Radio War Reporting

For 48 hours after war struck, the U.S. heard the fascinated, friendly voices of radio reporters in the Far East ("We think exactly the same thing about that speech [F.D.R.'s to Congress] as all you folks back home."). Then for 48 hours more the U.S. heard nothing from them. Then finally, from the war typhoon's intense center, they spoke again guardedly, inured, under censorship; but not before at least two of them had done extremely valuable pieces of action reporting.

Singapore. Cecil Brown's cabled, news-reel-clear account of the sinking of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales came into the CBS newsroom in Manhattan hours after his friends there had decided he was dead.

A long-nosed, persistent man of 33, Brown had already proved himself one of CBS's most military war reporters. He spoke from Rome during the phony war and the first Mediterranean fighting. Last April, kicked out by the Fascists, he crossed to Yugoslavia, just in time to meet the Germans coming in, narrowly missed a grenading by an advance Nazi motorcycle squad, and with a U.S. military attache drove upstream through the Panzer army to Belgrade. His further progress eastward included a stop in Ankara, a hitch in Syria on the British push into that hellish terrain, and the job of covering the Cretan campaign from Cairo.

Four months ago CBS sent him to Singapore thinking the British there would soon set up a powerful new short-wave transmitter. Brown found that the transmitter would not get going until February, that broadcasts relayed through Batavia were muddy by the time they reached the U.S. Cooling his heels in a new handmade pair of shoes, making friends as usual with fighting men, he jumped at the chance to go into action with the fleet. On Friday night last week CBS jumped at the chance to bring Cecil Brown's living voice from Singapore, censored, muddy or not.

Manila communicates with California directly by R.C.A. and A.T. & T. radiotelephone (a point-to-point system employing short waves outside the broadcast band). On deck in Manila for CBS were Tom Worthin and Ford Wilkins, for NBC local radioman Bert Silen, for Mutual Royal Arch Gunnison of North America Newspaper Alliance. Burly Bert Silen had assured NBC in Manhattan that he could "broadcast any time, even during actual bombing...."He did.

Silen's description of the first Japanese bombing of Manila gave listeners in the U.S. plenty to think about. Nothing like it is likely to happen again. Next day R.C.A. relaying of broadcasts from Marrila ceased, not to be resumed for two days and then only under a censorship that required broadcasters to submit their script well in advance of air time. Excerpts of what Bert Silen and his relief announcer Don Bell put on the radio telephone in the shiny moonlight during the first raid:

"We are trying to locate the exact place of the tremendous fire that is raging and turning the sky absolutely crimson....In the vicinity of Nichols Field there is a terrific fire that looks very much as though a gasoline dump or something like that is burning over there....Ladies and gentlemen, there is one thing we definitely found out at the present time: the Japanese came over with the idea of hitting a definite target and they have hit that target...."

This was obviously useful news to the Japanese. But NBC, in broadcasting it did something useful for the U.S.: dispelled at once and forever the prevalent and dangerous notion that Jap pilots are cross-eyed, their bombing crazy.

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