I woke up early Saturday, excited to make my first foray into the field researching Melville Jacoby’s story (not counting my visit to the shipwreck named after him, or the informal visits to my grandmother’s house work on this project began in earnest). The drive was pleasant. Eugene was lively as students and visitors enjoyed the sun and warm temperatures. The special collections librarian on duty was helpful and welcoming, as was the undergraduate assistant who lugged up a huge box of transcripts to the collection’s reading room.
It looked like she was in for many more trips. There were nine total boxes, and it wasn’t clear what order they were in. There was no finding aid, so I’d have to guess.
So, I started with box number one. It kinda felt like christmas as I opened it. What might I learn? What might I discover inside?
Many of you have heard about Melville Jacoby by now. Those who haven’t can read more about him there, and elsewhere on my blog. Now that the seventieth anniversary of his death is upon us, I’m renewing my work writing the book Mel never got to write.
Later today I’m headed down to Eugene, OR, to visit the special collections at the University of Oregon library. There, I’ll peruse the manuscripts of the Charles E. Stuart Collection. Stuart, you’ll recall, was the dentist and amateur radio enthusiast in Ventura, Calif. who received radio broadcasts Mel set up from XGOY, the official Republic of China radio station in wartime Chungking, China (now known as Chongqing). Somehow, the complete transcripts of these broadcasts, files full of related materials and original recordings of them ended up just 100 miles away from my current home. Though my grandmother has a few of the recordings, I’ve yet to visit her home in California to listen to them since this project started.
Continue reading “Studying Melville Jacoby in Eugene”
Seventy years ago, Sunday, a plane landed at a secret airfield near Darwin, Australia. Three men disembarked. One was a young second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Another was a general, a former ace pilot who’d shot down five German planes during the first World War. The third was a handsome, dark-haired young man from Southern California, a journalist who’d spent his twenties reporting from bombed out capitals, exploring Asia, earning two degrees, marrying another correspondent with whom he’d just survived a dramatic escape from the Philippines.
Across the tarmac, a fighter plane set out for daily maneuvers. As its pilot prepared for take-off, the plane veered out of control as a landing gear tire blew. The aircraft careened across the airfield and plowed into the landing party. Mortally injured, the general died in surgery that day. The lieutenant died instantly, as did the young journalist.
Seventy years ago, far from the fighting, far from the battlefield, for the first time ever, Time Magazine lost a reporter in the line of duty.
Seventy years ago, my family lost a beloved cousin.
I’ve been reading some of Melville Jacoby‘s correspondence, and I found this little snippet that so well illustrates just how global World War II really was.
“…You presume immediately that these foreigners are some of the Russians you have heard practically fill the streets of the Kansu capital. But they aren’t Russians — only more Norweigan youngsters. The third batch, in fact, coming through Moscow from Stockholm on their way to Canada and RAF training.”
This quote comes from a July 11, 1941 letter from Melville Jacoby to David Hulbard, then Time Magazine‘s news bureau chief. It describe’s Mel’s visit to Lanchow during a visit to Northwestern China with Carl and Shelley Mydans.
What remains of the S.S. Melville Jacoby
I’m also in Los Angeles doing research and visiting some locations of significance to Melville Jacoby’s early life. That also meant a visit to the wreckage of the ship once known as the S.S. Melville Jacoby was in order. Two friends of mine and I endured the unexpectedly long hike (more accurately described as a six-mile scramble around the rocky shore along the base of the Palos Verdes Peninsula) to find the ship’s rusted remains.
Continue reading “What’s left of the S.S. Melville Jacoby”
Seventy years ago, yesterday, a small freighter, the Dona Nati, arrived at the Port of Brisbane. Aboard were a handful of Americans, mostly journalists, who’d just spent four often harrowing, often tense months at sea. Most of those months were spent aboard an even smaller vessel. Sailing at night and hiding, they’d dodged Japanese submarines, evaded cruisers on intercept courses and eluded dive bombers as they escaped the Philipines. Among the last to leave Manila on Dec. 31, 1941, just before the Japanese took control of that city, they’d spent time in the jungles and foxholes of Bataan before finally escaping Corrigedor aboard the Princesa de Cebu, the small blockade runner that saved their lives. With them, they brought some of the first accounts of the dire circumstances faced by under-supplied American and Filipino forces faced those first savage months of World War II.
These were, of course, the last months of Melville Jacoby’s short but fascinating life.
As I completed my Kickstarter campaign, I whipped together this video in which I read some excerpts of a letter Mel wrote to David Hulbard from the Island of Cebu, along with some glimpses of a pamphlet Stanford University prepared upon Mel’s death. Among the images also included is a map that accompanied a story in the Saturday Evening Post about the escape and written by journalist Charles Van Landingham.
Enjoy the story, and don’t forget to click “Contribute” now and share the link to my project with others.
