Melville Jacoby Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby Bill Lascher

Infamy in Manila

Today is the anniversary of the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines that brought the United States into World War II as a combatant. In Manila, reporters Melville Jacoby, Annalee Whitmore Jacoby, and Carl Mydans sprung into action to cover the conflict. Here's an excerpt from the book Eve of a Hundred Midnights, by Bill Lascher and published by William Morrow, describing their experience of that harrowing first day.

Newlywed reporters Melville and Annalee Jacoby at work together during the outset of World War II. Photo Courtesy Peggy S. Cole.

Newlywed reporters Melville and Annalee Jacoby at work together during the outset of World War II. Photo Courtesy Peggy S. Cole.

Communication lines with Hong Kong were silent.

Radios tuned to Bangkok broadcasts received dead air.

Wireless communications with the United States carried only static.

The streets outside the Bay View were empty.

The morning of December 8, 1941, was deceptively quiet. Then the phone rang.

It was Carl Mydans. Pearl Harbor had been bombed. A newspaper slipped under Carl’s door declared the news in bold headlines. Melville Jacoby didn’t believe his colleague, so he looked at his own paper and “saw some screwy headline that had nothing to do with Honolulu.”

Still doubtful about what Carl had told him, Mel went back to bed, but he couldn’t fall back asleep.

He called Clark Lee, who confirmed the news.

There had been ever-more-frequent Japanese flybys of the Philippines in the preceding days, but still, the news was a shock. “We’d known about the Japanese flights, all the other signs, but we didn’t quite believe it even out there,” Mel wrote.

While Mel was on the phone with Clark there was a knock at his door. He hung up and heard another knock, heavy and insistent. Mel found Carl standing outside the hotel room door, already dressed and ready to head into the city.

That World War II would be fought, and won, in the skies was clear early in the conflict. Though Japan delivered its first blows at Pearl Harbor, more than 6,000 miles across the Pacific from the Philippines, it followed its opening act with devastating raids on two airfields—Clark and Nichols Fields—in the Philippines. Two squadrons of B-17 bombers, dozens of P-40 fighters, and other planes were destroyed, eliminating much of the matériel that had been sent at General Douglas MacArthur’s request.

Despite the news of the attacks in Hawaii nine hours earlier, the planes had been left in the open while their pilots ate lunch nearby. Flyers didn’t receive warnings of the approaching Japanese planes until they were almost overhead.

“By noon the first day, pilots were waiting impatiently on Clark field for take-off orders to bomb Formosa,” Annalee Jacoby wrote, referring to the Japanese-occupied island now known as Taiwan. “Our first offensive action had to wait for word from Washington — definite declaration of war. Engines were warmed up; pilots leaned against the few planes and ate hot dogs.”

Twenty minutes later, without warning, Annalee wrote, fifty- four enemy bombers arrived, delivering a brazen, devastating raid on Clark Field that crippled an already underprepared American garrison.

These raids sparked a decades-long debate about who was responsible for the blunder, but whoever should be blamed, the United States lost fully  half of its air capacity in the Philippines in this one devastating first day of the war.

“MacArthur’s men wanted to fight—but most of all they wanted something to fight with,” Mel wrote in a flurry of cables he sent Time following the war’s commencement and the air- fields’ decimation. Unfounded rumors of convoys and flights of P-40s coming to join the fight began almost as soon as the attacks subsided. They would not cease for  months.

On that morning, Manila’s Ermita neighborhood was quiet. Mel arranged a car for the Time employees to share. Together they raced up Dewey Boulevard, to Intramuros, the walled old- town district that had been Spain’s stronghold during its 300- year occupation. When they reached the U.S. Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) headquarters at 1 Calle Victoria, they found MacArthur’s driver, who had arrived early in the morn- ing, asleep in his car.

“Headquarters was alive and asleep at the same time,” Mel wrote. MacArthur’s staff was weary-eyed but busy as they girded for war. Within hours, helmeted officers carrying gas masks on their hips raced back and forth across the stone- walled headquarters, stopping only briefly to gulp down coffee and sandwiches. The general himself was his usual bounding self, striding through the headquarters as staff and other wit- nesses confirmed reports of attacks throughout the Philippines. Mel and Carl were concerned about their jobs. Would wartime censorship clamp down on their reporting?

“The whole picture seemed about as unreal to USAFFE men as it did to us,” Mel later wrote. “We couldn’t believe it, and MacArthur’s staff had hoped the Japanese would hold off at least another month or so, giving us time to get another convoy or two in with the rest of the stuff on order.”

