Andrew F Gulli, managing editor of the Birmindgham, Michigan, quarterly The Strand Magazine, found the transcript recently while looking through archives at the University of Texas in Austin. He told AFP: "Steinbeck was an idealist. He saw America as this wonderful land with so much to offer, but on the flip side he could see inequality, he could see greed and excess destroying the working classes. This story strikes me as an effort to show middle America that African-Americans were carrying on a huge burden in defending the United States and the allies during the war."