The Pacific edition of The STARS AND STRIPES is born today.

The time is fitting.

V-E Day has come. In Europe Naziism and Fascism have been crushed at a cost of millions of lives after nearly six years of bloodshed and destruction.

V-J Day is still far ahead in the Pacific. But now, for the first time, the United States and her allies can mass their full fighting force against Japan.

Thousands of ships will bring millions of men.

The man who hit the beach at Kwajalein will make room in his foxhole for the Yank who sloshed ashore at Anzio.

The veteran of Saipan will pass his canteen to his buddy from Bastogne.

The soldier from Tacloban will match yarns with the fighter from Cherbourg.

It will be the reunion of an heroic clan.

To these men, THE STARS AND STRIPES pledges an accurate and honest newspaper, dedicated to one big purpose – victory over the enemy.

We will try to serve all fighting men – men who fight with shovels and typewriters and trucks as well as Mls, mortars and long toms, men who fight on the high seas and in the air as well as in jungles and mountains and swamps.

We will mix what laughter there is in war with the inevitable boredom of lonely atolls and the hell of close combat.

We hope to write a human history of every man’s role in the defeat of Japan.

Our sights are high, for we come of a distinguished line.

The first edition of THE STARS AND STRIPES went to press 27 years ago; the time, February 8, 1918; the place, Neufchateau, France.

One of its avid readers was a young Colonel. To him and to his comrades-in-arms, that newspaper, written by the men in the service, spoke “the thoughts of the new American Army and the American people from whom that Army was drawn.”

A war later, that young officer, now Lieutenant General Robert C. Richardson, Jr., commanding Army forces in the Pacific Ocean Areas, has created this edition of THE STARS AND STRIPES to speak those same thoughts of its originator, General John J. Pershing.

Like the original edition, we promise to do our best to get the paper to you – “mud, shellholes and fog notwithstanding.”

We “will yield rights of the road only to troops and ambulances, food, ammunition and the paymaster’s car.”

Like the original and like our able contemporaries in Europe, the Pacific edition of THE STARS AND STRIPES “is up to the top o’ the mast – for the duration.”