This hesitation, of course, was partly to blame for the devastation that occurred that day and the unsettled footing with which American forces fought during the brutal months to come.

Meanwhile, deep-seated racial prejudices kept many Americans from believing that Japan was capable of carrying out the attacks.

“Those days were eye-openers to many an American who had read Japanese threats in the newspapers with too many grains of salt tossed in,” Mel wrote. “They still couldn’t believe the yellow man could be that good. It must be Germans; that was all everyone kept saying. We were just beginning to pay for years of unpreparedness. The shout ‘It’s Chinese propaganda’ had suddenly lost all traces of plausibility.”

Regardless of who was to blame, U.S. forces reeled.

Manila was quiet even as chaos engulfed the headquarters, where a scrum of reporters waited for updates. Rumors flew beneath the shady trees of Dewey Boulevard, rippled up the Pasig River, and raced past the storefronts along the Escolta.

“The whole thing has busted here like one bombshell, though, as previous cables showed, the military has been alert over the week,” Mel would soon write.

As the realization of what had begun set in, Manila residents rushed through the city, withdrew cash from banks, stocked up on food, and bought as much fuel as they could before rationing was ordered. Businesses quickly transformed basements into bomb shelters. Sandbags became scarce. As would happen all over the United States, local military rounded up anyone of Japanese descent, whether they were Japanese nationals or not. The Philippines waited for war.

From Eve of a Hundred Midnights, by Bill Lascher and published by William Morrow (2016). For the story of the Jacobys' last-minute escape from the Philippines and to learn about their work as war correspondents in China and the Philippines, find Eve of a Hundred Midnights at your favorite bookseller, or order it from Indiebound, Powell's, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.

 

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75 Years Ago, When War Seemed a Million Miles Away

75 years ago, today, Pearl Harbor was on the horizon, but for one couple in Manila, war briefly felt a million miles away.

Seventy-five years ago, today, with the United States and Japan on the brink of war, Time Magazine correspondent Melville Jacoby married the former Annalee Whitmore, a former MGM scriptwriter who had been managing publicity for an aid organization known as United China Relief. The following excerpt from Eve of a Hundred Midnights (William Morrow, 2016) describes the moment Annalee arrived in Manila from Chungking, the wartime capital of China, and Mel whisked her off to their wedding. Pick up the book from your favorite retailer to find out how Mel and Annalee's paths crossed, and what happened when war broke out just two weeks after their wedding.

From the edge of Pan-Am’s facilities along the southern arc of Manila Bay near the Cavite shipyard, Mel watched a Boeing 314 cross the sky. It was Monday, November 24, 1941, just three days before Thanksgiving.

Annalee was on the plane. As it landed she spotted Mel at the water’s edge, clad in a gleaming white suit, white shirt, and yellow tie.

“I could see him when the plane landed in the water, and it seemed like hours until they pulled it up onto the beach,” Annalee later wrote to Mel’s parents.

Finally, the Clipper’s pilot cut the aircraft’s engines. The plane coasted the last few feet to the dock, where its passengers disembarked. Annalee barely had time to say anything to her fiancé. After they embraced, Mel ushered her to a waiting car, which drove the ten miles from Cavite to Manila, turned right off Dewey Boulevard onto Padre Faura, then stopped at the Union Church chapel a couple of blocks away. Mel strode confidently up to the church, while Annalee, wearing a white nylon dress printed with palm trees, ukuleles, pineapples, and leis in green, yellow, and red, linked her arm in his, smiling widely, a broad-brimmed yellow hat tucked under her other arm. For a couple who never expected romance, it was as dreamlike as any fairy tale.

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

Melville and Annalee Jacoby walking along the streets of Manila on their wedding day, November 24, 1941. (Photo Courtesy Peggy Stern Darling)

Melville and Annalee Jacoby walking along the streets of Manila on their wedding day, November 24, 1941. (Photo Courtesy Peggy Stern Darling)

Carl and Shelley Mydans were there, as well as Allan Michie (a Time reporter about to transfer to England, Michie was also the author of Their Finest Hour) and the Reverend Walter Brooks Foley. As soon as the couple arrived, the small pro- cession gathered in an intimate reception room off the chapel decorated with white flowers and green drapes. Carl served as Mel’s best man; Shelley was Annalee’s matron of honor.

Reverend Foley performed the modest ceremony. Mel had always dreaded large, formal weddings. He had looked for a justice of the peace to officiate, but most of the ones he found spoke little English and held ceremonies in nipa huts—small stilt houses with bamboo walls and thatched roofs made from local leaves.

