LAUGH IT OFF
Honolulu Adbertiser ~ December 13, 1941
Star-Bulletin ~ December 13, 1941
By EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Honolulu resident and famous author of the "Tarzan" books and comic strip, has volunteered his services to the ARmy and will write a column each day on the lighter side of the war, Army authorities announced last night. The first of these columns follows. Watch for others from day to day. 

Whatever else the civilian population of this island of Oahu may lack, it is long on cooperation, guts and a sense of humor. Sicne the Japanese attack started the moring of December 7th, I have seen more grins and heard more laughter and jokes than ever before in all the time that I have spent in the Paradise of the Pacific. There has been no panic, and whatever fear there has been has been beautifully camouflaged. These people, regardless of race, color or antecedents are AMERICANS. They make me proud to be American, too.

Sabotage? As far as I have been able to ascertain, there has been none. At first there were the usual silly rumors, all of which were proved unfounded -- parachute troops landing on St. Louis Heights, snipers in every cane field, fifth columnists poisoning the city water supply. All bunk. Many of these rumors stemmed from actuall occurrences: On a hillside near Fort Shafter, an accidentally caused brush fire burned a perfect circle during a blackout. It looked like a signal to vessels at sea, or a beacon. Also during a blackouit, the home of an official of radio station KGU was suddenly illuminated. Irate neighbors called on him and ordered him to turn out his lights -- his windows were being lighted up by the searchlight of a naval vessel off shore. A woman telephoned the police that there was a man near her house, signalling with red and blue lights -- it turned out to be an employee of the Hawaiian Electric Company repairing a transformer.

Also during a black out, a colonel and a captain fell into a trench dug in the lawn at department headquarters -- but maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it, as it may be giving aid and comfort to the enemy -- something they are going to need damn bad  before this man's army and navy gets through with them. 

"Did You Hear That --?"
For two hours during the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Hickam field, my son and I ate breakfast and went oui tin front of the hotel on Waikiki beach, where we are living, and played tennis. Most of the hotel guests congregated there to watch the show. It was the middle of  the afternoon before we realized that it was the real McCoy and that we were watching a battle. As the radio then broadcast an order for civilians to remain off the streets, we went on with our tennis, stopping occasionally to watch the anti-aircraft shells burst, the bombs dropping into the ocean. 

I saw no indications of fright. One of our tennis partners is the wife of a naval officer who is commanding a submarine stationed at Manila. The husband of another woman with us was on a light cruiser at Pearl Harbor. Neither of these women permitted what must have been their real feelings to show -- two more Americans to make us proud that we are Americans. 

This column is intended to reflect the lighter side of what we are passing through.Army and navy personnel and civilians are invited to mail in amusing items and anecdotes to Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1298-B Kapiolani Blvd. for use herein. 

An enormously fat Hawaiian came to the table in the basement of Iolani palace where the Red Cross girls are dispensing coffee, chocolate and sandwiches and, draping his opu over the edge of the table, said: "I like see one menu."

Orders had been issued closing places of amusement and curtailing business hours. This has resulted in many calls on civilian defense for rulings on, for example, bowling alleys. Rost says that a large flamboyant, red-headed lady barged into the civilian defense headquarters yesterday, demanding a ruling. She wanted to know if her place was a place of amusement or a place of business!

I spoke of the Red Cross girls working in the basement of Iolani palace. When they start passing ouit orchids for war work, these girls should get a lot of them. At the beginning, some of them worked day and night without a rest. I have met many of them socially in the past -- their main concerns in life: bridge, cosmeticians and cocktail parties. They are wonderful. Incidentally, their smiling faces and their pulchitrude would help to take the hell out of Sherman's description of war in anybody's world. My hat is off to the Idle Rich. 

*     *     *
 There are countless others who rate unbounded admiration. Take the Filipinos digging trenches at Kewalo basin last Sunday and Sunday night, for example.  They worked 20 hours straight without a rest. If you don't think that is something, borrow a shovel and try it. The amouint of patriotism packed into one little Filipino would make him a match for twice his weight in wildcats.
*     *     *
The women, God bless 'em! What would we do without them? One of them called general headquarters yesterday and said that she understood that there was to be an air-raid in 12 hours. She wanted confirmation! The home of another was demolished by a bomb Sunday. She couldn't understand it and complained. "We wasn't botherin' nobody." I wonder if that pathetic complaint doesn't typify the reaction of all non-combatants to the ruthless destruction of life and property to which they are subjected by this Hitlerian type of warfare. 

