Great Change

Excerpts from the reports of TIME'S correspondents throughout the U.S. and its territories:

Manila: Manila this evening was very tense, the city faintly outlined from the shadows of smoldering fires started in the noontime raid....Civilians are assuming wartime posts of censorship, patrols, supplies, guarding, nursing, doctoring, evacuating, bandage-making....I watched half a dozen dogfights and saw at least two enemies downed....The Filipinos were good and spirited....Talking to already stubble-bearded, grimy Yank soldiers at undisclosed posts: "I'd like another crack at those low-flying bastards. Write my mother I'm a hero. I'll stay here. I'll stick it out."...Night sounds: howling dogs, shouts from sentries, douse that cigaret, turn off those lights, shrill police whistles, automobile backfires, the babble of Filipino and American voices....

Seattle: The atmosphere is getting grim....Portland, Grays Harbor, Seattle and other centers blacked out tonight....There is none of that wild hysteria, such as was produced by Mr. Orson Welles, but people are worried. A woman called the city desk and said she heard sounds of bombings: "I'm not a bit excited," she said, "I just wondered if you heard bombs. ..." On Seattle blackout nights gangs of high-school boys and girls run the streets, yelling "Put out your lights" and having a wonderful time. In the early morning on the way to work no lights are on, automobile headlights are dimmed in blue paint and cellophane.

Portland: Blacked out. Portlanders have worked into the routine smoothly except that they turn lights on dangerously early in the mornings....Night fogs, common at this season, are now welcomed as Portlanders watch for the grey haze rolling up the Columbia and Willamette Rivers at dusk. They like to compare Portland fogs to London fogs--previously treasonable.

Los Angeles: War came first like the unexpected lifting of the curtain before the stage is set. Now, in the pitch dark, it is here in earnest....Volunteers for every service in sight--Army, Navy, Marines, State Guard, Auxiliary Police and Firemen, Air-Raid Warning, Ambulance Service....Days of uncertainty, rumors, and a widespread sense of frustration....Telephone lines clogged with a rush of calls....More than 100 Japanese produce firms closed....

But the first blackout has made the great difference. Darkness fell impartially upon all, the Shirley Temples and the Sadie Smiths, Dietrichs and Doakeses.... Groups gathered at street corners to reprimand motorists who drove with lights. In the quiet of almost absolute night, this city of klieg lights and neon signs found a new beauty in starlight....

Chicago: London, when war was declared in 1939, was nothing like this. Recruiting centers are jammed, 400,000 Chicago women have applied for defense work, 100,000 have enlisted at the Red Cross. Flags broke out all over the Loop and outskirts...defense-bond sales up 75%....Unity came here with the roar of a bombing plane....The rush of volunteers 13 times greater than at any time since World War I....Enrollment for civilian defense duty 100,000; goal set for 250,000 to cover the city's 10,000 blocks....

St. Louis: Excitement is mounting to a fever pitch here....At first people hugged their radios, half-confused, half-scared, but elated at the epochal portent of the struggle--elated in the sense that a fighter, once in the ring, feels exhilarated....Theater audiences sing The Star-Spangled Banner lustily, applause drowning out the last strains....Recruits swarming the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard offices--Missouri draft boards announced they can supply immediately 8,000 more draftees in Class 1-A.

Topeka: One thing the Kansas press hasn't said and the people are saying is: "What the hell was the Navy doing out there?" Kansans can get over the unpleasant fact that we were given a good pasting, but they want to hit back. The Chew & Spit Club, which assembles daily on the sunny side of Topeka's Sixth and Kansas Avenues, wants to know when we will....The people are calm but determined....A bit of a fifth-column scare, bridges, railroads, public utilities, radio stations guarded....Enlistments up several hundred percent. Outwardly, everything is calm, but underneath there is a vein of anxiety and determination, a sag in optimism--but a feeling that the attack precipitated a fight that was inevitable and that out of it will come eventually victory, peace and a better world.

Boston: A cold wind needled down from the north, dispelling the fog....Power-plant guards were doubled, as they were at factories, shipyards, reservoirs. Air-raid warden posts manned 24 hours a day. All recruiting stations jammed....Governor Saltonstall and Mayor Tobin spoke at a mass preparedness meeting at Faneuil Hall--and when they finished were greeted by the report that enemy planes had been sighted 200 miles from the city....Bellboys on the roof of the Hotel Statler dumped buckets of paint over the arrow on its roof pointing to the airport. Workers at the Navy Yard were released from work. Autos were frozen in parking lots and immobilized on the streets, and children were excused from schools. The sound of an automobile backfiring, truck wheels rumbling, of ambulance and fire-engine sirens moaning, of the hum of the regular commercial plane bound for New York--all this took on an ominous note....Office windows measured for blackout curtains. The realization that it could happen here has dawned on the city.

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