Melville and Annalee Jacoby exchange vows in front of the Reverend Walter Brooks Foley at the Union Church of Manila on November 24, 1941. (Photo Courtesy Peggy Stern Darling)

Melville and Annalee Jacoby exchange vows in front of the Reverend Walter Brooks Foley at the Union Church of Manila on November 24, 1941. (Photo Courtesy Peggy Stern Darling)

“The morning I came he found Reverend Foley, who was   a short blond near-sighted angel, full of extravagant plans for choir chorales and processionals and borrowed bride giver-awayers,” Annalee wrote.

Annalee may not have wanted a big to-do or an ostentatious ring, but she clearly couldn’t restrain her delight at the occasion itself. Her smile did not subside throughout the ceremony. Her hands gently clasped Mel’s as they exchanged vows, and she looked intently at her husband, her eyes grinning and warm. For his part, Mel couldn’t mask the pride on his face, nor his joy.

Within an hour of Annalee’s landing, she and Mel were married. After their wedding, they wrote letters to their families. In one, Annalee insisted to Mel’s parents that she didn’t go to China to marry Mel, but she “couldn’t think of a better reason” to have gone.

Mel and Annalee Jacoby on their wedding day, November 24, 1941. (Photo Courtesy Peggy Stern Darling)

Mel and Annalee Jacoby on their wedding day, November 24, 1941. (Photo Courtesy Peggy Stern Darling)

The celebration continued at the Bay View Hotel, just a few blocks away. Gathered in the lobby were many of the couple’s friends who had also transferred to Manila from Chungking, as well as others Mel had met since arriving. Those who couldn’t be there sent their congratulations. Everyone, from Annalee’s colleagues at MGM to Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, to all the Press Hostel residents, to the entire staff of XGOY (which also aired a brief item about the marriage), sent their good wishes.

 “General MacArthur about knocked me over the other p.m. congratulating me,” Mel wrote. “Admiral [Thomas] Hart’s staff nearly shook my hand off.”

There was a portable phonograph setting the tune with jazz standards and popular big band recordings. In between songs, the newlyweds ducked into a corner of the lobby where they took turns placing long-distance phone calls to their parents in Los Angeles and Maryland. And then they danced into the night. War was on the horizon and could arrive any day, but that evening it could have been a million miles away.

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Melville Jacoby, The Scenic Route Bill Lascher Melville Jacoby, The Scenic Route Bill Lascher

Hitting the (Silk) Road

Chongqing was hot. It was loud. It was squalid. It was crowded.

It was home. Chongqing was home.

"You get to like it,” Mel wrote.

Will I like it? Five weeks from today I will wake to my first morning in Beijing on the first leg of a trip through China and the Philippines. In the weeks to follow I hope to visit Guangzhou and Manila, to see Shanghai and Cebu, to ride trains through Guangxi, and to sail through the Visayas. Most importantly, perhaps, I hope to climb from the Yangtze through the exploding megalopolis of Chongqing and, I hope, to find this place Mel and Annalee and so many others once called home. 

Humidity suffocated Chongqing. Mosquitos infested Chongqing. Exhaust from charcoal-burning-buses choked Chongqing. At Chongqing parties flowing with roast duck, scallion pancakes and rice wine, Japanese rebels, German communists and American military attachés mingled with adventure-seekers, mercenaries and bohemians from the world's farthest corners. Outside these bacchanals, Chongqing's cacophonous streets crawled with beggars peddling broken tools and decrepit clothing and stinking of unwashed mothers trying to feed children defecating in the gutters. 

Even in the middle of the night the heat enveloped Chongqing. The city's stink hung across every inhabitant's skin, a blanket as sticky as the countless steps from the shore of the Yangtze were slimy. Noise was as ever-present as the leaden air. Silence was a concept so foreign in this pop-up capital that the word could be cut from dictionary pages and never missed. Clear days meant wailing sirens, and that distant drone that climbed into a roar, a brief, eerie, quiet, then a deceptively distant thud of blasts heard beneath hundreds of feet of stone, "like suction cups plopping against water."

Any other moment meant the noise of teeming masses, conversations and lovemaking unhidden by paper-thin walls, the chatter of work and the constant rattle of typewriters. Countless dialects pooled from China's four corners to this polyglot bastion, as Cantonese and Mandarin and Sichuanese swirled from storefront to storefront. Measured voices of news announcers read morning briefings in the headquarters of XGOY. 

Chongqing was hot. It was loud. It was squalid. It was crowded.

It was home. Chongqing was home.

"You get to like it,” Mel wrote.