We are not an understanding people. We are too dense to realize that Japan was only bringing peace and prosperity to the island of Oahu last Sunday. We may be dumb, but we remember. We remembered the Alamo, we remembered the Main, we shall remember Pearl Harbor. Behind oiur kidding and joking, there is an iron will, and backing up that will a splendid army, a grand navy. So talk on, little man, and give us more laughs.

To the ladies!  You've got to hand it to them for courage and endurance. And they're all pretty much alike. We have Kipling's word for it:

And then there is the old Scottish woman quoted in TIME, Nov. 24:
"When the air-raid warning sounds, I take the Bible from the shelf and read the Twenty-Third Psalm. Then I put up a wee bit prayer. Then I take a wee drab o' whiskey to steady my nerves. Then I get in bed and pull up the covers. And then I tell Hitler to go to Hell."
*     *     *
When enemy aliens were ordered to bring in their firearms, a little Japanese showed up with a bow and arrow! A Japanese woman brought in a pistol only  three or four inches long. The officer in charge said he didn't know whether she would have to turn it in or not, but that if she ever shot him with it, and he found it out he'd raise hell with her.
*     *     *
Who says that a man can't get ahead in this day and age! A week ago today I was a private in Company A, 1st Battalion, Civil Guard, getting flat-footed at Kewalo Basin. The next day I was a messenger boy at Iolani Palace. A day later I was promoted to chauffeur. Now I am a "war correspondent." Move over, generals, and make room; I'm on my way up!
*     *     *
Thanks, orchids, and medals to all those who have helped by contributing to this column; but I need more. Rost's imagination is flagging. Soon I'll have to do some of the work myself and lose standing in the Ancient Order of Columnists. My address is 1298-B, Kaiolani Boulevard.

Laugh It Off
Honolulu Advertiser ~ December 18, 1941
By EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS

Last night I rode the streets of Honolulu in a police prowl car. Suddenly Honolulu has become a ghost town by night -- a similitude that is heightened by the weird blue lights of an occasional automobile and the faint, will-o'-the-wisp flashing, now and then, of dimmed, blue flashlights. And the silence is the silence of a dead city. If you are looking for thrills and excitement, don't look for them in a police prowl car during blackout. The Chinese cemetery and a fat imagination would provide more of both. I was ouit with Sergeant Gunderson and Detective Honan in Car No. 60. They are rather delighted with this blackouit business, as it has cut their labors down almost to the vanishing point. Crime has vanished with the electric light. We heard a few calls to other cars: someone threw a rock at a window somewhere; a couple of prowlers were reported (probably CD men looking for lights, the sergeant said); lights and flares were reported from Wilhelmina Rise.

It was raining and dark as sin. For me, visiblity was reduced to approximate zero; but Gunderson, evidently being part cat and part owl, could see quite as well in Stygian darkness as most people can by daylight. He found streets that were not there and negotiated curves and corners that had disappeared hours before. 

*     *     *

Three events broke the monotony: some elderly people had thought that by pulling down their shades theey had blacked out. They were wrong. The sergeant went in andpointed ouit the error of their ways. He was kind and courtous. A young man was trying to drive home without lights. He was very much in the wrong, but Gunderson didn't get touch and bawl him out. He talked to him as a father might talk to an erring son, and then he guided him home. How different from the attitude of many Mainland cops I have seen! But don't harbor the idea that you can get tough with Sergeant Gunderson or any other Honolulu policeman. Beneath the court4esy that is required of them, they are bad hombres to mix with Our third adventure stemmed from a call that there was a man on a telephone pole in front of a house on Harding avenue. Gunderson swung the car around int he dark and we were off. I thought htat if any damn fool was sitting on a telephone pole in the rain, the wors that could befall him was to let him sit. 

How Gunderson found Harding avenue, let alone the house, is quite beyond me; but w were there in nothing flat; so were two other police cars. That, ladies and gentlemen, is police efficiency plus. The "man" turned out to be a transformer. And so to bed. 

W.S. Holloway likes a three minute egg for breakfast. The other morning, during blackout, he boiled his own three minute egg. When he opened it he found it as hard as one of Roy Chapman Andrew's dinosaur eggs from the Gobi Desert. It developed that the maid had hard boiled all the eggs in the house the day before in the event that if they had to run, they could take the eggs along without breaking them. Even efficiency sometimes backfires.