I was interviewed by KCLU’s Lance Orozco for a story about Melville Jacoby that aired today for that station’s broadcast of “Morning Edition.” You should now be able to hear that story at the following link:
Thanks for listening. Please share this with anyone who might be interested.
Speaking of radio, don’t forget that you can pledge $750 and get a unique audio documentary produced about you or someone you care about, in addition to all the other great incentives I offer, like letters written from Mel’s typewriter and signed copies of the upcoming book. Want to hear an example of my audio work? Visit www.lascheratlarge.com/portfolio/audio or check out the first few editions of my “Along for the Ride” series of stories about Portland-area mass transit routes.
I was digging through the collection of materials I have at my place related to Melville Jacoby (most are at my Grandmother’s in California) and found a photocopy of a lovely letter written to Mel 74 years ago today. The note was sent by Chen Ka Yik, one of Mel’s best friends. The two were roommates at Lingnan University in Canton (now Guangzhou) while Mel was an exchange student there.
“The flight of time is like an arrow,” Chen writes on university letterhead
The letter responds to an earlier mailing Mel had sent. It describes Chen’s fondness for his roommate, and, in many ways, is the sort of letter anyone might send to catch up with an old friend. But these greetings are described against a backdrop of war. Though calm seemed to have returned when Chen wrote the letter, it was clearly still a presence.
“Maybe it is so lucky that no bombs dropped in Lingnan or very near Lingnan so far, although the firing of anti-aircraft guns and the explosion of bombs of somewhere around Canton came to our ear quite often,” Chen writes. “Mel, I should thank you so much for your sympathy to our country.”
In recent months I’ve tracked down Chen’s daughter, Emmy, who now lives in the bay area. During a phone call a few months ago Emmy told me how her father thought of Mel as one of his best friends and how he clearly thought of those days together at Lingnan as some of the happiest of his life. That comes through clearly in his letter.
If Chen’s name sounds familiar, by the way, that’s because after he emigrated to to the U.S. in the 1950s he helped open what became one of San Francisco’s best known Dim Sum restaurants, Yank Sing, though he sold his interest in the business long ago. Still, this is one example of how as I tell Mel’s story I’m also eager to explore what happened to the other people whose lives he touched.
“Mel, I am very anxious to know something about your home and college life,” Chen writes. “You are a rich, smart, stout and handsome boy so that your life will be cheerful and romantic.”
For a short time, it was.
Assignment China
Also, today I was excited to learn more about “Assignment China.” That’s a project at my graduate alma mater, the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and specifically its USC US-China Institute. Their effort to describe how journalists have told the story of China’s evolution since the 1940s has so much relevance to the story I’m trying to tell about Mel. I’m thrilled to have found them. If you’re at all interested in China or Journalism do check out their fascinating “Assignment China” documentary on YouTube.
What does a shipwreck off the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the 1960s have to do with Melville Jacoby’s death across the Pacific during World War II?
A lot, if you knew the ship that sank was originally christened the S.S. Melville Jacoby.
That’s the invitation my family received from the Walsh-Kaiser Company and the United States Maritime Commission for the 1944 launch of the Melville Jacoby. The ship was one of 2,710 liberty ships built during World War II to ferry supplies for the U.S. War effort.
A few years after the war, the ship was sold. Renamed a few times, it finally became known as the S.S. Dominator. It sailed under that name until one foggy night off the coast of Los Angeles. That night, fifty-one years ago today, the S.S. Dominator, née the S.S. Melville Jacoby, sunk off the Palos Verdes Peninsula. According to the Web site of the California Wreck Divers, the ship carried a cargo of beef and wheat from Vancouver, B.C. bound for the Port of Los Angeles, just around the bend from the point where the ship wrecked. Two days of crew and Coast Guard efforts to save the ship failed (and may have led to rescuers’ shipwrecks as well), and the wreckage remains to this day.
Another Web site has an even more detailed description of the wreck and the salvage operation (if this topic interests you, do check out the epic word document about the shipwreck and salvage linked on that site). One artist even painted a great depiction of the wreckage and the beach.
Perhaps the most interesting consequence of the shipwreck is what LAist describes in a 2008 “LAistory” story, which also has a good description of the Dominator’s demise and the salvage operation that followed. According to the LAist piece, thousands of tons of grain that spilled from the ship fed generations of lobster crawling across the wreckage (most likely because the porridge that emerged from the ship drew insects and other creatures that in turn attracted the lobster).
Of course, all of this is only tangentially related to Melville Jacoby’s already fascinating story. I think, though, with the tragedy and sadness that comes with the death of such a young man, it’s encouraging that this ship became a fixture for Southern California residents and visitors. Sure, it wasn’t the greatest news that the ship named after him eventually sank, but there’s some poetry in the fact it gave root to a marine ecosystem. In a way, it’s a reminder that some aspects of Mel’s legacy persist in new ways.
