Paying the Price for a Smoking Gun

By the time I had the confidential State Department documents in my hands, I was five days into my research trip to Washington, D.C., I'd flipped through hundreds, maybe thousands of pages of dusty, sometimes crumbling government documents, private letters from publishing luminaries, and even water-stained diaries from hungry, stranded soldiers unaware of a coming death march through mosquito-infested, sweltering jungles.

All of it was fascinating, but more than halfway through my trip, little of what I'd found was of use to me. I'd spent nearly every dollar I had to travel to the National Archives and the manuscript division of the Library of Congress, and I still hadn't found a smoking gun. I needed something that would allow me to triangulate Melville Jacoby's position amid all the myths and memories of World War II that have bled into our consciousness over three quarters of a century.

I'd ended the previous week sifting through a slender box containing thousands of typed index cards. They mapped the paper trails of countless other lives who'd crossed paths with U.S. diplomatic officials at the height of World War II. As the day drew to a close and I began to crumble — I'd barely slept for a week, rushing first thing every morning to the repositories and staying until librarians forced patrons to leave — I saw Mel's name.

Detail of decorative books above the entrance to the Library of Congress's Madison Building in Washington D.C. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

I pulled the card, somewhat surprised to learn it led to a "confidential file" from 1942. I'd fantasized about discovering once-secret documents related to Mel, but knew I could have been over-romanticizing his life. It wasn't the only card I found. There was another, more somber file indexed. Beneath a bureaucracy of typed decimal reference numbers read the title  "Death in Australia of Melville J. Jacoby, American Citizen."

It would be three more weeks — indeed, yesterday morning — until I received a copy of that file, but in truth, I already know perhaps more than I want to know about Mel's death. What I sought at the archives that week was more of his life. That Monday morning, the stack of telegrams that began with a blaring all-caps "CONFIDENTIAL FOR TIME, INC., WITH MY APPROVAL, FROM JACOBY," sent by Francis B. Sayre, the U.S. High Commisisoner for the Philippines, was a treasure.

In time I'll unveil why what was within mattered, but I'm bringing it up now to explain that the find didn't come easily, nor cheaply, nor does it mean I'm done working. Today I leave for California and visits to two university special collections, and I need your help more than ever. Can you spare a few dollars so I can keep searching for history?  

Click to Fund My Research

Here's a breakdown of what I'm spending and why I need your help:

• $836.56 — Amount spent for a round-trip flight from Portland to Washington, eight days of food and Metro fares, but mercifully excluding lodging, thanks to three terrific hosts.
• Emptied — The Amtrak Guest Rewards balance and Southwest travel credits I used for travel between Portland, San Diego and Palo Alto for a second, 15-day-long trip beginning today. 
• $720 — Approximate combined total of expected food, transportation and other research-related expenses over the next 15 days.
• [Redacted] — Current abysmal balance of my savings account, especially following today's rent.
• $380 — Total amount I've received in contributions to support research travel this Spring.
• None — Outside income expected from freelance writing and editing clients during my trip.
• $1177.56 — Amount I still need just to break even for this trip.
• Priceless — The generosity of six households inviting me to stay during portions of each trip, thus saving me from paying for three weeks of lodging.

When I wrap up this second trip, I will have spent the better part of five weeks searching for Mel's story in the haystacks of archives and special collections libraries. That also means five weeks travelling, pulling documents, sifting and reading them, taking notes, processing what I've found, all on top of time I've been spending drafting new chapters of my book, revising my proposal and further developing my platform (That's also five weeks without time to report or research other paying stories, apply for outside jobs, or seeking alternative funding).

Why This Matters

A pencil from  the National Archives and Records Administration. (Photo by Bill Lascher).

Writing nonfiction is as much an archaeological dig as it is a creative endeavor. Sure, if I want to bash my keys into the form of a story, I can assemble a thin skeleton resembling Melville Jacoby's experience. As that comparison implies, such an outline would lack life.

