Sin in Paradise

The whorehouses in Honolulu were not on the hilltops before the war. In 1939 they were at the opposite pole, in their own segregated area near the water-front. Many of the hilltop Anglos had never seen them. But they were a significant part of the Hawaiian systems with a development story of their own.

One afternoon in 1803 a British merchantman was approaching the Islands of Hawaii. At her bow rail stood a sailor who may have been named Thomas Andrew Martin. Tom Martin was a good man. He fought fair. He feared God. He worked hard. He honored his father and mother. He loved his wife back in Liverpool who had borne him a strong son. In his heart Tom Martin was as decent as any man who ever lived. But Tom Martin had been at sea for many weeks, and as he stood watching the green islands expanding on the horizon, he felt a hungriness inside him.

"I know what I'm gonna do when I get to those islands," Tom Martin said to himself. "I'm gonna get drunk. Good'n'-drunk. I'm gonna feel happy and powerful--like I owned the goddam world. Then I'm gonna get me a woman. A pretty woman with soft lips and soft hair and big breasts and hot thighs. Me and my woman are gonna lie under the moon and I'm gonna crush her in my arms and bury my face in her breasts and have her and hold her. Then I'm gonna have her again and keep having her until I feel spent and satisfied and ready to come back to this ship. That's what I'm gonna do when I get to Hawaii."

One afternoon a hundred and forty years later, in 1943, an American LST was approaching the Islands of Hawaii. She was returning from Tarawa. At her bow rail stood a Marine who also may have been named Thomas Andrew Martin. And this Tom Martin, too, was a good man. He had fought for his country. He feared God. He worked hard. He honored his father and mother. He loved his wife back in St. Louis who had borne him a strong son. In his heart Tom Martin was as decent as any man who ever lived. But Tom Martin had been away from home for many weeks, he couldn't be sure he'd ever see home again, and as he stood watching the green islands expanding on the horizon, he felt a hungriness inside him.

"I know what I'm gonna do when I get to those islands," Tom Martin said to himself."I'm gonna get drunk. Good'n'-drunk. I'm gonna feel happy and powerful--like I owned the goddam world. Then I'm gonna get me a woman. A pretty woman with soft lips and soft hair and big breasts and hot thighs. Me and my woman are gonna be alone and I'm gonna crush her in my arms and bury my face in her breasts and have her and hold her. Then I'm gonna have her again and keep having (continued overleaf) Sin (cont. from preceding page) her until I feel spent and satisfied and ready to move on to another beachhead. That's what I'm gonna do when I get to Hawaii."

In the course of its development by white Anglos, Hawaii has welcomed millions of Tom Martins. Sailors, soldiers, tradesmen, vacationers, conventioneers, adventurers, the Tom Martins have arrived in their ships; they have found their liquor and their women; then they have sailed away.

Until about 1850 Tom Martin didn't have to go looking for his Hawaiian girl: by the hundreds she came swimming or canoeing out to meet him. He lifted her over the side, dried her wriggling, laughing body, and took her to his bunk. When he went ashore he slept with her on the beach. It wasn't prostitution; no gifts were demanded; it was only pagan simplicity and friendliness. The Hawaiians had no words for adultery or chastity or jealousy. Fornication to them was like shaking hands or rubbing noses. Not even the king objected to his wives' enjoying a little sportive punalua with the vigorous visitors. It was fun.

During this period Hawaii was nothing less than Paradise to the Sailormen of the world. Whalers recruited crews in Boston and Liverpool by promising to provision at Hawaii, and on one day in 1846 there were five hundred and ninety-six whaling ships anchored in Honolulu harbor. Beaches and bunks alike were crowded with delighted fornicationists; and the whalers were in no hurry to leave. It is said that during this entire period the only visitor to refuse the punalua was that austere ramrod of an Englishman, Captain James Cook himself.

But by 1850 the reformers of the world -- the people who hate Tom Martin and his woman -- the people who are frightened or outraged by such undignified carryings-on -- the people who are enemies of traveling men everywhere -- these people had begun to reform Paradise. By then the missionaries had been raging against punalua for thirty years; they had told the Hawaiians that punalua meant an English word pronounced "sin," particularly so if it was done along a street or on an open beach. More white homes were being built, and more white wives were arriving and joining the crusade.

The reformers campaigned for limited objectives. Their first triumph came in 1850 when they won two laws. One law prohibited fornication along the public streets or on the public beaches; the other prohibited women from visiting the ships. The sailors -- the traveling men -- didn't take their defeat democratically. They rioted for a week, destroyed property, beat up cops, theratened to burn down the churches. But the Lord's folks stood fast. They drove punalua behind curtains, then they segregated it, and thus gradually they were able to convey punalua into prostitution.

