the sub on exhibition down at DiMaggio’s restaurant now.”

That ended the submarine story.

And I know another funny war story although it’s actually pre-war. It seems that a few months ago the Army issued a strict prohibition against any soldier in uniform going into a house of prostitution.

So what happened? So an enterprising business man adjourned to one of the small cities down the coast, where the big Army camps are situated, bought up all the mechanics’ coveralls he could find, and proceeded to rent them to soldiers at two bits an hour to cover their uniforms. They say he is rolling in jack now.

Here’s ready-to-use victim

The editorial rooms of The San Francisco News have been equipped with blackout curtains, just as are all editorial rooms in London. The other night one of my friends on the staff of The News was caught at a party by a blackout, and it was fairly late when the “all clear” went. My friend lived clear across town, and he was due at work on an early shift, so he decided to go right to the office and sleep there the rest of the night.

He stretched out on a couch in the office of one of the editors, right beneath a window, and went to sleep with his clothes on. After daylight he was awakened by the startled shouts of a copy boy. My friend roused up, looked around, and found he was covered with broken glass.

It seems that during the night somebody had thrown a gas tank cap through the window and showered my sleeping friend with splintered window glass. And he never even woke up. He’s what I would call the ideal, housebroken, ready-to-use bomb victim.

Axis supporter loses money

But the funniest story yet, to me, was the one my little Japanese girl was telling. She’s completely on our side, no question about that. But she also knows a bargain when she smells it.

One day just before Christmas she was downtown buying some small Christmas trees. She stopped at a stand, and found the price for two little trees was $3.50. She thought that was too high, so she started haggling with the stand man. Now the stand man happened to be Italian. So suddenly he stopped gabbling at his new customer, looked at her closely, and said, “Are you Chinese or Japanese?”

“Japanese,” she said.

The Italian smiled and beamed his comradeship. “Ah, in that case,” he said, “you can have 75 cents off, we will deliver them, and I will pay the sales tax myself.”

“But 75 cents isn’t enough off for those little ones,” our girl said. “If you’ll give me two bigger ones at that price, I’ll take them.”

So that’s the way it wound up. Two big trees, 75 cents off, no sales tax, and free delivery, just because an Italian had an attack of the old Axis fellowship but forgot that most Japanese out here are really American. And nothing else. My Japanese girl laughs and laughs when she tells about it.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 29, 1941)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SAN FRANCISCO – My friends here in San Francisco, being mostly babes in the war woods, are eager to learn all the little niceties of proper conduct in case the air raids come.

And since I was exposed last winter to a few sashays of German bombers, people out here keep plying me with war-conduct questions, which gives me the opportunity that all men look forward to – that of posing as the fount of all knowledge.

Why, during this past week I’ve been asked war questions by the thousand. No matter what the question, I answer it. My replies are quick and confident, even to problems I never heard of before. This is done on the assumption that the Japs won’t come till after I get out of town, and then the local people will be too busy to remember what I told them.

But the kids on The San Francisco News have seriously written out a batch of questions for me, and I think I’ll spend a couple of days answering them in public. For even if Indianapolis and Denver never hear the crunch of a bomb, still people there might like to know. So here we go:

Q. Do skyscrapers or small structures seem to withstand bombings better?

A. I’d say skyscrapers, although of course London has no real skyscrapers, the building limit there being, if I remember, about 10 stories.

Q. Do you think the newer-type, so-called earthquake-proof buildings out here are safest of all?

A. Yes. In London it was the old brick buildings, with dry crumbly mortar, that went down so fast. The new steel and concrete buildings could take bombs up to 1000 pounds without great damage.

Q. What might a big bomb dropped in one of the local canyons of skyscrapers do to the surrounding buildings?

A. Blow out all windows for several blocks, probably cave in the fronts of some of the smaller buildings, and twist and shatter all furnishings within the nearby buildings. But I can’t conceive of even the biggest bomb completely knocking down one of San Francisco’s high office buildings.

Q. What good does sandbagging buildings do, and from London’s experience does it seem advisable here?

A. It mainly prevents shattering of glass, and in the case of old buildings might prevent the building’s collapse by absorbing the shock first. But London I believe has found its sandbagging relatively unimportant, and I don’t see much sense to it in San Francisco.

Q. Should I send my two children to their grandparents in Arizona for the duration?

A. No. I paid a lot of attention to children in England, and what I gathered was this: bombings don’t bother them much (unless they get hit, of course). Children are easily adaptable and can take their bombings pretty calmly, just as children ride on airplanes without fear when some older people can’t. It seems to me that the disruption of home life has done the English kids more harm than any direct nervousness from raids. I think that on the whole both parents and children prefer to take their bombings together.