It turns out that aside from my trip to California I'll have to go back some day to the National Archives. Five days split between there and the Library of Congress were too few to process the hundreds of files that contain relevant documents. Now I know where to target my next search, but I'll need to return to the archives to conduct it.

In the past three weeks I've also confirmed that there once existed a film of Melville and Annalee Jacoby's last kiss. I know who shot the film, though I do not yet know whether it has survived the decades. It may very well rest in an archive somewhere, but I'm going to need your help to find it.

But as much as this dig matters to me, what does it mean for you? What do you care if I find some record detailing the tonnage of the boat Mel rode through the Philippines 72 years ago? Why should you be interested in him, particularly given that it will probably be a while before you read much about him (but don't miss this story in which he makes a guest appearance)? 

Perhaps it's the mythic nature of this story: Given a choice between following his passion straight through danger and uncertainty or a secure, but unchallenging, career move, Mel chose to leap. In doing so, he not only connected with his eventual wife, Annalee, a woman making a similar gamble in pursuit of her passions, but found a job far more promising than the safe opportunity he'd sacrificed. With the world erupting in flames around them, Mel and Annalee's lives intertwined. Together, they braved great danger to chronicle the horrors around them. Finally, after a tremendous escape and much sacrifice, they reached a serene, peaceful refuge, where home beckoned and nothing seemed capable of going wrong ...

This is a grand story of a world teetering on the precipice of historic upheaval, an intimate tale of two young people with the world laid out before them, and a glimpse of moments of tenderness they're able to share amid the harshest circumstances.

Rememberences of Bataan, Corregidor and China — the three places Melville Jacoby reported  — at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Bill Lascher)

While I find this story compelling, it's possible that's not what will motivate you to offer a few dollars. Might there be other reasons you'll contribute? Have I ever entertained you? Were you ever intrigued by something I've written or said elsewhere? Did you ever laugh at one of my tweets or status updates. Was I the one to introduce you to my neighborhood goats? Has their been a reporting trend you found out about or an under-discussed natural danger you've learned about because of me? Maybe I helped you discover a new way to get around your city. 

I wonder whether there's something more personal that might convince you to support me. Have I ever introduced you to a new friend or helped you find a lover? Perhaps we've cheered for the Dodgers together. Maybe we took a class together, or whiled away a few hours over beers. Did we run miles and miles together? What about traveling; have we crisscrossed the country or explored a foreign city together?

Maybe we've held each other's hands. Maybe we've kissed. Maybe we've fought.

Perhaps we've cooked a meal together or whiled away a Sunday morning at brunch. Perhaps we've stayed up dreaming, regretting or reminiscing. Perhaps I witnessed your wedding or watched your children grow up. Perhaps I celebrated your career and cheered your triumphs.

Maybe you once sat in awe listening to Mel's tale and told me who should play the leads in a movie of this life, wondering why no publisher has picked it up yet, let alone a film studio.  

There's another potentially more likely possibility: we may have never met. It's quite likely we've never shared anything beyond existence in this moment. But maybe you recognize something in these words, some kind of yearning for it all to finally click, for something to come of years of work.

Maybe you don't want to give me anything. So, I wonder, what would you suggest? What should I do to keep these wheels turning? Where do I find work that I can pour myself into while still being able to tell Mel's story? How can I fund that story? What am I missing?

Click to Fund My Research

Happy Holidays From Mel

View fullsize

Here's how Melville Jacoby celebrated the holidays when he was in China as an exchange student in 1936-37: with custom-made holiday cards from Canton, where he studied at Lingnan University.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

A Wedding At The Brink of War

View fullsize

Mel and Annalee walking together through Manila on their wedding day.