Jackee, my great aunt, reminded me about the ship this weekend. Since she lives in the L.A. area, she was able to pick up a piece of the wreckage after the shipwreck. She still has it, though she’s not certain what part of the boat it came from. The twisted piece of metal now graces her yard, as you can see here.
Though shipwrecks aren’t particularly positive affairs, there’s something about this thread of the Melville Jacoby story that heartens me. It helps that nobody died in the shipwreck. Sure, naming a ship doesn’t bring back a lost loved one. Nor does the random debris from that ship’s destruction. But meaning is so individually defined that it’s no less poetic that this tribute to Mel found its way back to his family.
Moreover, it now appears that the ship’s wreckage is a popular hiking destination for Angelenos.
Hey, perhaps you’ll get a chance to see the remains of the S.S. Melville Jacoby yourself. Two people willing to back my project at my top tier — $10,000 — will get a custom train trip and tour of the Los Angeles sites of significance to Melville Jacoby’s life. I’d be happy to lead you on a hike down to the wreckage as part of that visit. Perhaps we’ll later dine on some Palos Verdes lobster! And though support at that level will definitely be welcome, any backing, even a few dollars, is thrilling, and I look forward to keeping you up to date on this project.
Special thanks to Marc V. Nessen, who first brought the S.S. Melville Jacoby to my attention in a comment on my Web site a couple years ago.
UPDATE:The Kickstarter campaign is now over. You can continue to support this project directly through this website. Learn more and donate by clicking here.
WOW!!!
This is exciting. Two and a half days of fundraising down and I’ve already raised more than $1800 here on Kickstarter. Woohoo. I’m expecting a few hundred more from people who said they’d like to donate but have yet to set up accounts.
I’m thrilled, but not surprised. Mel’s story is so compelling, and I’m touched that so many of you recognize it is, and that you are sharing this project with your friends and family and coworkers and social networks. To those already backing this project: even though I’m going to start formally thanking each of you once my project is funded (and it looks like I better stock up on typewriter ribbon!), I definitely want to express my gratitude to you right now for being the first to step in and show your confidence in my ability to tell Mel’s story.
I’m already amazed by the Kickstarter experience. I’d hesitated about taking this route. For a long time I wondered whether it might be a better idea to do a traditional pitch to a publishing house. I finally decided to go with Kickstarter because I knew having the deadline to reach my fundraising goal would motivate me. Boy, has it ever. So many new ideas about how to research and tell this story have percolated just since I clicked the “launch” button.
But what a scary moment that was! Had I tweaked the pitch enough? Did I clearly express what I was working on and why I needed help to do it? Should i have made the video shorter? Longer? Higher resolution? Funnier? More serious? Would people commit very hard-earned cash to it? Would people care? Would they tear apart the idea?
Of course, no one has, and of course, Mel’s story promotes itself. As I dive deeper, it just gets more exciting. For example, when Mel was a news broadcaster in Chungking, he dispatched his reports by shortwave radio. Those reports were picked up by an amateur radio operator — a dentist — in a small, beachside community an hour north of Los Angeles. Someone from NBC would drive up to get the recordings and use them in newsreels. The coolest part (at least in my opinion)? That city where the dentist lived was Ventura, the same city in which I grew up!
It’s definitely a small world.
Another cool thing about running the project on Kickstarter is that my backers are also helping me out with ideas for the book. A friend of mine who attended Mel’s Alma Mater, Stanford, was an editor of that school’s newspaper, the Stanford Daily. She reminded me that Mel’s wife, Annaleee Whitmore, had been the first female managing editor of that publication. Mel’s thesis advisor, meanwhile, was Chilton R. Bush, who developed Stanford’s journalism program.
These tidbits represent just the surface of what’s out there to discover not just about Melville Jacoby, but about what the world, and especially the Pacific Rim, was like as World War II loomed.
I can’t wait to learn more.
What about you? As I prepare to write this story, and as I seek further support, what questions do you have about Mel, about his story, and about the world in which he lived and worked?
As you think about these questions, check out this cool press card of Mel’s!
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For my latest edition of the Along for the Ride series of transit chronicles I rode Line 14 from Downtown Portland to Lents, and back again. Along the way I stopped for lunch at a taqueria I’d once visited on another spontaneous journey, met a man well-equipped for his trip to Vancouver, Washington, and learned why a young couple preferred to head all the way to Downtown Portland to shop at Buffalo Exchange. Listen above, then follow the jump to get a glimpse of what it looked like or follow my ride in “real time” by viewing my tweets from the bus.
Oops.
Many of you have heard about 
I’ve been reading some of 
I’m also in Los Angeles doing research and visiting some locations of significance to Melville Jacoby’s early life. That also meant a visit to the wreckage of the ship once known as the S.S. Melville Jacoby was in order. Two friends of mine and I endured the unexpectedly long hike (more accurately described as a six-mile scramble around the rocky shore along the base of the Palos Verdes Peninsula) to find the ship’s rusted remains. 
