Pearl Harbor as a Reporter Experienced it in Manila

Today marks the 71st anniversary of the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor. Popular history places Dec. 7, 1941 — the day that would live in infamy — as the start of the U.S. involvement in World War II. Of course, the situation was more complicated than that. Reporters like Melville Jacoby saw war coming for some time. They witnessed rising tensions in the days and weeks that preceded Pearl Harbor and speculated when (and where), not if, war would come. In his role as Time Magazine's Far East bureau chief, Mel relayed those reports that seemed most credible and his analysis of the news collected across Asia to the magazine's editors in New York City. These editors, in turn, synthesized Mel's cables for news updates in Time (and, at times, Luce's other publications, LIFE and Fortune) and drew upon them as background for future stories.

This week, as December 7 approached, I tweeted bits of the cables Mel wrote during that last week of "peace." Now, I'd like to share pieces of what Mel cabled the day of the attacks (which, because the Philippines are on the other side of the International Date Line, meant it was Dec. 8, 1941 when Manila heard about the attacks).

At first, Mel cabled, the the gravity of the situation didn't seem to register in the Filipino capital:

"Manila has not yet digested the fact of war. Balloon and toy salesmen and vendors on the streets with extra editions are just appearing as fully equipped soldiers are appearing."

That first cable, sent from Manila at 10 a.m. to Time's David Hulburd, confirmed bombing raids at three locations across the Philippines, though at that point there hadn't yet been raids, or even alarms, in the city. However, American military officials prepared to fight.

"MacArthur's headquarters were the grimmest place at dawn this morning when the war staff was aroused to face war [and] send troops to their battle stations. Extra headquarters guards arrived at 9.A.M. as officers began donning helmets and gas masks while grabbing hurried gulps of coffee and sandwiches."

As officers began to study maps and reporters crowded into press rooms, rumors began to spread across the city.

"The whole thing has busted here like one bombshell, though, as previous cables showed the military has been alert over the week."

In only a few hours, though, the city began to realize what was happening, as Mel wrote in another cable that day:

"War feeling hit the populace about noon time when there were full runs on banks, grocery stores, gas stations. All taxis and garage cars were taken by the military, clogging transport systems. Our own planes overhead are drawing thousands of eyes now, while they didn't earlier this morning..."

Introducing "Monsieur Big-Hat"

Most of my posts about Melville Jacoby focus squarely on nonfiction. He was a journalist. I am a journalist. Though Mel worked for a time as a broadcaster and was handy with a camera, he was first and foremost a writer. So it shouldn't be terribly surprising that he dabbled in fiction a bit. Some of that fiction is pretty good, though it was never published. Take "Monsieur Big-Hat." That's a short story Mel wrote in 1940 while he was working in Chongqing, China's wartime capital (then known as Chungking). Written at a time when the Japanese were pounding Chongqing with bomb upon bomb, "Monsieur Big-Hat" describes an American correspondent's encounter with a French diplomat who was just about to leave China to return to Paris after years away. The two meet during an air raid in a shelter dug deep beneath Chongqing. Just as dark news reports arrive from France, the diplomat — so eager to return to his wife and son — makes a fateful decision amid the rattled nerves and thunderous blasts of the raid. It's a poignant glimpse of life during wartime with descriptions of the attacks so vivid that they were clearly informed by Jacoby's own experience in the Chinese city.

Mel also took a number of compelling photos of the air raids on Chongqing. I took the story and put it together with some of these photos in a short eBook that's now available online (an MP3 audiobook is also available). I've given the book as a gift to everyone who contributed to One Last Assignment, but now anyone else who wants a copy can get one, too. It's available for just $2 in a variety of formats at my new store at lascheratlarge.com/store and on most many of the other places online where one buys books. That's currently the only item on sale in my store*, but I hope to add other projects soon.

However, if you're looking for something lovely as a Christmas gift, any shot from my entire photography portfolio can now be ordered as a print online. Click here to see those photos or here to place an order.**

* This was the case in 2012 when I first wrote this post. As of February, 2023, more items are available in the store and it presumably will continue to change over time.

** Photo sales are temporarily unavailable as of February, 2023, but per the note above, this is likely to change.

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.

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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!

Picking up where Melville Jacoby left off

It may have taken seven decades, but the book Melville Jacoby never got to finish is finally taking shape. This morning marks one of the most exciting as I continue to pick up where Mel was silenced. In a short while I'll be in an apartment in Alhambra, California, meeting with George T.M. Ching, his wife, and their daughter. George was one of Mel's dear friends during his time as an exchange student at Lingnan University. At ninety-seven-years-old, it's uncertain how able George will be to deeply reflect on Mel's life, but I expect the chance to share some time with someone who Mel cared strongly about, and who cared strongly about him will be valuable.