When the reformers began trying to eradicate prostitution, however, the powerful tradesmen blew the whistle on them. Tradesmen are realists, men of facts and figures. They know that any man arriving in Hawaii is at least two thousand miles from home. He has come to the exotic and erotic Paradise of the Pacific -- land of soft breezes, soft music, grass skirts, and swaying hips. Whatever the purpose of his visit it's ten to one his name is Tom Martin and that he intends to have a drink and a woman when he lands.

The tradesmen said to the reformers, "Men traveling to tropical Paradises are going to drink and fornicate -- that's a fact. And since God either approves this practice or is apathetic toward it, who are we to try and stop it? Moreover, the development of these islands depends on traveling men wanting to come here. Traveling men demand women; for us to deny them their women would be bad business. Accordingly, our policy will be to segregate and regulate traveling-man fornication, not to outlaw it."

This policy served to make Honolulu a city of remarkable extremes. Its areas devoted to the diversion of "traveling people" were unrestrained, while its well-stratified residential areas were as orderly as Back Bay Boston. The police were charged with maintaining the line of demarcation.

• • •

Hawaii's era of prosititution, beginning about 1860, has been fabulous. The houses were located in the harbor-front section of Honolulu known as Iwilei, and Iwilei was a name familiar to every man who traveled the Pacific. It was synonymous with fancy fornicating. Iwilei was the place where women of every hue, shape, and tongue waited to satisfy the most jaded or perverted appetite. Iwilei was where the most astonishing shows were presented; where a man could discover for himself the differences in races and techniques. Anglo fighting men celebrated victories in Iwilei in '65, '98, and '18.

Iwilei has been a rich vein for the romatic fictioneers. Many of Maugham's characters knew Iwilei. Sadie Thompson operated a crib there before moving on southward to her adventures in Rain. The interest here, however, is not in romatic Iwilei but in its business facts.

Between the two world wars there was considerable industrial expansion in Iwilei, and by 1939 to use the name Iwilei as synonymous with prostitution was to do some injustice to the more respectable enterprises in the district. But the whore houses were still restricted to Iwilei, and River Street was the guarded boundary between sin and respectability.

By 1939 Honolulu prostitution had long been a million-dollar-a-year business. Even during the hard-time 'thirties the take seldom fell below a million a year. And it was a strictly managed business. It was managed by the city "authorities" in cooperation with a dozen powerful madams, of whom Bertha Parchman was the most powerful. These madams operated the most famous houses; they marketed the two hundred women who did the work; they collected all the money and paid all the salaries, bills, and imposts. They had their own trade association; they made their own rules for the control of their labor; and, with their confederates, the police, they exercised the power of life and death in their domain.

To be a madam in Honolulu was to be a woman of great force and influence; a cynical buyer and seller of human flesh; a whipcracking ring mistress with the power to suborn cops, to order whores flogged or executed, and to tell generals to go to hell.

There was a rate for every man's pocketbook -- from fifty cents to ten dollars -- but for white women the rates generally were lower than in other Pacific cities. Compared to Shanghai, for instance, where reasonably attractive white women could command high rates from prosperous Oriental men, Honolulu was a low-rate center. Honolulu had few wealthy Orientals, and the more prosperous whites seldom went to the whorehouses. So the rule in Honolulu was low rates and big volume -- from soldiers, sailors, conventioneers, and the thousands of Japanese and Filipino field workers -- and because of this, the fancier white adventuresses usually avoided Honolulu and preferred Shanghai, Hong Kong, or Singapore.

Whatever the toll, it was as a rule split fifty-fifty between the madam and the girl. This meant that the madams grossed at least $500,000 a year out of fornication alone, and they made perhaps an additional $200,000 out of incidentals like drinks and cigarettes. Out of this they paid the "authorities" up to one hundred dollars per girl per month, or around $200,000 a year.

This under-the-table payoff was never made to a cop or even a police chief. It was made to an attorney who represented the "city" or the "authorities." And while some of this money stuck to individual fingers, much of it was used in the legitimate development of Honolulu. The Anglo developers of Hawaii used these whorehouse revenues just as the City of New York now uses revenues from racetrack gambling.

To the madams this payoff was a bitter dose, but it wasn't as bitter as the rent gouge. Once each year the madams faced the attorneys who represented the property-owners -- the old Anglo-Congregationalists-developers. (continued on page 16) Sin (continued from page 8). The madams howled, but the stern representatives of the pioneers extorted a good $50,000 a year from properties which wouldn't have yielded a fifth of this for any other purpose.

Whorehouse rents supported more than one big house on Pacific Heights and paid more than one son's tuition at Harvard.

Thus, of their $700,000 annual gross, the madams were forced to pay around $250,000 directly to the "powers." They distributed other thousands to the cops who were members of the Vice Squad and who patrolled the houses, so the average madam, after paying all the expenses of her house, probably netted eight thousand a year for herself. Bertha Parchman was an exception: she must have stacked away at least $25,000 each year.