***

Will I like it? Five weeks from today I will wake to my first morning in Beijing on the first leg of a trip through China and the Philippines. In the weeks to follow I hope to visit Guangzhou and Manila, to see Shanghai and Cebu, to ride trains through Guangxi, and to sail through the Visayas. Most importantly, perhaps, I hope to climb from the Yangtze through the exploding megalopolis of Chongqing and, I hope, to find this place Mel and Annalee and so many others once called home. 

But I'm nervous. As I mentioned in a postscript on New Year's Day, I've never been to either place. As I prepare, my excitement is beginning to overwhelm me. I feel awakened by the possibilities this trip will present, yet I know I will have hardly enough time to truly discover the place that Mel and Annalee came to love over many years.

And, might I find something else? A new perspective on Melville and Annalee Jacoby and the world that brought them together? Some understanding of two lands whose present selves would be as foreign to the China and the Philippines the Jacobys knew as they will be to my American eyes? Some unquantifiable understanding of myself? What will I find beneath the surface?

Whatever I might find and however limited my time to find it, I must go. How could I not? But I could use your help.

I've asked for money before, so instead I'm asking whether you have non-monetary support in any form you can offer (though I continue to welcome donations or purchases from my store new Amazon wishlist if they're more your style). Do you have words of encouragement? Or might you offer something more concrete? Perhaps you have networks in Beijing, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Manila and Cebu or some of the other Chinese and Filipino cities I plan to visit. What about recommendations of places to stay, suggestions for meals, offers of couches, extra frequent flier miles or hotel credits, or thoughts on travel equipment or services? Maybe you can't help me in Asia, but you can on trips late this spring for last-minute archival research in the U.S. I'd certainly welcome any leads or help in New York, Washington, New Haven, Boston, and Columbia, South Carolina.

Again, maybe you just have a nice thing to say. I could really use a random hello or two and an update on your life. The effort I put into this book comes at the cost of a stable job with a predictable routine and consistent income, let alone the community that forms at workplaces. Jobs and schedules can be constrictive, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not nervous and I don't want to be ashamed for seeking some sense of comfort, security and camaraderie. It's not an understatement to say that I've ground my way just to even be here. But I also know I'm incredibly fortunate to be able to travel when so many people don't. I have the flexibility to travel. I get to set my own hours. I have a book deal, and, most importantly, I know this book — and I — will succeed. 

Yes, working on this book is a suffocating, cacophonous and chaotic affair. It is vibrant and joyful. It is disgusting and frightful. It is thriving and it is the confluence of many threads and many thoughts. It is all of these things and it is also home. Now, as an identifiable form emerges from something that seemed so mercurial, I'm getting to like it. 

It's now late in the Portland night, almost exactly one a.m., and as I finish this letter I'm thinking about Mel during his own first trip to China, when he attended school in Canton, the city now known as Guangzhou. Sitting in a dorm room window late one night, he finished a letter to his mother and step-father, which he opened as follows:

"The clatter of wooden shoes and the high pitched jabber of foreign voices has finally ceased. Even the village drums have quit their mighty rattle — in a word, it is now exactly one a.m. and the most glorious Oriental moon imaginable is rising. Its light makes visible the aged salt junks and square rigged whalers on the sluggish river. All this I can see from the window as I sit and write you tonight."

Mel Jacoby, December, 1936, Canton [Guangzhou]

I want to find that window — or whatever has taken its place — and write you words like this, telling you what I see and what I hear.

-Bill

P.S. Do you have a treasured travel trip? Have you ever been to China or the Philippines? What would you want to see if you went there? 

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The Last Night

A new year looms. As it has since I began unfurling this story, New Year's Eve carries a special meaning. As much as I'm thinking about Mel and Annalee, I'm also thinking about the people who left similar impressions upon them, and upon whom they left their own impressions. They are on my mind as I consider how, 73 years ago tonight, Mel and Annalee made the heartbreaking decision to leave their friends at a Manila hotel, run to the city's burning docks and leap aboard the last boat sailing into a dark, mine-strewn harbor before the Japanese entered the Philippines' capital. It was not an easy decision; the people they left behind were their colleagues, their friends, their fellow "soldiers of the press." They were, as I've addressed before, their tribe.

"This wasn't just Manila's last night of freedom. This was the last night the thirty-two reporters packed into the Bay View would spend together. A group bonded as tightly as any army platoon in the heat of battle -- many of whom had served alongside one another for years in the heat and stink and drama of China's wartime capital, Chongqing (then known as Chungking), where they were once so young, so eager and so ready to take on the world -- would soon fracture.”

