ADVENTURES FOR "LIFE"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 351, 15 March 1946, Page 6

ADVENTURES FOR "LIFE"

George Silk Can Stand Six Years More

T five o'clock the other morning, a telephone rang in toom 409 of the Waterloo Hotel. in Wellington, and a very sleepy New Zealander rolled over and answered it. The voice at the other end was speaking from New York, and the New Zealander was George Silk (above), now one of the team of 24 photographers who are scattered about the globe taking pictures for "Life." He had forgotten that he might have expected a phone call in reply to the cable he had sent off the night before, in between drinks. Later that morning, he was telling "The Listener" about it. "So I had to pull myself together and make bright conversation," he said.. "We talked for about five minutes and I told them how I was getting on. In the end they said, ‘Well, we'll expect to hear from you in China in about a week’s time.’ That was all." Silk has been in New Zealand since the beginning of the year, doing a story at Life’s request on the practical results of our social legislation, the medical side of Social Security, organisation of Unions, agriculture, the Maoris-a general look at the country, in fact. Life wanted it because of "the interest in New Zealand that was awakened by Peter Fraser at UNO." Immediately before he came here he was interviewing and photographing the major Japanese war criminals in Japan. He was due to leave again for China a few days after we saw him. Silk left New Zealand soon after the war began and persuaded the Australian Government to make him an official War Photographer (Listener, June 12, 1942). Before then, he had been in a camera shop in Auckland, devoting his spare time to photography. For the Australian Department of Information he went to the Middle East, then he covered the war, in New Guinea, was in the Gona-Buna campaign, the most desperate stage of the fighting there, and went on "a little 750-mile hike" with the Australians. After that he joined Life’s team of war photographers,

He went to Italy, Cassino, Anzio, the fall of Rome. Then he went with the airborne troops into Southern France. Sole Survivor "Had a pretty bad crack-up there. Going in with a ghider and the glider cracked up on _ anti-glider obstacles. There were nine of us in it. Eight were killed." Silk said nothing about being the only survivor. He waited for me to work that out. He sat with one foot across the other knee, pulling at his sock with his hand, and spoke with occasional traces of an American accent, but never noisily. "TI had several ribs bust up. I went back to New York to convalesce for a couple of months; then I joined the British Second Army in Holland, in the floods, the canals, and so on. Then to the Ardennes. Got wounded twice-a bit of shrapnel when I was crossing the Roer river, and then at Cologne I had to pull right out, and got back to the States about VE Day. After that I came across to do the Pacific. I was the first in at Hiroshima. Went there in a U.S. Navy flying-boat. It was a jacked-up deal. "Pretty eerie and grim going in at first. I went without any idea of what the reaction of the people there was going to be. "This was immediately after the surrender?" "Two days before the actual signing. I thought the people might be pretty mad, thought they might go us. We were literally unarmed; there was only the crew of the flying-boat and myself. But I walked through the streets and

went into the hospitals, and talked to people about the effects of the bomb, and they were quite indifferent. Pushed Through a Wall "After that I went into Korea, and joined up with the Russians." Silk began to grin for the first time. Suddenly he laughed, and slapped his shin. "Got mixed up with a lot of vodka, and got pushed through a wall! A -Russian major pushed me through a wall, so I returned the compliment and pushed him through a window!" "What exactly was the nature of the wall?" "It was a Korean peasant house. All it amounted to was this-the Russian major, in a — well, a moment of extreme friendliness, slapped me on the back so hard, that he pushed me through the wall. Accidentally I reciprocated in equal friendliness and. pushed him through a window. "The Russians were very friendly indeed. They actually showed more interest in us than we did in them. There was very little canversation. It was mostly singing and drinking and hearty slaps. There were slaps that night that brought one to one’s knees!" After Korea, Silk went to Shanghai and covered the surrender of the Japanese forces in China; then the war criminals in Japan; then he came to New Zealand. Working for "Life" He says he likes working for Life, and calls it "the most satisfactory paper in the world to work for." "It’s the most satisfactory because they use your stuff as you send it to them. They don’t turn it into their idea of how the story ought to read. If they send you to a country, it’s you that does the story, not them. They don’t turn

it round to fit their preconceived. ideas. That’s absolutely unique in journalism." I asked Silk. what was the time-lag betweén the preparation of copy and the actual publication. Life prints 5,000,000 copies each week. I wanted to know how soon a Life photographer’s work appears in print after it reaches New York. The edition closes, he told me, at 6.0 p.m. on Saturday. On the following Wednesday, 5,000,000 copies are on sale all over the ‘United States. The whole issue is’ made up-in New York, and laid out there. Everything is _photostated as it is done, and sent off to