The girls in the labor force came and went, but the number seldom dropped below two hundred. Since their gross earnings were about $500,000 a year, the average girl earned about $2500. She worked twenty-two days a month and served from four to ten customers each working day, though this schedule varied with shipping sailings and arrivals, convention periods, tourist seasons, paydays, and so forth. The more popular girls made much more than $2500; the less popular girls didn't do so well.

Few of the girls saved any money. A major graft on them was the medical graft. Each girl was supposed to pay five dollars a week to a "designated" doctor for an examination. Any treatment was extra. This meant that each girl was supposed to pay a minimum of $260 a year, a total of more than $50,000 a year for the doctors who were in favor with the "city." Usually these doctors were sons of pioneers and brothers of the attorneys who handled the leases and the payoffs.

The rest of the average girl's money went for "extras" to the madam, for clothes and jewelry, to loan sharks and shysters, and often to support a man or a child. The system didn't encourage thrift, and the average whore has a sharecropper mentality: she prefers always to be in debt to the madam.

Hawaiian prositution paid off almost everybody who was in business or who owned property. It paid off the rentiers and the political powers, the doctors and lawyers, the furniture dealers, the milliners, the merchants of ladies'-ready-to-wear, the jewelers, the loan sharks, the druggists. The taxicab companies got rich from it; and the Chamber of Commerce representatives had a whispered selling point which locked up many a big convention for the Paradise of the Pacific.

• • •

One of the business realities of organized, segregated prositution, whether in Honolulu or Kansas City, is that it must stay segregated; it must be unobtrusive. It must attract visitors and dollars but it must not advertise itself.

This means that women who prostitute themselves to common men must surrender their liberties, their rights under the law, to a greater degree than any other type of miscreant. Thieves, gangsters, murderers, when evading the law can go where they like and live as they choose with the full protection of the Common Law and the Constitution of the United States. But the prostitute, even though she may be in business with the mayor and may be paying rent to the First National Bank, has few more rights than some cop chooses to grant her. She has little recourse to the courts, her American citizenship becomes meaningless, and she is at the mercy of the system.

This has been true in many American cities, but geography makes it particularly true in Honolulu. If in Kansas City a girl fell out of favor with Pendergast's cops, she had some chance to run away before they beat her up or killed her. But Honolulu is on a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and all the exits are controlled by the police. This geographical fact enabled the developers of Hawaii to govern their harlotry by what was known as the Thirteen Articles; and from that day forward the Thirteen Articles, not the Constitution of the United States, became the measure of her liberties.

Article I. No girl may transfer from one brothel to another except by agreement of the madams involved.

The power in this article should be obvious to many Americans by 1954. It's the power of a state to prevent a man's changing from one job to another. This article forced every girl to curry the favor of her madam; for the madam, at will, could cut off her income; could prevent her working in any other house; or could induce the police to flog her, or to "bounce her back to the Mainland," or to "throw her over the Pali." This article enabled madams to trade girls as plantation owners once traded black men and as baseball clubs now trade players.

Article II. No girl may telephone the Mainland or send money to the Mainland without the madam's permission.

As the development of Hawaii proceeded, the aborigines became less and less important; and this was as true of the Hawaiian girl as it was of the Hawaiian man. For the Hawaiian girl could no more compete with a white girl in prositution than the Hawaiian man could compete with a white man in business. So by the time of the First World War most of the girls who filled the Hawaiian brothels were not Hawaiian at all. Neither were they Oriental or Negro. They were white girls from Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Detroit; from Georgia, Mississippi, and Iowa; from London, Glasgow, and Liverpool. And there was an economic explanation for this.

The traveling men of the world don't really care for the colored women of the world. They prefer their women white. They'll take color as a rule only when white is unavailable. A seventeen-year-old white sailor or a fifty-year-old Shriner will try an Oriental or Polynesian girl once out of curiosity; but from then on they are likely to prefer white girls. The bewitching Tondelayos who are supposed to drive white men crazy exist chiefly between book covers. And does a Japanese or Filipino man want to buy a colored woman? Not if he can buy a white one. So the Honolulu brothels kept a few "hula-hulas" and "wonks" around for the curiosity trade and for the drunks, but it was the white girls from the Mainland who made the money.

This being true, the Authorities didn't want the profits shipped back to the Mainland; they wanted the money kept and spent at home. Traveling money attracted attention, and disgruntled girls shouting hot grievances into the radio telephone would hardly be proper publicity for Paradise. Article II helped the madams keep the money in the Islands and censor complaints.

Article III. No girl may own an automobile.

This was the first of several articles aimed at preventing a girl from operating independently of the madams and the system. The whore with an automobile can defy segregation and control: she requires neither room nor bed; she doesn't have to split with madam, bellhop, or cop; she can pick up her men, use her back seat for a couch, and pocket the tolls.

Article IV. No girl may own real estate or maintain a residence outside the brothel.

If a girl had a residence outside the brothel she could entertain customers there and collect fees on which the system levied not a cent. Moreover, she might purchase a home in a decent section, and this the system could not tolerate.

Article V. No girl may be seen on the streets or in a taxicab with a man.

