Not long ago we heard from Ropata Karapine, our only reader in the Chatham Islands, 400 miles east of New Zealand at West Longitude. Wrote he, in part:

"Although it is our vanity that we here are the first in the world to see the sun rise, we get a mail only about once every three months. That brings a stack of TIMES. I look forward to TIME. I have never met a member of the great American people and I know your country mostly from TIME, but now I find I am even getting fond of characters like Leo the Lip (Durocher) and your fifth-married blondes. They are a cornfort to me in the dark winter when I know there is nothing between me and the South Pole but a barbed wire fence . . ."

To the northeast, on Manihiki in the Cook Islands, Reader A. H. Brown, who says he is "magistrate, postmaster, customs officer and anything else you can think of," is in the same boat. He writes: "Flour will only keep for two months in this climate, and we are cut off for periods of four to five months without a schooner calling. Believe me, to anyone living in an isolated place like this. "

TIME is a priceless boon. About 15 years ago a schooner captain brought me a year's copies of TIME that the U.S. consul at Tahiti had given him, and I have read your magazine ever since."

Although nothing can presently be done to deliver Readers Karapine's and Brown's weekly copies of TIME to them on time, TIME-LIFE International, publishers of our overseas editions, takes pride in the fact that most of our 160,000 readers in the Far East and Pacific areas can read their copies while U.S. citizens are reading theirs. The edition they get is the Pacific, one of TIME'S four international editions whose 260,000 weekly copies go to a million readers in 180 countries and possessions overseas. Each carries advertising directed to its particular markets.

Of these four editions (the others: Latin American, Atlantic, Canadian), Pacific has by far the most difficult transportation and communications problems. It has to be distributed, while the news is still fresh, from Honolulu west to Afghanistan, from northern Japan to southern New Zealand. To do this, TIME Pacific is printed in Honolulu (for the Hawaiian Islands, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and way places like Midway, Wake, Guam, the Gilbert Islands, New Caledonia, New Guinea, etc.) and in Tokyo (for Japan, Korea, China, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan).

At the same time on Monday nights that they are putting TIME'S regular edition to bed (from teletypeset copy) our Los Angeles printers are putting the Pacific edition on film which is then flown to Honolulu and Tokyo. By Friday afternoon, except for occasional bad weather, printed and bound copies of TIME Pacific are being unloaded from transport planes in Manila and Sydney, Australia, 10,000 airline miles from New York City, and Governor Ingram M. Stain-back and 7,400 others in the Hawaiian Islands already have theirs.

Shortly thereafter copies are on their way from our Tokyo presses by plane to the dropoff points for distribution to readers like India's Pandit Nehru and Industrialists N. H. Tata and G. D. Birla; to Shanghai Mayor K. C. Wu, Siam Premier Phibun Songgram, Oilman B. C. Jones in Dili, Portuguese Timor, 23 subscribers in Zamboanga, one in Tibet; to William Eu (Singapore), Jan de Groot (Batavia), and thousands of other plain citizens.

During the Communist siege of Taiyuan, Marshal Yen Hsi-Shan, leader of the Nationalist forces, arranged to have TIME Pacific parachuted to him along with the ammunition supplied by chartered planes. In Tokyo, General Douglas MacArthur reads TIME, as does Emperor Hirohito, after his secretary translates it for him.

In an isolated camp in northern Queensland, Australia, Geologist J. G. Hathaway probably qualifies as TIME'S most thorough reader. He writes : "I read every flamin' word: news, ads, picture credits, even the masthead (I see Marshall Smith got a promotion). I even count the type faces used."

In addition to the 40,000 copies of TIME'S regular Pacific edition, another 15,000 are printed for U.S. occupation forces in Japan and isolated garrisons throughout the Pacific -- a latter day reminder of the Pony, Navy V-Mail and other editions of TIME that were printed there during World War II for our Armed Forces and were the forerunners of our three-year-old Pacific edition.

Times are still difficult in the Far East and Pacific areas and TLI is accustomed to receiving curt communications like the one from longtime Subscriber C. L. Davar, of Pach-marhi, Central India, which began: "Re: change of address due to Punjab massacre . . ." For many of our subscribers in China, a change of address is now out of the question and communications like the following have been coming to us: "Unfortunately, the Communists are approaching my native city (Wuchang), and an iron curtain will soon be tightly drawn between us and the West. American publications, especially, will be prohibited . . . For the sake of my safety, please stop corresponding with your humble reader."

Soon I hope to tell you about TIME'S fourth International edition, the Canadian.

Cordially yours,

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