50th Anniversary Issue — October 1, 1995

By Peter (Grodsky) Grant

Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the first general to win five stars, had a love/hate relationship with the Army. He loved MacArthur. He hated the GIs. Peasants.

He wanted his own newspaper. A glory sheet for MacArthur. In fact, when he found out we were calling it Pacific Stars and Stripes and intended to run a real newspaper, word dribbled down to us: The name won't do -- too European.

"Come up with another name,'' our OIC timidly asked us. Timid, because he respected our news professionalism as compared to his own experience in circulation for a small-town Southern paper. (I think he was a bit more than a news delivery boy tossing papers on lawns and roofs. Maybe. But he was a major, I a corporal.)

For names, I suggested "5 Stars Finally" and "The Oriental Express."

Meanwhile, we pushed ahead to see if the eight of us writers and editors could put out a paper every 24 hours.

We had almost no backup. We had no teletype, photo feed process or outside source for features. We did get to pick up carbons of wire service stories out of Tokyo and day-delayed news summaries sent (in cablese mumbo-jumbo) by the services to their Tokyo correspondents to help them evaluate stories that might affect their reporting.

Another handicap: We did not know what size newsprint or press we could commandeer. This would determine whether the paper would be a tabloid or full sized. Also, we had to find English type and Japanese typesetters who could set English words. Setting up a distribution process was another pre-publication problem that had to be solved.

The name remained Pacific Stars and Stripes by a fluke.

The Japanese Domei news agency carried a story saying that PS&S would soon start publishing. American correspondents were mad as hell that Domei scooped them on an American story, but they ran the story stateside anyway. This was too small an item for the general to make an issue out of, so the paper's name stayed Pacific Stars and Stripes.

On Sept. 28, 1945, we put out a practice issue -- Volume 0, Number 0 -- to see if we could beat the clock and put out a daily. We made it in 17 hours.

That's less than 24, so we knew we could.

It was a great issue, with two pictures on the front page:

One showed MacArthur accepting the transfer of God status from Emperor Hirohito to Himself. (My description, not his.) Both men had their hands behind their backs. No shaking. The other picture was a billboard sign announcing the 1st Cavalry Division entering Tokyo.

The real issue No. 1, for distribution to the troops, came out Oct. 3. The top story of the day was demobilization. Naively, I had expected to get the story from MacArthur. I was a full corporal. He didn't want to talk to me.

MacArthur's picture did not appear in issue No. 1. He made no news. We made no friend. The 1st Cavalry billboard photo made it.

Presenting myself to Gen. Bonner Fellers, MacArthur's military aide, I had explained my mission. I wanted to interview MacArthur about the biggest morale story of the day among soldiers: demobilization. We wanted it as our lead story for Japan's first issue of Stripes.

"Come back in an hour,'' Fellers told me.

The answer was no. MacArthur didn't want to see me.

Then unfolded the strangest tale of all. Fellers, leaving no doubt in my mind that this was a message from MacArthur, began berating the whole Washington hierarchy including Gen. George C. Marshall, the chief of staff, whom he labeled a war monger. Of course this is all off the record, he told me.

Then Fellers turned the conversation. In effect, he told me I ought to write a think piece for the paper urging the U.S. to go to war now against our wartime ally, Russia. Wow!

But Fellers confused me. As I was leaving his office, he said, "It's your story. Do with it what you want.''

I wrote the story, quoting Fellers. However, discretion being the better part of valor (and I wanted out of the Army, too), I brought three copies of the story to him to check before I submitted it. (The fourth copy I kept in my office.)

Reading two lines into the lead, Fellers blew up and chewed me out -- but good, as a general could. He kept all three copies. I had no printable story.

But I did have a story for the civilian press. In the early days of the Occupation, correspondents were too busy to follow it up. Several weeks later, Fellers called a news conference. To the assembled newsmen he announced that the meeting was off-the-record and gave them the same convoluted shtick he'd given me.

(Those guys were in the same position I was, only in reverse. They wanted to stay and could be booted out of Japan if they didn't toe the line.)

Later the news dribbled out in pieces without the real impact or shock I had when a general proposed that I start a war. All I wanted to do was go home.

As the Occupation moved along, civilian correspondents didn't work too hard. Many of the men hired beautiful translators (via their expense accounts). Some translators were a little handicapped: They spoke no English. This complemented the correspondent's inability to speak Japanese. But they were useful, as only beautiful girls could be.

This made many a correspondent reluctant to leave Tokyo. Those reporters were satisfied to hang around GHQ, use PR handouts, get whatever stories they could pick up easily and cull tidbits from Stripes. They shared stories among themselves.

One day I scrounged a story about a phony emperor. He had written to GHQ hoping for help. About 600 years ago, he claimed, his family had the imperial robes. In a war with the Hirohito branch, his family lost the empire, he said, and all he had left were impressive-looking papers, scrolls and drawings, many of which he sent in.

Seeing this stuff led me to the story. A generations-long peasant, the poor man had visions of grandeur. He was willing to replace Hirohito if MacArthur would say the word. MacArthur wouldn't.

The man lived 60 miles from Tokyo, but the brass had taken away my Jeep as a result of on-going feuds. So I worked out a deal with Connie Ryan of Time magazine (who later wrote a book and war movie, ``The Longest Day''). We would go together (in Connie's car) to see the guy, and I'd hold my Stripes story until the day his Time story hit the street in the States.

Ken Pettus, then editor of PS&S, didn't think much of the idea of holding a story for 10 days. I wouldn't tell him what the story was about, only that "it was something big."

Finally, the day came and I brought in the story. Ken looked at it and said the equivalent of "Nuts. It's a nothing story." I had to do a hard sell to get it in the paper.

The next morning, all hell broke loose for the correspondents. Beginning about 5 a.m. they were besieged by their home-office editors wanting to know about the phony emperor. The mystery was on both sides of the phone.

They started waking up people in the Army press office, calling all the officers, even generals in a frantic effort to get a hook on the story.

They didn't get their answer until Stripes came out. Then they all wrote stories quoting Stripes. I was vindicated. The phony emperor never got back his throne, but he did get a day or two of glory.

By the way, losing the Jeep wasn't as much of a hardship as it sounds, although at the time I felt it was catastrophic.

I surrendered the little vehicle reluctantly after returning from a news expedition to Kyoto, which was 6th Army headquarters. A few years later, I realized that my nemesis had indeed been my friend, and I began telling people that MacArthur did me a great favor.

Who knew then about the extent of radiation danger in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

And it was just as I was ready to drive off to see the two devastated cities that my Jeep slipped away from me.

Instead of my seeing the atomic bombed areas, my wife and I were able to have three wonderful children after the war. Who knows if that would have been possible otherwise.