Taxicab-drivers all over the world are the natural confederates of harlotry. Every successful madam has a working arrangement with many cabdrivers: Bertha Parchman owned an entire taxicab company just to make sure that the drivers delivered the customers (continued on page 20) Sin (continued from page 16) to her. But, if the system allows it, the enterprising taxicab-driver can also compete with the madams and thus deprive the system of revenue.

In Norfolk, Virginia, during the war it was almost impossible to get a cab for a legitimate purpose after four in the afternoon because each driver had a girl in his back seat and was picking up sailors for her. He'd pick up a sailor, duck into an alley, collect five dollars from the sailor, give the sailor five minutes of semi-privacy with the girl, sell the sailor a pint of gin for another five dollars, then dump him out and pick up another sailor. Far from delivering business to the madams, the cab-drivers were monopolizing it.

Under the Honolulu system the automobile, private or public, could transport the customer to the whore, but it couldn't transport the whore to the customer or provide the rendezvous.

Article VI. No girl may have a steady boy friend.

The system could not tolerate the steady boy friend for several reasons. He was a threat to segregation. He almost certainly would try to meet the girl outside the segregated area either to have her himself or to sell her to other men, and this could result both in offense to his neighbors and in loss of revenue. A boy friend might leach away a girl's earnings and leave her unable to care for herself properly. Or he might give the girl too large a measure of independence.

A steady customer who came regularly to the brothel to pay his fare and to see his girl in the prescribed manner was welcome; but a steady boy friend who wanted to meet his girl outside the brothel--he was forbidden.

Articles VII and VIII. No girl may visit an Army or Navy post. No girl may marry service personnel.

By 1939 the military already had become a major industry in Hawaii and it was soon to dwarf everything else. So the Honolulu system was tailored to suit both the Anglo hill toppers and the military. Admirals and generals usually approve prostitution systems if they are Efficient and Clean--General Patton's first action after seizing new terrain always was to open up the brothels for his armies--but they object if brothels render their men in efficient. The Honolulu system was clean, efficient, orderly, and profitable.

The civil authorities in Honolulu agreed with the military that service personnel should not marry whores. A whore married to the uniform of the United States of America could claim troublesome rights--such as the right to live where she pleased, to own an automobile, or to swim at Waikiki. This the system could not allow. The place for soldiers and sailors to meet whores was in a clean, efficient whore-house where the health and wealth of the Army and Navy could be guarded and where the receipts could be properly divided.

Articles IX to XIII. No girl may visit Waikiki Beach; she may swim only at Kailua Beach. No girl may patronize a first-class cafe or bar, or visit a golf course, or attend a dance, or be out of the brothel after 10:30 p.m.

Waikiki Beach is Hawaii's Number One tourist attraction. It's where the big hotels are, where the conventioneers are quartered. Millions have been spent by Hawaii's developers to make it pay off. They wanted Waikiki to be Clean and Exclusive, both for the Anglo tourists and for the "decent Anglos" of Hawaii. They wanted Waikiki to be "White Man's country" with only a few selected natives around to supply the Color--the breech-clouted surfboard riders, the grass-skirted hula-hulas, and the lei-bedecked guitarists.

Keeping Waikiki "clean" was an advantage to almost everyone concerned. The beach was exclusive; the hotels were quiet and clean and luxurious with no whores chasing about the halls at night; and since Waikiki is four miles from Iwilei, the taxicab companies had a profitable run to and fro. Almost everybody got what he wanted; and the only sacrifice was in whore-freedom.

The other articles completed the pattern of restriction. They made certain that whores and hellraisers didn't disturb the home folks; they made sure that whores stayed in their place, worked hard, and paid their taxes.

• • •

The Islands of Hawaii were captured on December 7, 1941. They were not captured by the Japanese, they were captured by traveling men from the Mainland.

Traveling men had been powerful in Hawaii since the beginning of the development. They had challenged the authority of the Anglo homefolks more than once, as in 1850 when they rioted against the prohibition of fornication in the streets. But from 1850 to 1941 the Anglo homefolks had been able to control the traveling men; they had been able to run Hawaii like the Anglo hilltoppers wanted it run; they had been able to maintain the line of demarcation between traveling men and homefolks. On December 7, 1941, however, the traveling men dethroned the Anglo pioneers, seized control, and ran Hawaii to suit the traveling men for three years.

These particular traveling men were of the Army of the United States. They assumed authority legally and perhaps properly. They marched under the Stars and Stripes and served the brave purposes of freedom. But whatever unifrom they wear, whatever flag they march under, whatever brave purposes they serve, traveling men all share at least one characteristic--they just naturally don't give a goddam about the homefolks in whose gardens they bivouac. And this is particularly true of war's traveling men.

Wherever war's traveling men bivouac they are going to fornicate in the streets; they are going to steal your wine and get drunk and shout their filthy little war-words into the night; they are going to trample down your roses, kick out your windows, spit on your floors, clog your plumbing, and break down your fences. War's traveling men just don't give a goddam.

