The Press: Red Faces

Events have an embarrassing way of outrunning slow printing presses.

Two days after the Japs finally said “Uncle!,” Collier’s came out with a Quentin Reynolds “authoritative picture” of how hard the invasion of Japan was going to be. In twelve simultaneous newspaper ads Collier’s tried to cover its blushes: “The atom bomb, forecast by Collier’s five years back, caught Collier’s, as well as the Japs, by surprise.”

The Saturday Evening Post, which crows (“Post luck!”) when its prayerful leaps land safely, was also in a subdued mood. War’s end found the Post’s new star, Richard Tregaskis (Guadalcanal Diary), starting a series of “human, intimate” weekly pieces which promised to follow a B-29 crew “in the long, arduous flight from the plains of Kansas to the bombing run over Japan.” His first article got them as far as California.