Q. One point puzzling war novitiates is how opposing planes in night fights determine whether that fighter pouring in from the left is friend or foe?

A. The expert will now go hide his bald head, for he doesn’t know.

Q. If an incendiary bomb falls on the roof will you know it right away?

A. Yes, baby, you’ll know it instantly, for the damn thing will probably come right through and land on the sofa beside you. I’ve seen them go through a sheet of steel laid over a skylight.

Q. What if it’s a tile roof?

A. It might come through anyway, but if it’s a steeply slanting roof it will probably glance off into the street.

Q. Are plyboard frames for windows O.K. for blackout use, so long as the blackout is complete? Or will they shatter with concussion and add to the damage?

A. They’re O.K., at least they’re used quite a bit in England. They’ll shatter if the bomb is close, but so will anything else. You’d think heavy drapes would absorb the fine particles of shattered glass, but if the hit is close the drapes blow out and the glass chews them up.

Q. Can red be spotted from the air – auto stop lights, for instance?

A. Yes. In London the lenses of all traffic lights are painted black, with just a tiny cross left in the center for the red or green light to show through. Then over the light is a black steel hood. You can see these lights for blocks if you’re on the street, but from a fifth-story window, looking down, you can’t see a light of any kind.

Q. San Francisco has forbidden smoking on the streets during blackout. Is that necessary?

A. I don’t want to get into a quarrel with the Army. But everybody smokes on the street in England. You daren’t, however, LIGHT a cigarette on the street.

Q. Could you pick off an enemy pilot with a rifle that has a range of 5,000 feet?

A. Yes, if you were Annie Oakley and had your pockets full of horseshoes.

Q. My Pop wants to hide in the hydrangeas and take pot shots at Jap planes. I say he’s nuts.

A. Aw, let him go ahead and enjoy himself. He might bring down a seagull for dinner, you never can tell.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 30, 1941)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SAN FRANCISCO – Today we continue with our free advice on how to conduct yourself when the bombs begin to fall.

The questions were asked by the staff of The San Francisco News, which apparently expects to get blown up at any moment. The answers are by this column’s Ye Olde Bombe Department, which sees and knows all. Well, practically all. We’ll start off with one we can’t answer, and get the embarrassment over quickly.

Q. Comes the gas, and we without masks, do we get on the floor or grab the air higher up?

A. Honestly, I don’t know. But I think you’re supposed to hold your breath and run, for
gas usually doesn’t cover a very large patch. We never had gas in London.

Q. Shouldn’t we get stirrup pumps so we can deal with bombs? And are those pumps used only on incendiaries, or on any bomb?

A. Only on incendiaries. Other bombs go poof and then you ain’t there no more. I think everybody who can afford it should have a stirrup pump, even in peace time. Even if you don’t get the incendiary out with it. you can control the resultant fire until the bomb burns itself out.

Q. Don’t you have to wear some sort of protective device in order to get close enough to an incendiary to smother it?

A. Yes, preferably. People hold wash-boiler lids and boards and such things in front of them, but not always. I’ve seen people in England try to stamp them out with their feet and get only a burned shoe, although I assure you they didn’t stamp long. You can put on sand with a long-handled shovel without much danger.

Q. Is blue cellophane over lights effective?

A. No. They won’t let you use it here anyway, you know.

Q. Is the cellar a safe place to go in a raid? Otherwise, where is the best place to go?

A. Yes, the cellar is safest place if you’re at home. Lots of people in England get underneath the stairway that goes down to the cellar. That protects you from falling debris. The best shelter here, it seems to me, would be the second basement of a big apartment house or office building. Nothing that I know of, except a long, deep, winding tunnel under 50 or 60 feet of rock, is safe from a direct hit.

Q. What gases do the masks in England protect against?

A. Against all types known to be in possession of the Germans. All civilian gas masks in England now have an extra filter cap taped over the original nozzle. That is because when France fell, the Germans captured a certain French gas against which the British masks didn’t immunize, France having been on our side. So England immediately whipped up a device against this new gas, distributed it thru the ARP service, and soon everybody had the new protection on his mask.

Q. Should I stock up on canned goods, sugar, other foods? Auto tires? Clothes?

A. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to stock up a little, although we’ll doubtless have laws against hoarding pretty soon. They’ve already stopped tire sales, you know.

Q. What civilian defense activities do you think will be most valuable for a housewife to perform? A man? A high school student?

A. I couldn’t say, because the authorities take the whole mass and fit people into whatever they’re best qualified to do. It’s best just to register, give your qualifications, and let the people running it decide.