War's typical traveling man may behave decently in his own home town. He may be a good individual, a responsible member of a family and a community. But in an army he is in uniform, he is away from home, he is adventuring, he doesn't give a goddam. There are exceptions, but the exceptions can't change the generality. Uniforms make men uniformly bad; armies reduce men to the lowest common denominator.

Many Americans relearned this old truth about war's traveling men during the Second War. Norfolk and Williamsburg, Biloxi and Hattiesburg, Seattle and San Diego--many Americans learned what it means to be overrun by the traveling men. But no Americans suffered from war's traveling men like the Americans in Honolulu.

Honolulu is a small city ... two hundred thousand in 1940 ... smaller than Dallas or Birmingham. Yet ninety per cent of the war effort against Japan was funneled through Honolulu. Two million traveling men were staged through Hawaii, and Honolulu was their last liberty town going out and their first coming back. "This is Honolulu, Mac. We better get the hell off this ship and look for same grass skirts. For there ain't no women where we're going. It'll be a long time before we see women again." Or, "Now we're going home, Mac. We ain't seen a white woman for eighteen months, three days and two hours. But just wait'll we stop at Honolulu! Boy, we'll start catching up on what we been missing!"

Whole divisions of seventeen- and eighteen-year-old Marines -- lads who had been selected for their "combative spirit"--were trained on Oahu, taken to a beachhead, then brought back to Oahu to "rest and recuperate" before another beachhead.

Air bases were everywhere ... with airmen by the thousands. Thousands of the aristocrats of war's traveling men ... the young flyers ... the chaps who had never earned thirty dollars a week but who now, tragically, were paid a hundred dollars a week and more. They had to live furiously in order to dissipate this much wealth before taking off, fatefully, into the blue yonder.

Army camps were everywhere ... with GI's by the thousands. Oahu was the training center for jungle warfare. The navy was everywhere. The Royal Hawaiian Hotel was a rest home for submariners. Pearl Harbor had countless ships and countless thousands of restless sailors. Thirty thousand war-rich, away-from-home civilian workers were barracked (continued on page 35) Sin (continued from page 20) around Honolulu. There were forty thousand Seabees, thirty thousand Army engineers, twenty thousand stevedores, and the coming-and-going crews of a thousand merchant ships. And with them were the camp-following adventurers -- the rag-tag-and-bobtail of welfare, propaganda, and entertainment.

Other American cities thought they had housing problems. They had nothing compared with Honolulu. I could have rented my house for one year for $25,000. Nothing less than a general could command a private room. A major, if he was lucky, might get into a hotel room for three days, but only in a room with two other majors.

Other Americans thought they had laundry problems and servant problems and marketing problems. They should have seen Honolulu. No city in the world which wasn't bombarded or overrun by an enemy army suffered during the Second War like Honolulu.

Because there was a 9 P.M. curfew, the greatest writhing crowds of restless uniforms jammed the streets by mid-morning. Every one of them had money in his pocket, plenty of money, and he was willing to give it all to you if you could only divert him for a few minutes.

Anybody who had anything to offer a traveling man in Honolulu could get rich. The yellow girl in the grass skirt could make a hundred dollars a day posing in the arms of sailors for photographs. If only she could have speeded up the mechanics of picture development, she could have increased this to a thousand dollars a day. The merchants of tourist junk sold out and then tore their hair because they couldn't get new stocks. The man who had a board, a sack of nails, and a hammer could make three hundred dollars a day just betting the traveling men that they couldn't sink the nail with one blow of the hammer. His nails were in shorty supply, so after curfew each night he went to work straightening out bent nails for the day's driving.

The crafty people who had had the foresight to acquire coin-operated machines--anything that dispensed, lighted up, jangled or challenged--they had only to keep their mechanisms in order and count their money.

If a nickel-eating machine with these instructions: Insert Nickel Here, Then Turn Knob. Nothing Will Happen; You don't Get a Goddam Thing; You Just Put the Nickel in for the Hell of It--if such a machine had been placed along Hotel Street, the owner would have reaped a fortune.

Any movie house was swamped, no matter how old or how feeble its offering. Men lined up three blocks and three hours away from the entrance without bothering to inquire what the picture was.

All day long this restless horde milled through the streets, inserting their nickels, turning their knobs, driving their nails, tossing balls at cups, staring into vacant shop-windows, standing in tired queues, or just flowing aimlessly along with their comic books sticking out of their pockets. All day long they moved, like sheep, with the heart in each uniform whispering the Great American Prayer, "Give me something, O God, to divert me. Let me have a device into which I can insert a coin so that an illusion may flicker before my eyes--anything, O God, so that I won't have to be alone with myself."

Most of all, these restless traveling men wanted women. So the longest and saddest queues were in Iwilei.

• • •

When the traveling men of 1941 seized control of Hawaii, their first action was to raise the Stars and Stripes over Bertha Parchman's whore-house.