Seventy-two years ago today, mere days before Pearl Harbor, two young journalists from California married as war clouds gathered over Manila. Melville and Annalee Jacoby had met at Stanford and reconnected in the Spring of 1942 when Mel briefly went home to the United States. Annalee arrived in Chongqing n September, 1941, and the couple quickly fell in love. Mel proposed as the couple raced through Chongqing's steep streets on rickshaws, their drivers dodging crowds and bomb-blast potholes, but the next day Time asked him to transfer to Manila. Annalee had work to finish and wouldn't join him for two months. They got married the day she arrived in Manila, Nov. 26, 1941. Their romance is one for the ages, and it's the heart of the book I'm working on about Mel. Here's an excerpt from that book about the wedding day that I've adapted a bit for this space). Happy Anniversary!

That day, Mel waited on the shoreline for her plane to land. The approach to the beach seemed to Annalee to take hours. The entire time she eyed Mel by the side of the water in his gleaming white suit, white shirt and yellow tie.

As soon as Annalee stepped off the plane, Mel whisked her off to the Union Church of Manila. Her wedding gown a casual white nylon dress covered in prints of palm trees, ukuleles, pineapples and leis, Annalee strolled along a Manila street with one hand clutching Mel's arm and a yellow, broad-brimmed straw hat tucked under her other arm. She beamed as she looked up at him. He strode confidently, almost smugly.

“It was just like I'd always hoped it would be,” Annalee said.

Mel had wanted a justice of the peace, but the search for one who could speak English had ended up a comedy of errors and cultural clashes, so he chose the Union Church’s Reverend Walter Books Foley. Foley performed the ceremony in a small room off the chapel decorated with white flowers and green drapes. Mel had spent $746 on two rings: a simple platinum band, and another with a square 1 ½ carat diamond head and small diamonds branching off along its platinum mount.

“Looks like half a milk bottle it is so big,” Mel told his parents.

Life photographer Carl Mydans was Mel’s best man. Mydans’s wife, Shelley, a writer for Time and Life and a mutual friend of Mel and Annalee from Stanford, was the matron of honor. The only other guest at the ceremony was Allan Michie, another Time reporter. After the ceremony, other friends of Mel's met the newlyweds at the Bay View Hotel, where they danced around a portable phonograph, called home and celebrated.

For a brief moment after the wedding, the world fell away from Mel and Annalee. That they didn't have the traditional wedding their friends in the Chinese government wanted to throw for them back in Chungking didn't matter. That all their things — including most of Annalee's clothes — were on a ship that would end up diverted from Manila when the war started didn't matter. They were two young reporters in love.

“He types on the desk, and I type on the dressing table, and we both feel awfully sorry for the people next door,” Annalee told Mel’s parents.

View fullsize

Mel and Annalee Jacoby's Wedding at the Union Church of Manila.

Mel and Annalee slipped away for a brief honeymoon at a cabin near the Philippine town of Tagaytay, as much a tourist destination then as it is today. Their cabin overlooked the stunning lake Taal and the volcanic island at its center. The shack's electricity didn't stay on through the night and the faucet dripped, but they were happy to be able to escape — if just for a weekend — from a war that was then just days away.

Tied up next to the cabin were two baby giant pandas. Madame Chiang had entrusted Mel and Annalee with the animals’ care — not an easy feat — until they could be loaded onto the Calvin Coolidge, the last passenger ship to leave the Philippines before the war began.

Aside from the Pandas, the couple received a bevy of luxurious and stately gifts from their friends and contacts in China. These included red satin blankets, elaborate vases and piles of greetings from other journalists they knew in Chungking. Hollington Tong — China’s information minister and Mel’s former boss — gave them cash because he couldn't throw a “Red Sedan” wedding for the Jacobys. Such a traditional ceremony would have involved drummers, fine clothing and an elaborate chair. But the conflict made that celebration impossible.

Despite headaches caused by caring for the pandas, the intermittent services at the cabin and a rainstorm, the Jacobys were not dismayed, as Annalee explained in a letter to Mel's parents:

“The running water worked only at intervals, the electricity blinked on and off all one evening, and it poured, but it was still the most wonderful honeymoon anyone ever had.”

