Frank Hewlett - Fall of Bataan

Soldiers of the press. It is a tale that should be put in scrapbooks and read in school rooms. A tale that should shame every civilian who has grossed about the war and its sacrifices and hardships.

It is a story of average men facing death or capture with all the odds against them. That editorial comment in the Cincinnati Post was inspired by Frank Hewlett's traumatic eye witness account of the fall of that time.

Frank Hewlett of United Press was the only regular correspondent who remained on the bomb-blasted bullet-rake peninsula until the very end of that town's grim, dogged resistance. Here then is the personal story of Frank Hewlett, Soldier of the Press.

They say that kids from Idaho are born at a roving feet. I know I was. Boogatello is my hometown, and I got my first newspaper job on the Idaho State Journal. But even then, I had the Orient in mind.

And as fast as my roving feet to newspaper jobs could carry me, I got there. For five years I roamed the Pacific, looking for headline material and adventure. Then in a few short weeks I found more headline stories, more adventure and more experience than a newspaper man ordinarily can hope for in a lifetime.

It all began on a well-remembered Sunday, December 7, 1941. I was in Manila, a member of the staff of the United Press Bureau there. Richard Wilson, our bureau manager, was away in a trip. Word had just reached us at the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

I got your message at home, Frank, and came right down. How bad is it? Doesn't look too good. Japs apparently have handed Pearl Harbor an awful pasting. Details aren't quite clear yet. And he knows from Wilson yet?