Dear friends,

It's been a while. Long enough that I wish I had written many more letters to each of you individually. The other week I received a call from a man who stumbled upon a tweet I'd written about a journalist who crossed Mel Jacoby's path in the Philippines. That man was the caller's godfather. The caller told me about the stories his godfather told, what a wonderful man he had been and all the possessions he left the caller with clues to the fantastic life he lived. We struck an instant rapport and I identified immediately with the caller's fascination with his godfather. This whole process of composing this story has been replete with similar connections.

Just this afternoon I set aside a draft of this letter to chat with a barista at the coffee shop I typically haunt. After I brought up something unrelated to my book I learned that the barista's husband is Filipino. His family, the barista told me, experienced some of the war's most horrific experiences, some of which overlapped with what Mel witnessed or reported. As the barista and I spoke, the woman sitting next to me at the counter took interest. In the ensuing conversation I learned a bit about her own family's history. Though a separate story, the introduction opened a deep, meandering discussion that left me feeling inspired about how crucial spontaneous interpersonal interaction remains in this day of channelized media and "social" media.

Now a new year looms. As it has since I began unfurling this story, New Year's Eve carries a special meaning. As much as I'm thinking about Mel and Annalee, I'm also thinking about the people who left similar impressions upon them, and upon whom they left their own impressions. Just this November, I met one of the families of Mel and Annalee's closest friends and colleagues. As the family provided me with intimate glimpses of their parents and the Jacobys' experiences, we struck up our own friendship, one of a few I've been fortunate enough to begin through my work on this book.

All of these people are on my mind as I consider how, 73 years ago tonight, friends and family were on Mel and Annalee's minds. It was that night when Mel and Annalee made the heartbreaking decision to leave their friends at a Manila hotel, run to the city's burning docks and leap aboard the last boat sailing into a dark, mine-strewn harbor before the Japanese entered the Philippines' capital. It was not an easy decision; the people they left behind were their colleagues, their friends, their fellow "soldiers of the press." They were, as I've addressed before, their tribe.

The passage at the beginning of this email is a small sample of what I've written in my book's opening chapter, and I hope it whets your appetite for what is to come. Later the same night Mel, Annalee, and their friend Clark Lee toasted the new year with a bottle of applejack on the darkened deck of the boat they'd escaped upon. As we celebrate the New Year, I thought I'd share a little bit more from my first chapter, particularly, what I wrote about that toast as 1941 blazed into 1942:

"On New Year's Eve, treacherous waters roiled around a burning city and a nation at war. But the three reporters had finally escaped, and for a moment, for one quiet moment in the darkness of Manila harbor, they were just a newlywed couple celebrating the new year with one of their friends.

"In the 21st Century, we plan for New Year's parties like they mean something. Like they'll change our lives. Like where we decide to go determines the sort of year we'll have. Our decision points will be bars, clubs, house parties, restaurants or quiet nights at home. We wonder whether we will spend the holiday with friends or dates, or if we'll spend it alone.

"We toast with Champagne. We toast with beer. We toast with sparkling cider or we toast with nothing at all. The renewal swept in by the calendar's turn leaves us longing for drama and adventure, so we will brave the cold and try new neighborhoods, new bars, new habits and new loves.

"But as 1942 approached Manila, New Year's Eve meant braving the future and a new war. Nineteen-forty-two might not have been a year to welcome with Champagne, but the simple fact of the reporters' survival so far merited celebration. This would be a year for escapes and near misses. It would be a year for tragedy and loss. With 1942 arriving the way it did, a bottle of applejack passed around the deck of a blacked-out freighter made for as good a toast as anything. All the last minute sabotage and looting throughout Manila provided the fireworks.

"'A ninety-million-dollar send-off,' Mel said of the Hollywood-esque theatrics, before the reporters drifted off to sleep."

I can't wait to share what happened when they woke up, and what led them there. Meanwhile, let's all stay in touch in 2015. Write back to this email. Share this project with your friends. Send me a note some time. Give me a call. Knock on my door. I'll try to do the same.

Happy New Year,
Bill

P.S. I have tickets booked to retrace Mel's steps in China and the Philippines this spring. I'll write more about my trip soon, but I'll welcome any suggestions any of you have for these places, and I welcome any introductions you have to people there (and I'd love to see you if by chance you'll be in either place).

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A Wedding At The Brink of War

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.

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.

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.”

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Pearl Harbor as a Reporter Experienced it in Manila

"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," After news reached Manila that U.S. forces had been attacked at Pearl Harbor, Melville Jacoby cabled news to his Time Magazine editors about how the Philippines capital digested news of the Japanese raids.

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..."

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