The Last One Out: Yates McDaniel, World War II’s Most Daring Reporter

Jack Torry’s The Last One Out looks at the life of Yates McDaniel…Best known for reporting the fall of Singapore McDaniel was also a witness to the Nanking Massacre. McDaniel was a “mishkid” born in Suzhou who was to go on to become famous for covering the fall of Singapore. In China he noted: “My last remembrance of Nanking: Dead Chinese, dead Chinese, dead Chinese”.

When Yates McDaniel died in Florida in 1983, few outside his family paid much attention. The only hint of his fame came in a brief obituary buried on the inside pages of the New York Times. The obit suggested bravery and a past far more exciting than almost anyone knew. Even those who worked alongside him in the 1960s at the Associated Press were startled to learn what McDaniel had been, what he had done when he was a young man and the world was at war. Yet, this remarkable reporter covered more of the Asian war than anyone else—from the savage Japanese assault on Nanking in 1937 to the fall of Singapore in 1942 to landing with US Marines on New Britain in 1943. He took risks no other reporter ever accepted, and colleagues joked that Japanese bombers followed him wherever he went.