Already, the past ten days have brought me much deeper into Mel's story. What I've seen is unbelievable: first hand accounts of journalists nervously huddling in a Manila hotel room as they debate whether to escape or face capture by the Japanese, photographs of newlyweds in makeshift clothes making the best of an island refuge while on the run, home movies of bomb-ravaged cities, shocked telegrams spreading the news of a young journalist's death, playful letters home from an eager college student travelling the world, massive cables describing the buildup for war to editors. That's just a sliver of what I found.

I'm excited to have all this raw material to work with because it so enriches what I know not just about Mel, but the world in which he lived. But, of course, raw material is one thing. I need to write it up. From reading Mel's letters I know all too well that all our plans can be so suddenly shattered. From what seemed like safety in Australia, Mel dashed off his last cables to the U.S. They included negotiations with New York publishers about a book deal based on his reporting, as well as early drafts of that book. I may struggle to make ends meet to write and publish Mel's story, the one he was never able to tell, but as many sacrifices as I think I might be making to tell it, I'm not making the sacrifice - ultimately so much nobler - that Mel made to the world and his country as he told that story. As much research as I'm doing, writing is just as important. Mel's story cannot linger another 70 years for some distant relative to pick up.

One Last Assignment One More Time

After much anticipation, last week I released a new video describing Melville Jacoby's fantastic life. It also reintroduces the work I'm doing to tell his story. I'm really proud of this video. I'd love to hear your opinion in the comments, or by email or social media, and for you to share it with anyone interested in wartime journalism, storytelling, or 1930s and 40s nostalgia.

Meanwhile, I've extended my fundraising deadline for Melville Jacoby's story through the summer. If you haven't had a chance to donate, now's a great time to do so.

Next week, I'll be boarding a train to Southern California. There, I have two major projects scheduled. First of all, I'll finally meet 97-year-old George T.M. Ching, who Mel befriended when he was an exchange student at Lingnan University. I can't wait to hear first-hand from one of Mel's friends what it was like to study and travel with him. Actually, I'm looking forward to whatever George has to say.

My other goal is also pretty exciting for me, and very important to this project. I'm going to visit my grandmother's house for the first time since I formally started working on Mel's story (Why my grandmother? Because Mel was her cousin, and she ended up with all the various artifacts Mel's mother, Elza, kept after he died). That means access to many, many more primary source documents, photographs, recordings and other materials that either belonged to Mel or involved him. For the first time I'll be able to thoroughly and systematically inventory everything she has available so I can then better identify what gaps I need to fill in my research.

Since I'll be in the greater L.A. area, I'll also be able to conduct other research as it arises and take advantage of a few resources unique to the area.

Your support will help pay for this trip and the work I'll do while I'm there. As I did on my recent trip to the Bay Area, I'll do my best to blog, tweet and record my trip.

Thanks again to those of you who have already helped out.

Discovering One More Friend of Melville Jacoby's

This world is tiny.

By now, anyone closely following Melville Jacoby's story knows a little bit about Chan Ka Yik. For newcomers, Chan (who later adopted the Americanized "George K.Y. Chan") was Mel's roommate while the two studied at China's Lingnan University during the 1936-37 academic year. Last week, a few members of my family and I met Chan's daughters for something of a reunion between our two families.

As I've already described, the visit was lovely. But it also stirred up a fantastic coincidence, one that could reshape how I tell this story, and which I think will provide a truly unique glimpse on Mel's time as an exchange student in China.

Seeing who steps out of the woodworks has been a big part of this project. Last year I tried to find some hint of Chan Ka Yik during a day-long layover in San Francisco. A few days later, his daughter, Emmy, called me to respond to a longshot email I'd sent to a cousin I'd found a few weeks earlier. That first call put our two families in touch and laid the groundwork for last week's reunion.

This Spring, a man named Darrow Carson reached out to me. Carson's grandfather, Lew, was a fellow passenger on the Doña Nati, the ship that took Mel, Annalee and Clark Lee on the final leg of their escape from the Philippines. As Clark Lee explained in 1943's "They Call it Pacific," with American forces deploying to the Pacific, hotel rooms were scarce when the group arrived in Australia. Lew Carson finally found the group beds after they'd spent weeks sleeping on freighter decks.