Motion Picture Treat: "When The Whole World Is So Upset"

For the first time ever I'm able to share a movie of Melville Jacoby himself!

On Jan. 8, 1941, Melville Jacoby was on a boat from China bound for Manila and, eventually, to the United States. He had just finished a year's work as a stringer in China and the region then called Indochina. There, in the city of Haiphong (a part of modern-day Vietnam), Mel had been arrested and briefly detained by the Japanese, who'd accused him of being a spy. As he traveled back to the United States, he wrote a moving letter to his Mother in which he attempted to reassure her about the risks he'd taken in the previous year.

Listen to excerpts from that letter as you watch this video, which features snippets of Mel when he was a young man in China. This is just a minute's worth of footage from the more than an hour and a half of Mel's films that have been digitized. Your contributions make it possible for me to find and process these amazing artifacts. They allow me to present a richer version of Mel's story and the way they show a young man laughing with friends and capturing his wonder at the places he saw humanize him as well. If you haven't yet, please contribute today.

Sponsor My Work

Not even pandas could spoil this honeymoon

Pandas at the National Zoo. Credit: Ann Batdorf, National Zoological Park, http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/PhotoGallery/GiantPandas/default.cfm

This week's news of a panda cub's birth at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. reminds me of one of of the more comical aspects of Melville Jacoby's story. Shortly after Mel proposed to Annalee Whitmore he was transferred by TIME to Manila to cover the brewing war. After wrapping up her work with Madame Chiang's United China Relief, Annalee joined Mel and the two were married shortly before Thanksgiving, 1941. But the couple didn't end up in the Philippines unaccompanied, even after their nuptials.

"They slipped away for a two-day rainy honeymoon in a cottage on Tagaytay," wrote TIME in its May 11, 1942 obituary of Mel [Sorry for the paywalled link] . "But they were not alone; they had to see to the care & feeding of two baby giant pandas, gifts of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek en route to the U.S." Madame Chiang offered the pandas as gifts to the children of America in an early example of what's come to be known as panda diplomacy. After the pandas safely arrived in the U.S. in early 1942, United China Relief and the New York Zoological Society (now known as the Wildlife Conservation Society) sponsored a contest for children across the U.S. to name them. Nancy Lostutter II of Columbus Ind. won the contest with the names "Pan-dah" and "Pan-dee." In a bizarre twist, though the pandas were thought to be a male and female, zoo officials realized a few years after they arrived and didn't mate that they were both, indeed, female [again, sorry, pay-walled].

Mel and Annalee were tasked with watching over the yet-unnamed pandas until zoologist John Tee-Van could ferry them out of the Philippines and across the Pacific (ultimately, the bears made it out on the last convoy from Manila to the U.S. before the city's collapse). The pandas were enough of a headache that Mel dedicated a paragraph of a Nov. 15, 1941 letter home to venting about them.

"I've been going wild again over the Panda situation," Mel wrote to his parents. "Two of them arriving with the Zoo keeper tomorrow and I've had to do everything from hire station wagons, to finding places for them to stay, to getting special kinds of bamboo and sugar cane flown down from the provinces in a chartered plane. What a business. People phoning all the time wanting to see the animals, or borrow them, sell insurance, an air conditioning plant, grape jiuce [sic] and everything imaginable."

Two weeks later, Mel and Annalee each sent letters to Mel's parents describing their wedding and brief honeymoon. In her note, Annalee describes their beautiful lakeside escape, and how the pandas even came along for their honeymoon.

"After a subdued dinner we drove to Tagaytay for two days -- a cottage next to the pandas, overlooking a huge island-dotted lake in what used to be a volcano crater. The running water worked only at intervals, the electricity blinked on and off all one evening, and it poured, but it was still the most wonderful honeymoon anyone ever had."

