In a previous letter (TiME, Nov. 24) I told you something about your fellow readers of TIME in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Now we have had a chance to take a close look at the readers of TIME'S Pacific Edition, which is printed in Honolulu and Tokyo.

To learn something about these TIME readers, who they are and how they live and work, questionnaires were sent to 23 countries ranging from Japan to Fiji, from Australia to Afghanistan.

Of the several thousand readers who answered the questions, many of them added a note about themselves.

From Manila, for example, we heard from an original TIME reader, now a government official, who wrote: "Since its first issue to the present, I never missed a copy except during the dark period of our history of the Philippines when the Japanese occupied our country. During that period, my old copies that I had saved were inspirations for hope of final victory and freedom." From Sumatra, Reader B. Siregar wrote that he is a 30-year-old Indonesian student now taking an Australian correspondence course in civil engineering. To pay for the course, he began teaching his own class in bookkeeping and English, and in his spare time enjoyed that universal sport --fishing. Wrote he: "Here in Sumatra, the fish we love to catch is the silvery-white jurung, which grows to about ten pounds."

Considering their geographic locations, it is not surprising that TIME'S Pacific readers are great travelers. More than one-third have visited the U.S. at one time; 36% have traveled outside their own countries during the past year; 37% are planning to travel next year, and more than half of these will take their families along for the trip.

These well-traveled TIME readers are also a well-educated group: 81% are either college graduates or have had some college training. Many teachers mentioned the use of TIME in their classrooms. Wrote P. V. Rajan, assistant principal of a school in Ceylon: "Both my wife and I are delighted with the use of language in your magazine. I use it in my work as a teacher preparing students for university exams." Ferose Buchome of Pakistan, a concert pianist and co-founder-director of the Karachi Academy of Music, wrote: "Don't let me flatter you by saying the usual things about coverage, and journalistic brilliance, but simply that TIME is the best thing of its kind in the world."

More than half the readers of TIME'S Pacific Edition are in business, 41% in professions and 17% in government positions. Reader S. Rasananda, who is in the real-estate business in Bangkok, Thailand, discovered TIME when the Allied forces arrived in his city in 1945. "While visiting the U.S. in 1946," he wrote, "I subscribed to TIME and have been reading it ever since, to keep up with international events and to get to know the Americans." In Tokyo, Masao Saneyoshi, head of five oil and construction companies,described his TIME-reading habit another way: "To be the first to know the latest, to know world affairs at a glance."

Of every 100 of these families who read TIME'S Pacific Edition, 43 own their own homes, 76 have telephones, 70 have electric or gas refrigerators and 63 employ one or more servants. There are 109 autos, 27 pianos, 45 electric washing machines among each 100 TiME-read-ing families; 39 of the families have one or more dogs, and six have either a yacht or a motor boat.

In answering our questions, readers reported that they entertained an average of eleven guests a month in their homes. Undoubtedly many of the guests are presented with slightly thumbed issues of TIME, for three out of five reported that they passed each issue along to friends, relatives or institutions. Reported a reader from Suva, Fiji: "My copy is read by myself and family and then passed on to a number of prominent citizens of Suva and finally finds its way to a coconut plantation for the perusal of the overseers." No copy of TIME, he added, stops circulating while it is still legible enough for one more reading.

Cordially yours,

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