I got a letter from the venerable former United Press International reporter Robert C. Miller, now retired and hanging out in Hilo, seeking to collect on an old debt. Covering Hirohito’s
Big Island visit"I note that you've been reminiscing in your columns," he said. "Don't you think you should finally do the Hirohito-Mauna Kea story?"
Specifically, he wanted me to own up to being responsible for one of only two stories he killed in his 46-year career.
The first was in 1948 when he helped sneak an Israeli girl through the Arab line to Bethlehem for Christmas Eve mass. He thought it showed the stupidity of the Arab-Israeli war, but was persuaded he would mess up peace negotiations if he wrote the story.
The other story died because I was afraid people would laugh at me.
Bob Miller is a giant of our profession, the guy a great wire service sent to cover the most important stories of a half-century. Heck, Miller has a scholarship named after him in Hilo that I wasn't smart enough to win when I was a student at Hilo College. So if he wants me to tell a story, I'll let him tell it himself.
I was the Star-Bulletin Big Island correspondent in 1975 when Japan's Emperor Hirohito visited the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel. Both governments decided to freeze the press out of the hotel. Here's Miller's story:
"Of all the reporters in Hawaii, Dave Shapiro was the only one who used his advance knowledge of Hirohito's planned visit to book himself into Mauna Kea for that weekend. Brilliant!
"Rarely in the history of journalism has one individual managed to incur the collective wrath of the State Department, the Treasury Department, the White House, the Japanese Foreign Ministry, the Imperial Palace and sundry state, county and local authorities."
Modesty and the knowledge that my old editor Hank Sato still reads the paper force me to confess that Sato tipped me to the emperor's visit and suggested I book a room. Miller again:
"You should have quit while you were ahead. Your wife decided she should be included in your weekend and took unpaid vacation time from UAL. Then she decided she didn't have any clothes for such an historic occasion, as women never do. That decision alone would have mortally wounded the Shapiro budget, but no way was she going to look beautiful entering the Mauna Kea on the arm of a slob."
OK, so I was wearing a suit -- and an ill-fitting one at that. But I didn't buy it. I borrowed it from my friend Howard. Miller goes on:
"When you two strode up to the reception desk that day, you looked like the two lucky winners of the Wisconsin Cheese Producers 'Free Trip To Hawaii Contest.' And awaiting you was the combined wrath of the bureaucracy and the Establishment. You were taken into protective custody by armed guards."
IT was worse than armed guards. It was PR people.
"The worst part of that weekend must have been seeing the rest of us swimming on the beach, throwing expense-account dollars up and down the bar," Miller writes. True. The worst part of that weekend definitely was seeing Bob Miller in a bathing suit.
He concludes, "I thought it was a helluva feature story, but for some reason unknown to me you asked that I kill it. Why?"
Let me try to remember. Was it the part about telling the entire English-speaking world via the UPI wire that I looked like a cheese something from Wisconsin?
Bob wanted to know if the feds got even with me by auditing my taxes. No, more cruel. They saw to my eternal damnation by inspiring me to leave reporting and become an editor.