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!

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.

I Shall Never Forget Our Friendship

“That's Papa!” Recognition bursts forth in a flurry of English and Cantonese as warm as the California sun streaming through the living room windows.

"I recognize our father immediately," Susie Poon says as she stares at a weathered black and white image of a young Chinese man. The man is Chan Ka Yik, Melville Jacoby's roommate while the latter was an exchange student at Lingan University in Canton during the 1936-37 academic year.

Poon and her sisters, Emmy Ma and Eva Cheung, their husbands, and three generations of my own family pass ancient photos around the room. The pictures show a prized water buffalo and grinning friends on balconies, boys jumping into swimming holes and old men steering sampans, classes arranged for group photos and candid snapshots. They contrast an elaborate family compound in Guangxi with peasants toiling in the countryside. And they feature handsome young men in three-piece suits, their smiles filled with excitement, adventure and friendship crossing two cultures, two continents, and two countries.

(Before you continue, why not make a donation to support this project?)

These were simple, timeless moments of peace. These were moments before war, moments before revolution and exile. Before life and death.

These were moments we all recognize. These were moments that have been and moments that will be.

"Mel looked like a movie star," Emmy says, echoing a sentiment many express when they see pictures of my cousin (twice-removed).

But the star today is my grandmother, Peggy Cole, who holds court with a folder full of letters, a pile of photos, and a sheet of notes to which she refers while recounting the adventures Mel, Chan and their classmates took together. Many of the tales she shares she heard from Mel's own mouth when he returned home from his first trip to China and visited his adoring cousins. The others she pieced together from letters and memorabilia she inherited from Mel's mom, Elza.

For the first time in half a century our two families connected. As we exchanged memories, new stories took shape.

Chan emigrated to the U.S. more than a decade after Mel's death. As he fled China, Chan reached out to Elza to vouch for him with immigration officials. In the letter he sent his beloved roommate's mother, Chan described how Mel's death was not just a loss to her family, but a loss of his own "good friend," telling her.

"I shall never forget our friendship and what we had done in Lingnan and my country."

Indeed, it seems that friendship continues.

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:

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This is Our War

Are we disconnected, or just different? This month marked the beginning of my full-time focus on Melville Jacoby. June marked my latest birthday. May marked three years since I received my master's degree.

In many ways I haven't lived a normal life since.

I'm 32. My last "normal" job ended four years ago, and did so only three years after I started my first full-time position in my chosen profession. Let that sink in. Less than 10 percent of my time on this Earth has been spent in a professional workplace. The vast majority of my life has been spent not working on my career, not plugging away in an office day-in and day-out, not doing what I thought "it" was all leading toward. Life so far has seemed more about creating and recreating myself. It has been about making something of myself rather than actually being something.

And here I am trying to write a book about someone else, trying to tell someone else's story. The something I am making of myself depends on the something Melville Jacoby made of himself, and of the something of his that was denied.

And it was denied when Mel was just 25. That's the same age I was when I got that first "real" job. By that time Mel had made friends around the world. He'd dodged bullets. He'd made daring escapes. He'd met and impressed some of history's most prominent figures. He'd completed his education and made his way into a fantastic job. He'd been a heartthrob, he'd loved and lost, and, finally, he'd married an astounding woman.

Mel's life was short, but full. When I compare it with mine, it's difficult not to feel something missing. I wonder if that sense of disappointment is of my own making or a product of this era. I drafted the first version of this post in early June. That day, WePay — the site I use to process donations in support of my project (please donate, by the way) — crashed. It went down the victim of a Denial of Service, or DoS, attack. What's more, it took place just a day after WePay highlighted my project on its gallery of featured donation campaigns.

At the time, the shutdown was the latest in a series of frustrations. Death by a thousand cuts. A month earlier, I'd finally felt comfortable enough with my finances to purchase a new laptop. Two weeks later, that computer stopped powering up. I was out the system for another two weeks as it received warranty repairs. Then its return didn't go smoothly and I lost quite a few photos I'd thought I'd backed up. Fortunately, these weren't photos related to Mel's project, but nevertheless, their loss represented the latest in a series of obstacles I'd battled this Spring. Some of these obstacles were technical, some professional, some financial, some personal. Among the most noticeable was not reaching my Kickstarter goal. They all stung, but like I've mentioned about facing other failings, what option did I have but to keep pursuing the things that matter most to me?

And are these really challenges? Life, of course, is not horrible. None of these obstacles represent much more than modern life, or so I tell myself. I often think "What the bleep? How is this at all compared to war, to disease, to sleeping on the deck of boats praying that the shape you you've been seeing in the distance as you slip between darkened islands in the dead of night is not a hostile battleship? How was this at all comparable to Mel's experience?"

But then I think perhaps this is our horror. We do not face bombing raids and artillery barrages because this is our time. Yes, some in this world — indeed too many — certainly do face such violence and destruction. The bullet and the bomb still haunt many millions. Journalists continue to face very mortal dangers for the work they do (Particularly just over our Southern border, as a powerful On the Media episode recently detailed). For more than a decade our own society has been at war. When I taught last quarter, two of my students were veterans, one from each war. Yet they still seemed younger than I felt, even though they'd had these experiences I couldn't begin to conceptualize.

We berate ourselves for lamenting the petty annoyances that shape our lives. Much of our contemporary cultural discourse discusses how disconnected Americans are from the surrounding world, how insulated we are from modern times, how inoculated we are from current events. We toss around the term "first world problems" to acknowledge our privilege. We strive to simplify and slow down. We advocate for purity and healing. We seek cooperation and authenticity.

But we occupy a different world. We're quick to dismiss this world as mundanity. My obstacles are remarkable in their lack of note: Failed computer systems, broken hearts, fading identity, un-acknowledged job applications, friends battling serious illness, mounting debt, loneliness. All of these are our battlefronts. They rarely involve our own survival and yet they besiege us. They may not be romantic, but they are our enemies. Call it bourgeois, call it privilege, call it sad, call it whatever you want, but it this is our reality.

This is our war.

Help me fight my war

I need your help today to keep telling Mel's story. Any amount you can contribute makes a tremendous difference, and there are many incentives I'm offering in exchange for your support (find out more here or here. If you can't afford to donate, perhaps you have frequent traveler points for trains and planes, lodging, or other resources you can share. But if you can make a donation, please do so below and spread the word.

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