Before December 7, most of those internal spaces had been painted white or gray, but now that the Japanese attack had dramatized the flammability of paint, working parties were put to the tedious work of chipping it all away, inch by square inch, with iron scrapers. They tore up the linoleum tiles and scraped smooth the steel underneath. They worked in the sweltering, airless heat—exacerbated by the wartime requirement of keeping the watertight doors and hatches dogged down—and found that they sweated through their uniforms so quickly they might as well strip them off and work in their
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