May 8th, 2012

Melville Jacoby's Lasting Radio Drama

The first page of Melville Jacoby's Life Magazine article "The Battle of Bataan." Actors play Melville and Annalee Jacoby in a 1943 dramatization for NBC of Clark Lee’s “They Call it Pacific.” Read the full post to learn more and to find what where you can listen to the show in full.

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May 7th, 2012

What it Sounded Like

They Call It Pacific“…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…”

This is part of a compelling passage I read today in Clark Lee’s “They Call it Pacific,” a 1943 book that describes Lee’s escape on New Year’s Eve, 1941, just minutes before midnight, on the same boat as Melville Jacoby and his wife, Annalee.

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May 2nd, 2012

Don't Take My Word For It

The strong impressions Mel made weren’t limited to personal relations, though. After Mel died in 1942, Stanford University’s journalism department produced a beautiful pamphlet memorializing his life. The booklet led off with reflections on Mel and the impact his reporting had in those early days of World War II. They came from two of the most prominent U.S. military officials of the time, General Douglas MacArthur and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. See what they had to say after the jump.

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April 28th, 2012

Studying Melville Jacoby in Eugene

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).

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April 27th, 2012

Seventy Years Ago

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

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March 29th, 2012

Escaping From Bataan

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

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March 20th, 2012

Melville's Story on the Radio

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:

http://www.kclu.org/2012/03/20/ventura-journalist-writing-book-about-almost-forgotten-war-correspondent/

Thanks for listening. Please share this with anyone who might be interested.

Speaking of radio, don’t

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March 16th, 2012

A Letter From Melville Jacoby's Best Friend

UPDATE:This post was originally written for a Kickstarter campaign that is now over. You can continue to support this project directly through this website. Learn more and donate by clicking here.

I was digging through the collection of materials I have at my place related to Melville Jacoby (most are at my Grandmother’s

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March 13th, 2012

The Wreck of the Dominator

UPDATE:This post was originally written for a Kickstarter campaign that is now over. You can continue to support this project directly through this website. Learn more and donate by clicking here.

What does a shipwreck off the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the 1960s have to do with Melville Jacoby’s death across the Pacific

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March 9th, 2012

Getting Going

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

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