They rehung the nudes in Bertha's reception room and made way for a gigantic picture of the President of the United States.

They decreed a New Deal for the whores.

They banished the Vice Squad from Iwilei and announced that henceforth Honolulu's harlotry would be ordered, not by the guardians of the homefolks, but by the military police of the traveling men.

They banished the civilian doctors from Iwilei, cut off their $50,000 a year, and set Army doctors to guarding the health of the whores and the traveling men.

They froze the rents in Iwilei, and thus prevented the old Anglo Pioneers from sharing war's excess whore-profits.

They interposed themselves between the madams and the old civilian Powers, and thus they encouraged the madams to quit making the $200,000-a-year payment to the Powers. Why should the madams any longer pay good money to old, helpless, deposed defunct, and reactionary Powers?

In short, the traveling men emancipated Honolulu's whores from provincial exploitation. No longer were the whores to be regulated and exploited by the local fascists; they were now fonctionnaires, as it were, of the Government of the United States.

Naturally, all this national recognition made the whores feel patriotic. It nurtured their egos. They cheered at the flag-raising ceremony, tried to sing The Star-Spangled Banner, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. They applauded lustily when a major explained the New Deal to them and welcomed them into the crusade for a better world.

Then, abruptly, the major challenged their patriotism.

"Now that you have been liberated from your old masters," he said, "your government feels that, as a patriotic gesture to the fighting men, you should reduce your basic charge from five dollars to three dollars. The three dollars should be a Special GI Rate and should be divided two dollars for the girl and one for the madam."

There was a gasp from the girls and a long, low wail from the madams. No respectable five-dollar whore likes to be summarily reduced to a three dollar status. Not even to serve patriotic ends. To comply with this government request without taking a loss meant that each girl would have to increase her operations by at least one-third and the madams would have to double overall operations.

But the major was persuasive. "There are many angles to this proposition," he explained. "You're going to have more business than you can take care of. The fighting men will be lined up at your houses from eleven A. M. until nine P. M.-- and, human nature being what it is, there'll be considerable after-curfew business. The only limit on the volume of any girl will be her own endurance. And who's providing this business for you? The United States Government. You'll have no advertising cost, no sales cost. The girls won't have to pay any doctors--the American taxpayer will pay your doctors. The madams won't have to pay any cops--the American taxpayer will furnish all the MP's you need. Your rent's being frozen. Everything you take in will be profit."

"And here's another angle," the major continued. "Everybody else is going to do something for the GI's ... give 'em a special rate or something. The Pennsylvania Railroad ... all the railroads ... gonna give the GI's a break. Dining cars will have a Special GI Plate. And the movie houses ... nobody's gonna expect the man who is fighting for his country to pay the same rate as goddam civilians. You don't want to be different, do you? And here's what you can do. When the Pennsylvania Railroad serves a GI the Special GI Lunch, hell, the goddam waiters don't give him all the fancy service they give civilians. Hell, no! They just bring it all out on one plate and throw it at him. Every GI gets the same quick deal. That's all a GI wants. Well, you can cut corners the same way. At this GI rate you can cut corners the same way. At this GI Rate you can cut down the preliminaries ... make it snappy ... hell, there's a war on. Just strip down to your bare ass, give the GI the old hurry-up routine, and get him the hell out of there." (continued on page 42) Sin (continued from page 35) The major's arguments were cogent but what won the day for the government was the fact that his arguments were backed by the threat of force. This New Deal had teeth in it. The Special GI Rate of three dollars was adopted for the duration. I report this sadly; for the benefit of Mr. John Steinbeck and all the other portrayers of tender-hearted whores I wish that the Honolulu whores had reduced their rates out of pure, selfless patriotism, but alas, they did it only because of government force. The madams bowed to the will of Washington, and next day they called in the carpenters and began moving out the furniture, boarding up windows, cutting out partitions, preparing for the storm--or like Cunard did when it converted the Queen Mary from civilian to GI service.

The person who was most appalled by all this is a girl I shall call Mamie. It's the unusual talent who suffers most from the levelings of war and New Deals. The boy who is making thirty dollars a week sacrifices little when he is drafted into government service; it's the man who is making a hundred a week, or who has a business of his own, who takes the loss. The prewar five-dollar whores who had netted $2.50 an operation were being asked by their Government to sacrifice very little. By doubling their number of operations they could more than make up the loss. But Mamie, a good looking blonde who'd once played bit parts in B-Grade Hollywood movies, had been netting $6.50 an operation, $195 a day for thirty operations. To do as well under the New Deal, she would have to perform a hundred operations a day ... 4400 a month ... an entire regiment! This was an appalling prospect, even for so talented an operator as Mamie.

She went to the major, showed him this rather formidable arithmetic, and appealed to his sense of fair play. When the five-dollar girls were sacrificing so little, was it fair to ask the ten-dollar girls to sacrifice so much? Not even the Pennsylvania Railroad was cutting rates so drastically. Mamie had Hollywood experience; she had picture credits; she wanted the fighting men to have the best, but surely the government could be fair!