Q. How can we equip our cars to drive during a blackout?

A. You can’t, unless the rule against driving at all is modified. If that ever happens, the authorities will probably specify an official type of headlight cover that must be used. In London they use just one light, which has a shield over it with tiny silts in it, and a hood projecting over that. It makes a very dim and soft light by winch you can see faintly a few feet.

Q. Since we have no shelters, what’s the point in keeping a bag packed, the better to flee with? There’s no place to go.

A. You might come up and see my etchings.

Q. Is flying shrapnel apt to be a real menace or it is just something you skip?

A. Well, it’s a menace all right, and if the guns are going big, most people in London get under cover. But where the shrapnel all falls I don’t know, for you seldom hear of damage. Personally I heard only two pieces of shrapnel fall all winter in London. But I do know that if you’re on the streets during a heavy raid, the fear of getting hit by shrapnel just keeps pulling you over close to the buildings in spite of yourself.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (December 31, 1941)

Rambling Reporter

By Ernie Pyle

SAN FRANCISCO – The White House is one of San Francisco’s biggest stores. It was named after the famous Maison Blanche in Paris. It has been here 87 years, and is as much a San Francisco institution as Twin Peaks or Fisherman’s Wharf. It has 800 people working for it, and they call themselves co-workers, not employees.

There are a lot of fine stores in America, so I’m not writing about the White House for that reason. I’m writing about it because, so far as I can learn it has done the best commercial job in San Francisco in its preparations for war.

For months the White House has been organized as though it were an army, for the possibility of air raids. It has raid equipment, its employees have drilled, everybody is ready.

And furthermore, the executives of the White House don’t share the complacent feeling of some of us that the Japs won’t bomb San Francisco for a year, or maybe never. They think the Japs will bomb San Francisco practically any moment now.

The White House began its preparations for the present war last May, which is thinking a lot further ahead than most of us did. That far back it began organizing the store floor by floor and getting its co-workers thoroughly trained in first-aid and bomb conduct.

Today it is organized in a two-fold way. (1) It is one of the strongest units of the Red Cross for general city-wide assistance in case of bombing. (2) It is thoroughly organized within its own walls for sudden disaster from the air.

Let’s take the Red Cross part first. Twenty-six of the store’s workers have trained so thoroughly in Red Cross work that in case of trouble they immediately become part of the general staff of the Red Cross. They will be executives, helping direct the thousands of volunteer Red Cross workers all over the city. Further, the White House’s fleet of delivery trucks forms San Francisco’s biggest bunch of potential ambulances.

The trucks are equipped with stretchers and blankets. At any time of the day or night they can shift almost instantly from the workaday task of delivering bundles to the dramatic business of carrying wounded to the hospitals.

And now to the store’s own inner organization for protection of itself and its customers.

Each floor is organized

Each floor is organized. Take the fifth floor, for instance. It has one captain, who is in complete command of everything on that floor in case of emergency. Under him are four emergency squads, all composed of employees. They are:

Traffic squad of nine people, who are to see that all shoppers and employees on that floor are quietly taken to the first floor or basement, either by elevator or stairway. As soon as the last person has cleared the floor, the traffic squad itself goes down.

Blackout squad. This has seven people. It is their duty to turn off all lights, pull the shades and make a final check to see that all electric appliances are turned off.

First-aid squad. Two people in this. They remain on the floor until the “all clear” sounds. They are equipped with first aid kits and stretchers. At three places in the store there are emergency hospitals.

Fire squad. Five people on this. They, too. stay on the floor throughout the raid. They have sand for incendiaries, and buckets, rakes, shovels, extinguishers and hose. If a fire gets bad, one of the squad turns in an alarm and meets the fire department when it comes.

Elevator starter gives alarm

As soon as the sirens sound, the elevator starter rings the general store bell three times. Elevators will keep running and right now every elevator has a card of instructions hung on its wall. A phone operator will stay at her switchboard throughout the raid.

The store has 75 new megaphones through which squad captains will give orders. As soon as the sirens sound, phonograph music will be piped all over the store to soothe people’s nerves. The basement and first floor have been equipped for complete blackout, so that workers and shoppers herded there will not have to stand in the dark.

All this is planned and it is not just theory. Nearly a fifth of the store’s 800 employees make up the vast emergency battalion to take over in case of trouble, and each one knows his place and his duty as well as any soldier. They have drilled and practiced for weeks and will continue to do so throughout the war, raids or no raids.

So thorough has been the White House’s preparations that other big stores here are ready to use its plan as a model. It’s all so wonderful and reassuring that I’m going to see if the White House won’t rent me a cot in the corner of the perfume department and let me live there till the war is over.