But the coincidence in Palo Alto is something else entirely. During our lunch with Chan Ka Yik's daughters, my grandma told the stories she'd heard about her cousin Mel and his time in China, and about the people he knew. One was Chan. Another was a man named George Ta-Min Ching. Many of the photos Mel took in China, including the one attached to this post, featured Ching, a handsome man who often appeared in sharp suits (Of course, who among Mel's contemporaries, himself included, wasn't utterly dashing or stunningly beautiful?).

Chan's daughters all knew about Ching. They called him "Uncle Ching" and had met him multiple times when he'd visit their father's Dim Sum restaurant in San Francisco. George T.M. Ching had moved to Los Angeles in 1951. Indeed, he even called on Elza Meyberg (Melville's mother) multiple times over the years. It was from him that Chan first learned of Mel's tragic death.

George Ching was a success in America. He was a co-founder of Cathay Bank, which the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California says aimed to provide financial services and capital to L.A.'s growing Chinese American community. The bank has grown significantly since then and is the oldest Chinese American bank in the country.

In addition to his professional success, Ching raised two daughters in Silverlake. That fact caught the attention of my aunt's husband Mike, who grew up near Silverlake around the same time. "Was one of them named Debbie?" Mike asked, remembering a high school friend with whom he remains in touch. Sure enough, one was, and Mike emailed a photo to his friend.

The next day Debbie Ching responded, flabbergasted why he'd have a picture of her father as a college student. Mike explained that his mother-in-law Peggy (my grandmother) was a cousin of a good friend of Debbie's father when they were young. Debbie, in turn, recalled her fathers frequent fond stories of a many he referred to always as just "Jacoby."

What's most amazing, though? Three quarters of a century after he and Mel met, Ching is still alive at 97-years-old. Apparently, he has seen the pictures Mike sent to Debbie and he may be willing to speak with me and/or my grandmother about Mel. I'm floored by this news because the chance to speak to one of Mel's contemporaries would be extraordinary. I'll certainly keep you posted about how this goes.

Your support is what made it possible for me to make this discovery. Will you help make it make more discoveries before it's no longer possible? If so, Please make a contribution , and you can always learn more about Mel and my effort to tell his story on my central page about him at lascheratlarge.com/melville.

Won't You Be My Mrs. Luce?

Earlier this afternoon I shared the first in a series of stories about my visit to Palo Alto last week to further study Melville Jacoby. As much as I hope you enjoyed it, I need your help today to keep telling these stories and finish telling the story Mel died trying to tell. Last week, at lunch with the children of Chan Ka Yik, my grandma described how Melville Jacoby became a China specialist. It began while he was an exchange student at Lingnan University and deepened after he returned to Stanford. There, he penned columns for the Stanford Daily about the war erupting between China and Japan and studied the way the media covered conflict in Asia. As I've described elsewhere, Mel returned to China upon graduation and strung together a career for himself.

"[Mel and other young journalists in China] didn't have anything like Kickstarter," My grandmother told our new friends. "What they had was this opportunity to talk on the radio to America, and to send home material, because he was learning. Gradually he became very expert on his subject."

She turned and looked at me "He was you at that stage of the game," my grandmother said. "It was a different way, but that's a story too. How does a young reporter like Bill Lascher get started?"

This is how. By not letting go. Two weeks ago I completed a quarter teaching a community college class on multimedia journalism and turned in the last of two small freelance assignments on my plate. All that's left for me is what I'm doing now: throwing all that I have on the table in pursuit of this one last assignment. Everything I have, everything I can be is now focused on this account of the first Time Magazine reporter killed in the line of duty, this tale of Melville Jacoby, this story of my family's beloved cousin and this man who lived so fantastically before he died so tragically.

"He had the good luck to be on an airplane with Mrs.[Clare Booth] Luce [the wife of Time Magazine founder Henry Luce, who was also on that plane], who was impressed with him." my grandmother said. "You have to be on an airplane with someone who will be impressed with you."