When the major saw her points he took the matter to higher echelons. Referred all the way to Washington, it caused torrid discussion among the bureaucrats. Some of them resented one whore's thinking she was better than the others. One coordinator insisted that the whores should have an orientation course in democracy; another thought that a fact-finding board should be sent out before any decision was made. But while the case was pending Mamie assiduously developed her relations with the brass, so I wasn't surprised when she got a decision in her favor.

In addition to the Special GI Rate of three dollars there would be a Deluxe GI rate of five dollars--$3.50 for the girl and $1.50 for the madam--and Bertha's three prewar ten-dollar girls--Mamie, Maybelle, and Jackie--were certified to charge the Deluxe Rate.

• • •

In retrospect, this manner in which the United States Government treated the Honolulu whores seems remarkable.

The argument which the government used to the whores--the war is multiplying your business; your government is your principal customer; you'll have no sales costs, no advertising costs, no protection costs; you'll be in full production; therefore, you should give your government a special rate--is a reasonable argument. But I can't recall that the government advanced it very often, or very effectively, on the Mainland.

The government didn't use this argument when it placed orders for war material. It allowed all the wages and profits of full production.

On the mainland the government allowed its citizens to pillage it with such devices as overtime, Sunday time, vacation time, any other sort of "time" which could be devised. But in dealing with a few Honolulu whores the government allowed neither overtime nor incentive pay for piecework above the norm.

The government allowed Big Steel to charge off millions for the depreciation of its facilities. But it didn't allow the Honolulu whores any profits to cover depreciation.

The OPA was unable to decide whether the whores were selling a commodity or a service. But whichever it was, the government had no legal right to reduce their price below what they were getting in 1940.

As a matter of fact the Honolulu whores were the only group of American civilians who were asked by their government to do more work during the Second War at a reduced rate of pay.

• • •

In complying with their government's request for this Special GI Rate, the Honolulu whores proceeded to create the most famous genuine slogan of the Pacific war:

Three Dollars for

Three Minutes!

I say genuine because the other Pacific slogans--Send Us More Japs, Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition, etcetera--were phonies. Nobody said them. Three Dollars For Three Minutes was genuine. It was originated by a GI, and subsequently spoken by thousands of GI's. It was genuine, honest, original, authentic.

Prior to the Second War the brothels of the earth had operated on more or less the same slow and inefficient plan. The customer entered and found girls in the reception room. He chatted with them pleasantly, patted their bustles, perhaps bought a few drinks; and if further stimulation was needed the showroom provided it. He then chose his girl, went upstairs with her; and after an interval not so long as to be immodest nor so short as to be embarrassing, he came back down and made a dignified and leisurely departure. This was Standard Operating Procedure, and was varied only in such occasions as when one asked for a particular girl and was shown to her room by a servant.

There was some grace in this procedure. Through the years it had acquired a certain tradition ... an honored place in our folklore. Like the two old Southern colonels arriving in New Orleans and one of them saying to the other, "Suh, shall we stop along the way and have a drink or shall we proceed directly to the who' house?" Everybody felt sorry for the neglected little tart who sat in the corner and sang plaintively, They All Go Upstairs But Me.

But when Bertha Parchman's girls were drafted into the Army, they knew the old unhurried years were ended. Honolulu had to become the Detroit of harlotry. Whores had to embrace mass production; they had to build a better assembly line; they had to modernize or starve. So with their carpenters and plumbers they hovered over diagrams, took readings on slide-rules, debated new plans for serving the largest number of customers in the shortest possible time. They had to arrange for a quick turnover. They had to become efficiency experts, speedup artists, if the fighting men of America were to be properly processed in the crusade for democracy.

One fact was recognized instantly: the day of the One-Bed Woman was past. In the graceful, leisurely old days if one woman kept one bed fairly warm she was doing a good night's work. But now, under the New Deal, even the oldest and laziest of them would have to operate two beds. And Mamie, who was to become the Henry Ford of Harlotry, produced the most ambitiously patriotic plan of all. She announced--and she presented carpentry blueprints to show how she would do it--that as her contribution to the war effort she would keep four beds running during the hours she was on the firing line.

As far as I have been able to learn, Mamie was the first Four-Bed Woman in history. Her plan of procedure, therefore, deserves explanation and recognition.

Mamie began by asking Bertha Parchman for (continued on page 50) Sin (continued from page 42) the big downstairs showroom for the duration. "we won't have time to put on any shows now, Bertha," she argued. "The only purpose of the shows was to help some of the old boys get in the mood. These GI's won't need shows to get in the mood; hell, they'll be ready when they come in the door. So let's close the shows and let me and Jackie and May belle use the showroom."

