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Describing the Club in those days, Hajime "jimmy" Horikawa recalls that the Club officers and staff had their hands full, straightening out billet assignments, procuring adequate stocks of food and liquor, and keeping the members happy.
Administering the Club was in the hands of capable and conscientious officers under successive presidents Joe Fromm and Bill Jorden. On the other hand, those were hectic times, and Club members had a war to cover. When Korea called, Tokyo and the Club became secondary.
Mary Ushijima was thrown into this maelstrom at its peak in October 1950. Mary, born and reared in Fremont, California, was thirty-three and married when she was hired by Fromm and Costello to manage the switchboard, the heart of the Club's operation. Being on the army signal system, the Press Club had fast and clear communications with Korea and the States.
News agencies and favored specials had offices in the Radio Tokyo Building, where they took calls from Korea. Communications were generally bell-like. But fadeouts and static could make talking to Korea a regression to the days of the crystal radio receiver. Ralph Teatsorth was ordinarily the most gentlemanly, soft-spoken guy alive, but when he hit one of those bad moments on a phone call into the UP Korean War Desk, you could hear his voice clear at the other end of the long, second-floor corridor as he screamed, "What? Repeat that! How do you spell it?"
Working with Mary on the switchboard were a contingent of nisei girls. Among them, she remembers Michi Imori, now living in Los Angeles, and Canadian Patsy Ogawa. Probably because Mary looked the "mother" type, members began to confide in her.
"We did everything from relaying messages between a correspondent and his office, to setting up a date for him at Miyoshi's [more about Miyoshi's later]," says Mary. "Or telephoning a girlfriend to tell her her man was coming back from Korea tomorrow and wanted to see her. Or cajoling reservation clerks to nail down plane and hotel reservations. Most of the members were younger than I was. If their wives or girlfriends were Japanese, they couldn't talk to each other so we had to interpret, telephone messages, and even do secretarial work for them. To avoid charges of favoritism, the Army PRO sent its urgent releases through us. We'd get all the bureaus on one party line and the PRO would deliver the information to them with one call."
Working from 8 A.M. to 6 P.M., the staff dealt with French, German, Chinese, Filipino, Australian, and Turkish correspondents. When a correspondent was hospitalized, Mary took over special fruits and wines. For another correspondent, she remembers staggering hospital visiting hours so the patient's wife and girlfriend didn't come calling at the same time.
She was invited to the Club parties, even appearing in some of the skits. She attended a Press Club reunion in New York, as did Kotaro Washida, longtime Japanese manager, and other old-time Japanese staff members. She was a houseguest of several members in the States, including James Michener. She recalls with special affection Keyes Beech, Hessell Tiltman, John Rich, and LeRoy Hansen, among others, and her enjoyment at speaking to persons she would never otherwise meet, like Edward Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and Joe DiMaggio.
Hajime "Jimmy" Horikawa, everyone's favorite bartender, recalls, "There used to be dancing in the small dining room, but no dance parties as such because the party room on the third floor was converted into billets. The music was usually provided by a combo, but sometimes the members arranged private parties, and hired a band, usually from one of the military service clubs."
Entertainment at the Club parties was usually the work of the Entertainment Committee members, notably Joe Fromm, Karl Bachmeyer, and the Zenier brothers. The skits, which gained a reputation for scathing sarcasm, were the work of the "Hamsters," members like Pete Kalischer, Max Desfor, AI Kaff, and Charlie Smith.
In Tokyo, MacArthur was busy handling a war on two fronts. On July 8, he authorized Prime Minister Yoshida to form a National Police Reserve of seventy-five thousand men, and increase the strength of its Maritime Safety Board by eight thousand men. The Japanese government began recruiting the following month. Ambassador Sebald described Yoshida's prompt agreement as the "greatest help" in carrying out the support of the ROK forces in Korea.
1951
1951 FCCJ FACT FILE
• Membership: No records.
• Professional events: Press conferences and interviews. No record of Club events.
• Social events: Inaugural party, Anniversary party, and New Year's Eve party. No record of other events.
• President until June 30: Burton Crane (New York Times); from July 1: Joe Fromm (U.S. News & World Report).
In Korea, the killing game continued, wearing down the slugging armies of the North Korean-Chinese Communist forces and ROK-United Nations divisions. The conflict was just as much of a hell for the correspondents and the cameramen, sharing the cold, the danger, and despair with the fighting men whose lives they were depicting. Japan, struggling out of its postwar morass, suddenly saw its economy coming together as it moved toward peace and international acceptance. In this situation, Tokyo was an Elysium compared to the suffering and destruction the correspondents saw on all sides of them in Korea.
The Turkish Brigade arrived in Korea in early 1951. Harry Gordon, who reported the Korean War for the Sydney Daily Telegraph, Singapore Straits Times, and other news organizations, tells of the camaraderie that sprang up between the Aussies and the Turks, though they could barely communicate with each other.
With the Australians in Korea relates that the Turks fought with a ferocity which made them something of a legend. One of their first battles occurred in late January 1951. Their orders: to take a steep icy slope about four hundred yards high south of Seoul. The Turkish Brigade attacked at 1 A.M. against the entrenched Chinese. Next morning there were "hundreds and hundreds" of dead Communists on the ridge. That height became known as Turks' Ridge. Six months later, the Turkish Brigade received a presidential unit citation for that action.
In another firefight, Gordon reported, the Turks complained bitterly that the artillery barrage put in to soften up an enemy position before their charge was too heavy. "There weren't enough live Chinese left to make it a decent fight." Their standard solution for a fight was fixed bayonets. When the Turks charged with their bayonets, Gordon reported, "the Chinese ran."
The first Turk correspondent to join the U.N. Forces in Korea was Aladdin Berk, who was sent by a newspaper in Ankara several weeks before the Turkish Brigade arrived. Naturally, they dubbed him Berk the Turk. Berk wrote his first dispatch and took it to the American teletype operator
