Bob MacGregor’s Pan Am Days

Bob MacGregor was born in Denver, Colorado. His father was from Scotland and his mother from Mexico. Early in his career, he found employment with Pan American World Airways, which was then in the process of developing an around-the-world air transportation system. For awhile he was stationed in the Philippines, an important link in the Pan Am network. There, his duties included going out into Manila Bay at night to light floating kerosene pots that marked the watery runway for Pan Am’s giant, four-engine Boeing seaplanes.

Bob also met his future wife, Emalita, in the Philippines. The couple had to keep in touch long distance when he was transferred to Singapore in 1941 to open a new Pan Am station. So Bob was in Singapore and Emalita in the Philippines on December 8 of that year when Japan launched simultaneous attacks against the Philippines, Singapore, Malaya, Thailand and Pearl Harbor (where it was still December 7, thanks to the international date line).

Immediately following the attack, Bob gathered the flight crew of the Pan Am Flying Clipper riding at anchor in Singapore’s bay, emptied the Pam Am office safe, boarded the aircraft and took off, heading west. They crossed India and Africa and then hopped the South Atlantic to Brazil. Finally they made it to Florida where they returned the aircraft and the contents of the safe to Pam Am representatives, less only what they had paid for gas, oil and supplies along the way.

In the meantime, Emalita had been captured by the Japanese army and was being held prisoner in the Philippines. As World War II wound on and reports of atrocities and casualties filtered in, Bob almost gave up hope of ever seeing her again. When the war ended, he was enormously relieved to find her name on a Red Cross list of displaced persons. Then it was just a matter of time before Emalita and Bob were able to get back together — and come to Hawaii to start a new life.