Won't you be my Mrs. Luce? I'll do everything I can to impress you. You don't even have to board an airplane, you can just make a secure online donation right here:

Enter an Amount

A Reunion of Sorts

California, here I come, right back where I started from. In a little less than two weeks I'll hit the road for Palo Alto, California, the home of Stanford University. That's where Melville Jacoby earned his bachelor and master's degrees in the 1930s (it's also where his wife, Annalee Whitmore Jacoby Fadiman was the first female managing editor of the daily student newspaper and where other close friends, such as Shelley Smith Mydans, studied). It's a trip I've long been waiting for, and one that wouldn't be possible without the support, encouragement and financial contributions I've received since I first launched my Kickstarter campaign and then launched the current fundraising campaign. Yes, I'll be retracing Mel's footsteps and digging through archives, but I'm most excited for what might best be described as a reunion. One of the more fascinating aspects of Melville Jacoby's life was his relationship with Ka Yik Chan (later known as George K.Y. Chan). Chan was Mel's roommate at Lingnan University, in Guangzhou, where Mel spent his sophomore year of college. The two became fast friends. As is evident in photos and letters home, Mel was quite fond of Chan and treasured the adventures the two took around China. Even my grandmother and her sister -- Mel's younger cousins -- recall the stories Mel told of their travels when he returned home. For example, Chan's father was an influential landowner in Southern China -- what some refer to as a "warlord." On one of Mel's trips with Chan to the family's compound, the two were picked up by a sedan chair. Though Mel came from a wealthy family in Los Angeles, he was modest about his status, and particularly uncomfortable with the idea of Chinese peasants carrying to the compound a young European man who could have easily walked the dirt road.

After Mel died and after the conclusion of World War II, Chan was forced to leave China. His family had become a target of the communist regime that had come to control the country. Chan moved first to Hong Kong and then, after abandoning everything but his wife and children, to the U.S., where he settled in San Francisco in the early 1950s. There, Chan and his wife started a Dim Sum restaurant and raised their family as Americans.

Two Families Meet

My grandmother (Mel's cousin and also Stanford grad, by the way) and I have long discussed how curious we are about what happened to this man who was such an integral part of Mel's life. Had it not been for their friendship and Chan's hospitality, Mel may have had a very different in China, and may not have fallen in love with that country the way we did. You'll have to read the book (and, hopefully, help me afford to research and write it) to learn more about that love and about Mel's time at Lingnan. Last fall, I was finally able to speak on the phone with one of Chan's daughters and learned just a little bit more about their family. Since then, Emmy has been one of my biggest cheerleaders for this project, stressing how much her father would want to see Mel's story told.

Now we'll have a chance to meet in person. The same weekend I'm in Palo Alto, my grandmother plans to visit my aunt (yet another Stanford alum - that side of my family's rife with them). While we're there, we'll meet Emmy and her sisters (all of whom still live in the Bay Area) for the first time in our lives. Though as a young girl one of the sisters once met Mel's mother during a family visit to Los Angeles, over the years the ways of the world meant our families did not stay in touch. Now we will have a chance to reconnect, to get to know one another, and to share stories about these loved ones of ours. My grandmother also plans to bring photos and other materials of Chan's to share with his daughters, some of which they most likely have never seen.

This is one of those amazing things about life: the way we thread ourselves in and out of each other's worlds, the way these oceans of years can still be crossed, the the pages keep turning.

This is one of those amazing things about life: this is only possible because you've made it happen.

California, here I come.

Right back where I started from.

What it sounded like

In recent weeks I've been re-reading Clark Lee's "They Call it Pacific." The book describes the first phases of the U.S.'s entry into World War II from Lee's perspective as an Associated Press reporter first in Shanghai, then in the Philippines. Lee, as I may have mentioned elsewhere, escaped Manila just short of midnight on New Year's Eve, 1941, on the same boat as Melville Jacoby and his wife, Annalee. Thus Lee's narrative of the war's first years -- particularly his description of those first few months after Pearl Harbor -- provides an important base for my work on Mel's life. The read has been thought-provoking aside from those passages about Mel. At some future point I look forward to writing about some of the tangents Lee's book has led me along, not the least of which being my discovery of his involvement in the Tokyo Rose controversy (It's so easy to learn so much about other subjects while doing research like this). For now, I thought I'd share a terrific passage I read this afternoon that powerfully captures the experience of enduring regular bombing raids. The raids Lee describes here took place in early January, 1942, as he and Mel and Annalee waited on the island fortress of Corregidor for the next phase of their journey away from the Philippines.

"...Then would come the noise of the bombs falling. The bombs didn't screech or whistle or whine. They sounded like a pile of planks being whirled around in the air by a terrific wind and driven straight down to the ground. The bombs took thirty years to hit. While they were falling they changed the dimensions of the world. The noise stripped the eagles from the colonel's shoulders and left him a little boy, naked and afraid. It drove all the intelligence from the nurse's eyes and left them vacant and staring. It wrapped a steel tourniquet of fear around your head, until your skull felt like bursting. It made you realize why man found he needed a God."

This is what war sounded like. This is what war sounds like.