Meet Marie

There were other romances for Melville Jacoby before he and Annalee Whitmore escaped the Philippines as newlyweds. This shouldn't surprise most of you. Many have remarked about Mel's good looks, and photos of him certainly seem to excite the Tumblr set. Saying Mel was dashing might be superficial, but it's no less true. Of course, it's tough not to allow our contemporary nostalgia for all things vintage to enhance Mel's charm. Nevertheless, he was handsome.

Though Annalee was the woman who finally won Mel's heart, others came first. After a visit to Hong Kong in early 1937, for example, Mel wrote about a date "with two girls Sunday night one of them was a more modern Chinese girl." Mel proceeded to remark how Hong Kong girls were more modern than those around his college in Lingnan; then he bragged about swimming at the Lido twice, including "Once at one A.M. in the moonlight." Modernity indeed.

But Mel had more than dates. Two women stand out in particular: Marie (Seen above) and Shirlee (a college sweetheart who I'll introduce in another post).

Marie was the daughter of a wealthy Portuguese colonist who had many Chinese wives. Mel first met her on a holiday vacation during his year at Lingnan University. He'd befriended a man named Carlos at a pilot school in Hong Kong. Carlos, in turn, invited Mel and some other exchange students for what Mel describes in one letter as a "big four day party."

In those four days, Mel met Carlos's 18 sisters. Among them was Marie. Over the ensuing months and weeks, Mel's letters evolve from mentions of a "very nice looking friend" who telegrams Mel to visit Macau for the weekend, to references to his "girlfriend." The exchanges ensue as Mel accepts more invitations to Macau, though some are also from his friend Carlos, who he admires very much.

"Did so and again was the victim of hospitality, one or two parties and such," he wrote to his parents(I continue to be struck by his candor in his correspondence with them). "Arrived on campus at six a.m. and read your letters in my seven o'clock class."

It certainly is a unique relationship. Though Mel gladly visits, their dates must be chaperoned. And chaperoned they are ... by all seven of Marie's "mothers." Each of the wives of Marie's father accompany the couple on their dates.

None of this dissuades Mel, and by the time his exchange program wraps up in June, 1937, he considers bringing Marie with him back to the United States. But in his description of his decision not to do so we see a troubling hint at the casual prejudices of Mel's era, prejudices that Mel himself can't escape.

"Had lots of fun taking her out spending money and everything," Mel writes to his mother and stepfather. "Thought about taking her home and putting her in pictures but decided stepping off the gangplank in U.S. with her on my arm might cause considerable consternation among my closest relatives."

It's too bad to realize that Mel's relatives -- my relatives -- might be so troubled by the thought of Mel becoming serious with a half-Chinese woman, and it's even more troubling that Mel himself succumbed to such concerns. Sadly, such hesitations were not isolated to Mel or his family but were a reality of their era.

But even that sentiment is my interpretation of a small part of Mel's correspondence, much of which reveals a growing infatuation with Marie. In future posts and in the book itself, I hope to offer more about Marie (indeed, I have one special treat planned). I'll also, of course, introduce Shirlee as well. If you don't want to miss these or other posts, please subscribe to email updates or this blog's RSS feeds if you haven't already.

For now I"ll leave you with the note Marie left for Mel the day he left after his exchange program.

More Artifacts From a Journalist's Life: Correspondence

While I'm away from the Internet for a few days, I'm sharing a few glimpses of the letters, telegrams, photos and other materials from Melville Jacoby's brief but fascinating life. If you like these and would like to see me complete a book telling Mel's fantastic true story, please read more about Mel and make a contribution today. Though Mel spent years away from his home and family in Los Angeles, California, he was a dedicated correspondent. He wrote to his mother, Elza, and stepfather, Manfred, regularly, and also to other relatives, friends, and coworkers. Mel's letters were reflective, touchingly honest, incredibly detailed, and often quite humorous. Later, in my book about Mel's life, as well as in future blog posts, I'll quote extensively from these letters to give you more of a direct sense of what Mel wrote and how he thought. For now, I thought I'd offer a glimpse of how these letters, their envelopes, even something as simple as their return addresses invokes nostalgia for an earlier era.