*     *     *

The Red Cross has requested the ladies to have their babies in the daytime. It should have notified the stork, also. He was flapping his way toward a house the other evening, and at the sound of his wings a hurry call was put in for an old Chinese midwife. Her husband took the message and gave the address to the driver who was to take the midwife to the job, with the result that a police prowl car fouind the old lady pounding on the gates of King Lunalilo's tomb. After convincing the frantic midwife that there was no reason to suspect that King Lunalilo was gravid, the police got her to the right house. I do not believe the story that the baby opened the door for them; but he was there all right, waiting for them.

I spoke of the Red Cross girls working in the basement of Iolani palace. When they start passing out orchids for war work, these girls should get a lot of them. At the beginning, some of them worked day and night without rest. I have met many of them socially in the pst -- their main concerns in life, bridge, cosmeticians and cocktail parties. They are wonderful. Incidentallly, their smiling faces and their pulchitrude would help to take the hell out of Sherman's famous description of war in anybody's world. My hat is off to the idle rich!

We may be dumb, but we remember. We remembered the Alamo, we remembered the Maine, we shall remember Pearl Harbor. Behind our kidding and joking, there is an iron will; and backing up that will a splendid army, a grand navy. So talk on, little man, and give us more laughs!

A friend of minE was inspecting a Red Cross unit at one of the schools yesterday about noon, when a patient rushed from a ward, clothed in one of those amazing shirts that hospitals inflict on one  -- and little else. "Hurry up!" cried the patient. "I want my lunch. I have only 15 minutes!"

My friend was aghast. "Oh, don't worry," said one of the Red Cross girls. "He's only our patient. We practice on him!"

"Dear Folks: I am writing to tell you that I am alive and well in a German concentration camp, and I want you should know that I am happy and comfortable. You can't imagine how well they are treating us. We get the best of food, live in clean sanitary quarters, and are shown every courtesy by the guards. In fact, I really haven't a thing in the world to complain about. Please pass this on to all my friends. Tell everyone you meet how swell the Germans are treating me; and, particularly, TELL IT TO SWEENEY!"

You will recall the remark of the ambassador from Thailand: "They caught us with our trousers off." An officer at Hickam field has experienced the full realization of what that means. He was reading the Funnies in that time honored place reserved for reading the Funnies before the kids get them on a Sunday morning, when a bomb blew all the walls away leaving him in the open -- reading the Funnies.

Among my many life's ambitions, including that of being a pirate, I have harbored the hope of becoming a war correspondent; and now that I have achieved it, the war is running out on me -- at least insofar as my "front" is concerned.

Here's a honey to start the day off with: A woman heard her American born Japanese maid talking in Japanese to a neighbor's maid, and told her that she must not talk in Japanese. She also asked what she had been saying. It was evident that the girl did not wish to tell. The woman insisted. "Please, I no want to tell," said the maid. "You must tell me immediately," snapped the woman. "Please!" begged the culprit; but the mistress insisted: and finally the girl, covered with confusion, said, "I tell my friend I no see how such handsome man marry such ugly woman!" Laugh that off lady.

The other: "As the craft got hit, this Swede, Whitey, gets knocked into the drink. As his head came above the oil, smeared waves, he looked a mess. Then he bellows out to his shipmates on board: 'I been tryin' to get off this blanked craft for months, and at last I made it'" Guys like that may be bombable, but they're not beatable.

I can't help but think what a swell story this would have been had they been "Scotch-Americans"  -- swell for Ripley.

The many admirers of Anton Rost will be delighted to learn of his promotion. He tells me that he has been gazetted third assistant, from fourth assistant to the second assistant errand boy at Iolani Palace and is now intrusted with the delivery of the more important memoranda issued by OCD. HIs salary has been doubled. Next week he expects to be measured for a uniform. 

"Why, no," said the lieutenant, a Harvard man; "I'm really quite clean, I just came to pay a call."

She also reports that, because of a shortage of chicken feed, poultrymen have bee instructed that all chickens over 100 must be slaughtered. I could evolve a swell crack from this but I'm afraid I'd be kicked out of my hotel. Couldn't we have an age limit on eggs, too?

Hazel did not report for duty December 8. When she came on the 9th, she was full of apologies, and begged Mrs. Halliday not to discharge her. She explained that she had not come the day before, because her brother, her uncle, and two cousins had been killed by machine gun fire while driving their car Sunday morning. She has been working steadily since. Deserved kudos to Hazel Kabookele!