When Bertha agreed, Mamie had all the furniture moved out of the showroom. It was a large room, some thirty feet square. In the middle of the room the carpenters then built a plywood box eight feet high and fourteen feet square. They put a door at each corner, painted a Chinese-red booth inside and out; then they went inside the box and partitioned it into four rooms, each seven feet wide and seven feet long--about the size of a Pullman bedroom. On each of the doors was painted a yellow number--1, 2, 3 and 4--and in each room was placed a four-foot-wide couch. The only other furniture in each room was a tin waste pail, coat-hangers, and a wall light.

The finished "set" looked like a clever arrangement of dressing rooms on a beach. Or like fortune-telling booths at an indoor carnival. It was pretty--remainded one of Hollywood. There was space for traffic all the way around it, as the only other furnishings in the big room were two lavatories installed at the back and which were hidden by a curtain. Also, at the side of the room the carpenters cut a new outside entrance.

Thus, from noon until 9 P. M., each day for almost three years, there were two lines of uniforms at Bertha Partch-man's. The longer line was at the main entrance. They were men who wanted to pay Three Dollars For Three Minutes with any of Bertha's girls. The shorter line was at the side entrance. They were men who wanted to pay Five Dollars For Five Minutes with Flaming Mamie. MP's kept the lines orderly.

At Mamie's doorway a soldier was met by a Japanese woman who took his five dollars and led him to the booth which had just been vacated. There he removed his cap, his pants, and his underpants--nothing else.

The moment Mamie finished in a booth she went immediately to the next one, wearing only her high-heeled mules. As she walked out of a booth a Japanese woman darted in, ushered the GI out, then rushed a new customer in.

The objective always was to keep the four-room set busy in this manner: from one room a satisfied customer was being ejected; in the next room there was action; in the third room a man was waiting "at the ready"; and in the fourth room a man, just ushered in, was being made ready. Mamie could not be held up and her time wasted by the mechanics of men dressing and undressing. The three Japanese servants had to hustle to keep ahead of her.

Occasionally there was a minor tragedy in one of the booths. When Mamie entered she found the waiting soldier unprepared for immediate action. Mamie patted him on the shoulder and said to him under her breath so that no one could hear, "Don't let it worry you, Mac. Better luck next time." Then as she passed quickly on to the next booth, she signaled to the Japanese woman to make a refund.

Mamie called this four-bed set the "Bull Ring," and she judged her efficiency by the length of time required to make a complete circuit. Ten minutes was par, though quite often she made it in eight. She was never longer than twenty minutes, for if any customer attempted to monopolize her services beyond five minutes he found himself jerked to attention by two alert MP's.

Mamie's record time--and, I assume, the world's record for this sort of thing--was one complete circuit of four operations in four minutes and forty-eight seconds. She admitted, however that she was shooting fish on this run. She made the record against four seventeen-year-olds of the Fifth Marine Division.

When a soldier emerged from Bertha Parchman's, MP's directed him across the street to the pro station where he lined up and got another processing by the medics.

Mamie's Bull Ring was in operation an average of nine hours a day almost every day for nearly three years. It handled from one hundred-fifty to two hundred men a day. Mamie, of course, didn't process all these customers personally. She was the Star Attraction--most of the men hoped to find her on the Ring--but she was assisted by Jackie and Maybelle, the other two deluxe values. Mamie usually came on stage about 2 P. M., took over from Maybelle without missing a beat, ran the Ring for an hour, until she was replaced by Jackie. Mamie then came back for a second shift at five and a third between eight and nine. At the end of a typical day when the Ring had handled one hundred-eighty customers, Mamie had handled seventy-two, Jackie sixty and Maybelle forty-eight.

Jackie was a wiry little redhead from Houston; they called her "Texas Dynamite." She was as energetic as Mamie, and she commanded a considerable following of her own. But she wasn't tall and hot-looking like Mamie, and she lacked Mamie's big, luxurious breasts. She could never quite match Mamie on the Bull Ring, though she tried hard enough. Maybelle was a willowy brunette from Chicago with Latin blood. She was a beautiful woman--something like a brunette Rita Hayworth. She didn't look as "mean" as either Jackie or Mamie, and she could never process a customer quite as fast as they could.

Usually there was bitching in the five-dollar line when the word was passed that Flaming Mamie was not on the Ring ... like a theater audience bitches when they find the slip in the playbill announcing a substitution for the star. But any man who wanted to wait for Mamie, or for one of the others, could do so without losing his place in line.

When either Mamie, Jackie, or Maybelle took an off day ... or on days when business was particularly heavy ... some of the five dollar customers got cheated because one of the three-dollar girls--usually Mamie's friend Kate--was shifted over to the five-dollar Ring. After a few complaints on this score had reached Major Sumac, Bertha was forced to adopt the policy of refunding two dollars to any GI who had paid five and then complained because he had to take Kate.

The Government of the United States couldn't tolerate any such chiseling on the fighting men.

Mamie's average of seventy-two operations a day on the Ring yielded her $252. She worked enough days to run this to $5000 a month, through 1942, '43, and '44.