William Tyree - The Pacific Theater

Soldiers of the press! In and out of the way move the ships, the planes, and the men who are carrying the fight to the Japanese in the scattered islands and on the broad sea lanes of the Pacific.

And with them go the correspondence of the United Press, recording epic events at such remote points as New Guinea midway the Salamans. For Honolulu is as much an operations base for war correspondence as for the fleet.

We bring you now the story of a man who has seen as much or more of action in the Pacific than any other of the core of correspondence whose home base is Honolulu, United Press Correspondent William Tyree.

I've been covering the war on the Pacific since the day it began. In fact, in terms of the newspaper men passing through Honolulu since Pearl Harbor, I'm looked upon as something of a veteran war correspondent.

The sea I was transferred to Honolulu as night manager of the United Press Bureau more than a year before the JAP staged their sneak raid in Hawaii. Like every other American who watched the smoke billowing up from burning ships and aircraft on December 7th, I was hopping mad.

My first impulse was to join one of the armed forces in order to get a direct crack at the nips. So I dropped in on my boss Frank Tremaine late one afternoon a few days later to talk it over.

Hello Bill, come on in. Thanks, Frank. If you've got a few minutes, I'd like to talk over a personal problem with you. Certainly. What's on your mind? Well, Frank, I'm still sore at the way the Japanese dragged us into this war.