A fresh contribution to the history of journalism.
The fierce controversy over a reporter’s wartime disclosure.
Drawing on abundant archival sources, unpublished memoirs, military documents, and hundreds of editorials and articles, Fine presents a meticulous examination of the fraught relationship between the military and the media during World War II. He focuses on the “surrender episode,” when Edward Kennedy, a respected Associated Press reporter, broke the news of Germany’s surrender despite the U.S. military’s insistence on a 36-hour embargo. “The Kennedy affair,” Fine writes, “is the story of government officials trying to bend the media to their own ends and of one journalist who risked much to do what he thought of as his duty—to inform a public sick of the fighting that the war in Europe had ended.” When Germany surrendered to the Allies in the early hours of May 7, 1945, 17 journalists were allowed to witness the event held at Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims, and they felt frustrated about not being allowed to file their eyewitness reports. Kennedy’s decision to do so was met with immediate praise from some quarters and repudiation from others, including journalists who had been scooped. By September 1945, AP, which had supported him at first, fired him. Fine’s illuminating history reveals the competitive nature of the news business, rivalries among news agencies and reporters, and volatile tensions between the military and the press that persisted throughout the war. The army’s public relations and censorship offices, writes the author, “focused more on getting out the military’s story than aiding independent reporters in getting out theirs.” Despite a nostalgic view that the war promoted cooperative efforts, the relationship was blighted by inconsistent censorship rulings and “conflicting information imperatives—the press’s to reveal and the military’s to conceal.” The “surrender saga,” Fine notes, “also calls into question another bromide about the war—that it was well-reported.” The book includes photographs of individuals involved.
A fresh contribution to the history of journalism.Pub Date: April 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781501765940
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Cornell Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.
Pub Date: April 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
A unique, inspiring story by a member of the Greatest Generation.
A firsthand account of how the Navajo language was used to help defeat the Japanese in World War II.
At the age of 17, Nez (an English name assigned to him in kindergarten) volunteered for the Marines just months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Growing up in a traditional Navajo community, he became fluent in English, his second language, in government-run boarding schools. The author writes that he wanted to serve his country and explore “the possibilities and opportunities offered out there in the larger world.” Because he was bilingual, he was one of the original 29 “code talkers” selected to develop a secret, unbreakable code based on the Navajo language, which was to be used for battlefield military communications on the Pacific front. Because the Navajo language is tonal and unwritten, it is extremely difficult for a non-native speaker to learn. The code created an alphabet based on English words such as ant for “A,” which were then translated into its Navajo equivalent. On the battlefield, Navajo code talkers would use voice transmissions over the radio, spoken in Navajo to convey secret information. Nez writes movingly about the hard-fought battles waged by the Marines to recapture Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and others, in which he and his fellow code talkers played a crucial role. He situates his wartime experiences in the context of his life before the war, growing up on a sheep farm, and after when he worked for the VA and raised a family in New Mexico. Although he had hoped to make his family proud of his wartime role, until 1968 the code was classified and he was sworn to silence. He sums up his life “as better than he could ever have expected,” and looks back with pride on the part he played in “a new, triumphant oral and written [Navajo] tradition,” his culture's contribution to victory.
A unique, inspiring story by a member of the Greatest Generation.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-425-24423-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton Caliber
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
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