Attack on Waikiki

Last week Waikiki, Honolulu's most popular resort, became a deserted village overnight. A Jap air attack could scarcely have emptied more quickly Waikiki's streets, cafes and bars, which usually teem with thousands of soldiers and sailors.

Reason: an epidemic of dengue fever.

The sudden outbreak took only six days to develop epidemic fury, jumped from seven to 39 cases. A quick-striking, infectious virus disease, dengue (pro nounced denggy) is almost never fatal, but for a week or ten days it lays out its victims, causing high fever, rashes and painful swellings, severe pains in head, eyes, muscles, joints. Mosquitoes carry it.

Last week the Army and Navy promptly ordered all servicemen out of the Waikiki district (except those with business there), barred them from the scheduled first Honolulu performance of This Is the Army, closed recreation centers, confined sailors in Waikiki's Royal Hawaiian Hotel (now a Navy rest center) to the hotel grounds. A Negro chemical-warfare company moved into Waikiki with thousands of gallons of insecticide to wipe out mosquito-breeding places. But by week's end the epidemic had spread to seven Honolulu districts. Officers feared they might have to declare the whole city out of bounds for the armed forces.

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