Here are some of those envelopes, letterheads, and signatures from Mel's travels around the world:

When Mel went to Lingnan University as an exchange student from Stanford University, he got there by way of an around-the-world steamship journey. Like hotels, many of the ships that transported Mel had their own stationery. This envelope from the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation company was addressed to Mel's mother and stepfather in Bel Air.

For a time, Mel worked for the Republic of China's Ministry of Information. This position put him in contact with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek and his wife, Soong Mei-Ling, also known as Madame Chiang. He interviewed each of them and even penned a profile of Madame Chiang for the San Francisco Chronicle. Later Mel's wife Annalee worked for Madame Chiang's United China Relief. When the couple wed, the Chiangs sent them many unique gifts on behalf of the Chinese nation, all of which were later destroyed by Japanese bombing raids on the Philippines. This is a closeup of the letterhead Madame Chiang used to write Mel a note regarding his interview of her for the Chronicle. Note the Stanford letterhead of the letter in the file beneath this visible through the nearly transparent letterhead of this paper.  Many of the documents I'm using as sources for this project are incredibly fragile. A portion of your donations will go to making sure all these historic materials are properly preserved and protect.

Mel was often lighthearted in his letters home. Though born to one of Los Angeles's first Jewish families, Mel became a Christian Scientist when his mother adopted the religion after the death of her first husband and Mel's father, also named Melville. Their devotion did not curtail Mel's sense of humor.

In the summer of 1937, after Mel finished his semester as an exchange student at Lingnan University, he spent time travelling through Japan. There, he was tailed by Japanese police and regularly witnessed the growing nationalist fervor in that country during the first stages of what became World War II. This return address was on the back of one of the letters Mel sent home from Japan.

Check back on Monday for another set of artifacts from Melville Jacoby's amazing life.  If  you missed the first installment of this series, check it out here. Meanwhile, don't forget to donate.

Artifacts From a Young Journalist's Fantastic Life

While I'm in the middle of travels that will keep me off the Internet for a few days, I wanted to share some finds from my recent trip to Southern California to learn more about Melville Jacoby. When I get back I'll share some reflections from my visit with George T.M. Ching as well as deeper examinations of Mel's life than have ever been shared on this page. For now, I'll share some of my recent discoveries. This really is but a sliver of what I've found. This book certainly won't want for a lack of source material, much of which I've brought home with me. These include thousands of pages of letters and cables, hundreds of photographs, a couple hours of home movies shot by Mel from his journeys around the world, some audio, half a dozen books, a journal, even a pith helmet that once belonged to Mel (that's more for my own fun than the book itself).

Please enjoy them, but don't forget: What I didn't bring home with me is money. Some of you have supported this project already, and I could never have made it to a point where I could make use of these resources without your support. But the next step is ensuring I can afford to continue to transform these materials into a book. I invite any continued support, and donations will continue to be welcome at wepay.com/donations/melvillejacoby or lascheratlarge.com/melville while I'm away.

Here are your first tastes of what I have to share:

Melville Jacoby and Annalee Whitmore on their wedding day in November, 1941. They were married in the Philippines, where Mel had just transferred to work as Time Magazine's Manila correspondent.

Annalee and Melville Jacoby making the most of a layover on the Philippine island of Cebu while on the run from the Japanese in March, 1942. Forced to cut their honeymoon short when the U.S. entered World War II, the couple's travelling companions and Cebu's native population helped them celebrate in the middle of their adventure.

A note appended to a memo Time News Editor David Hulburd wrote about the status of Mel, Annalee, and their friends Carl and Shelley Mydans after the Japanese occupation of the Philippines

Check back Friday and Monday for more artifacts!