U.S. Marine Corps combat correspondent Claude R. "Red" Canup wasn't required to keep personal copies of the dispatches he sent out while covering the war in the Pacific, during World War II. He did so, however, and "War Is Not Just for Heroes," edited by his daughter, 1970 Lander College graduate Dr. Linda M. Canup Keaton-Lima, is the result.
Following the publication of Keaton-Lima's book in May, by the University of South Carolina Press, her father's 398 dispatches will be given to the General Alfred M. Grey Research Center and Archives in the Library of the Marine Corps, in Quantico, Va. She said that "Claude R. 'Red' Canup's will be the only combat correspondent's collection, the only dispatches, housed there."
Canup, from Anderson, became one of the frontline journalists known as Denig's Demons at the age of 33. Reporting from Yontan and Chimu airfields, Okinawa, Yokosuka naval base, and elsewhere in Japan, he offered an engaging firsthand perspective on the war's final years.
Canup covered the famous giretsu attack on Yontan Airfield, Okinawa, interviewing two marines in the tower the night the Japanese successfully landed suicide planes with suicide troops, on May 24, 1945. He interviewed pilots from the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill, including famous Marine ace Captain James Swett, who landed on Yontan because kamikazes had damaged their ship's landing deck. Immediately after the war, Canup interviewed recently released prisoners of war aboard the hospital ship Benevolence, docked in Tokyo Bay.
Keaton-Lima, who graduated from Lander with a B.S. in business education and a minor in art, whose master's, from Clemson, is in education, counseling and guidance services, and whose doctorate, also from Clemson, is in vocational technical education, said that her father "never wrote about himself or his Marine Corps days after he was discharged." She said she "was determined my father and other combat correspondents, along with the valuable service they provided Marine families and the American public, would be remembered."
She said the title for her book, which took three years to research and write, "was found penciled in my father's notes and represented a belief he held."
Dr. Charles P. Neimeyer, director and chief of the United States Marine Corps History Division, said that "the Marine Corps historical program owes a debt of gratitude to Linda Keaton-Lima for bringing to light an invaluable treasure trove of wartime material and commentary from her late father."
Neimeyer continued, "If legendary World War II combat correspondent Ernie Pyle is known today as the G.I. Joe reporter, then Red Canup deserves similar recognition for his coverage of Marines. I highly recommend this remarkable collection of observations and dispatches to all serious students of World War II history."