Page 46 of The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe

Though World War II tensions were not long past, DiMaggio had previously arrived in Tokyo every inch the living legend.

“That half a million Japanese turned out in Tokyo to shout ‘banzai’ for Joe DiMaggio and Lefty O’Doul,” theNew YorkTimesreported in 1951, “keeps up our hope for some eventual international understanding.” A military band welcomed the baseball players with “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

By February 1, 1954, the tune has changed. It’s Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood’s sexy songstress, who’s captivating global imagination.

On the descent into Tokyo, Major General Charles W. Christenberry poses an important question. “How would you like to entertain the soldiers in Korea?” American troops have been stationed in Seoul as part of a UN occupation force. Though the Korean War ended in July of 1953, the boys still stationed there could do with a morale boost.

“I’d like to,” DiMaggio is quick to answer, “but I don’t think I’ll have time on this trip.” He’d also missed the chance in 1951, when a delegation of O’Doul’s All-Stars had visited troops serving at the Kumsong front, then an active war zone.

“I wasn’t asking you, Mr. DiMaggio,” Christenberry says. “My inquiry was directed at your wife.”

Marilyn doesn’t hesitate. “I’d love to do it.” She pauses then and says, “What do you think, Joe?”

“Go ahead if you want,” DiMaggio grins. “It’s your honeymoon.”

Cary Grant, Marilyn’s co-star inMonkey Business,had written encouraging her to visit the soldiers if she had an opportunity. He and his wife Betsy had recently done so, and “in practically every ward Betsy and I visited you were, I am delighted to tell you, a happy and prevalent topic of conversation. ‘Monkey Business’ had just been shown over here and my principal claim to fame, and their interest, seemed to be inthe fact that I had made a picture with you; it helped our conversation at each bedside immeasurably.”

It’s arranged that Marilyn will go to Korea for four days next week. First, she and her new husband visit Tokyo. But though her official Department of Defense ID is issued under the name “Mrs. Norma Jeane DiMaggio,” it rankles her new husband that the press refers to him as “Mr. Marilyn Monroe.”

In an open convertible thronged with adoring fans, the ten-mile drive from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport to the Imperial Hotel takes six hours.

Hundreds of police link arms to stop the crowd surging forward with shouts of “Marilyn!” and “Mon-Chan!” (the Japanese word for “sweet little girl”). Some fall into the hotel fishpond, others jam its revolving door, and someone smashes a plate-glass window.

It’s after 10 p.m., but the crowd refuses to disperse until Marilyn appears on the couple’s hotel room balcony. She waves self-consciously, fighting the feeling that she was “a dictator.”

At the promotional press conference for the baseball tour, the sports legend is once again overshadowed in favor of the white-hot film star.

“Marilyn! Marilyn!” reporters begin. “Is it true you don’t wear underwear?”

“I’m planning to buy a kimono tomorrow,” she says with a slight grimace.

“Marilyn! Do you sleep naked?”

“No comment,” she replies.

“What kind of fur are you wearing right now?”

“Fox,” she smiles. “And not the Twentieth Century kind.”

Joe DiMaggio is the only person in the room not laughing at the disrespectful questions. Reporters have no questions for him. All the photographers have their lenses trained on Marilyn. Her new nickname, “Honorable Buttocks-Swinging Madam,” makes the front pages, but not Joe’s picture.

The attention is so intense that for the first week in Japan, they rarely leave the Imperial Hotel.

“No shopping, Marilyn,” DiMaggio warns. “The crowds will kill us.”

She accepts a Mikimoto “pearl necklace with a diamond clasp” from Emperor Hirohito and Empress Kojun, but when she does venture out to shop for a kimono, photographers angle their cameras up her skirt. Gossips speculate that it must be too cold in Japan for even the “Honorable Buttocks-Swinging Madam” to go without underclothes.

Luis Miranda is serving on a Korean army base when a helicopter touches down and out steps Marilyn Monroe. The dreary winter atmosphere changes in an instant when Monroe poses for a photo with him.

“To me she has a good personality,” Miranda observes of the “happy lady” who “didn’t mention anything about her private life—she was attending the troops.”

From February 16 to 19, Marilyn tours Korea by plane and helicopter, performing ten shows and entertaining more than one hundred thousand soldiers and thirteen thousand marines.Stars and Stripesreports that fans wait for seven hours to claim front-row seats.

“Gosh, I’ve never seen so many men in my life,” Marilyn says when she takes the stage, having changed out of her fur-collared flight jacket and combat boots into a sparkly purple cocktail dress and gold stiletto heels in the makeshift changing room draped with military canvas.

She’s decided to sing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” “Bye Bye Baby,” and the Gershwin song “Do It Again.”

One of the generals had questioned her choice of material. “It’s too suggestive to sing to soldiers. You’ll have to do a classy song instead.”

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