Chicago. The paper has its own plane flying between New York and Chicago. Advertising, of course, is prepared ahead of time, and some pages (articles and features that can be prepared more or less at leisure) are laid out, and the plates made for the presses, with time to spare. Final copy on the latest topical news can be taken up to 6.0 p.m. on a Saturday. Silk covered the landing in Japan, which was made on a Thursday. His undeveloped photographs were flown back to America in a special press plane, and appeared in Life all over the country the following Wednesday. The issue is printed at two points in Chicago, and the editions for the West Coast and distant States are on their way by rail while the remainder are still being printed. I asked Silk how many employees were on the whole of Life’s staff. His answer was an unprintable which mearft "very few." "Everybody on the staff is in that list in the front of ‘the paper right down to office girls. Office girls on Life are people with the equivalent of M.A.’s. They’re called researchers." Some Figures on Housing The telephone went, and after the interruption, Silk felt inclined to open a new subject. "Do you want my views on what I’ve seen here-what I'll be saying in my story?" "Go ahead, please." "Housing-I think it’s very important to put a lot of emphasis on the fact that New Zealand is better off for houses than any other country in the world." I raised my eyebrows and appeared incredulous. Silk bristled up.

"Boy, V’ll give you a few figures: The U.S. 1s three and a-half million houses short at _ the moment; they expect to build 450,000 in the next 12 months. New Zealand is 26,000 houses short and expects to build 12,000 in the next 12 months. Here, a 40 per cent. overhaul in the next year, over there, 15 per cent. "If the United States is so much worse housed than we are, we don’t get that picture," I said. "But you do. Life gives it. It’s Life I’m quoting my figures from. Look. People here think they’re badly off. I’ve been in six countries in the last six years doing stories on conditions of life. I know what [’m talking about. It was a pleasant surprise for me to come here and see how the mass of people is miles better off than the mass of people in other countries.

Teeth-and Strikes "Another thing. I’m curious to know why, with all the excellent

dental set-up for children, New Zealand still has such bad teeth. I can’t get to the bottom of it. I only. get conflicting views, and no one seems to have found the reason. Other countries that haven’t anything like the elaborate system for taking care .of children’s teeth, have much better teeth." Don’t you think we have our elaborate set-up because we have such bad teeth?" "Maybe." , Silk talked on a while about the world looking towards New Zealand with great interest, waiting to "see if it all

works out in practice." Then he remembered another thing he wanted to say. "Strikes-they’ve been entirely petty here by comparison with other countries. Look at that Australian strike before Christmas. It only lasted three weeks, but it paralysed industry for three months. I was there and I remember having to find my way round the hotel with candles. And in the States, the strikes have been gigantic. No. Industrial relations are positively peaceful here compared with what they are in other places." Silk lit another American cigarette. We got up to go. As I looked round the room with all its mess testifying to the hectic life a man like this leads, I said: "How long have you been living this life?" "Six years." He blew out a cloud of smoke. "How many more years can you stand of it?" "About another six." I picked up a curious object of brass and bamboo, like a cigarette holder for a vertical cigarette. "That’s an opium pipe. And that thing over there’s my kimono. They were given to me by a Japanese who was the head man in the firm that made the Zeros. I .interviewed him and he tried to get the nice side of me with his opium pipe and a kimono." We made our way to the lift and down to his car. After six years, George Silk is not wholly a New Zealander now. He no longer pronounces "corres--pondent" or "figures" as we do. He has the slightly guarded manner of someone who doesn’t want to look as if sudden success has gone to his head, but doesn’t want that success questioned all the same. But there are moments when you see him as a natural, spontaneous New Zealander. I left him in one of these. I got out of the Government car that has been placed at his disposal while he has been here. He leaned out and shook my hand, and said "Thanks," and gave a good big grin.

A.

A.