Explore never-before-published photographs of World War II-era China, Vietnam, and beyond captured by American foreign correspondent Melville Jacoby. Author Bill Lascher will discuss his new book, A Danger Shared: A Journalist’s Glimpses of a Continent at War, which features hundreds of previously-unseen images Jacoby captured as he bore witness to an oft-neglected, transformative, and cataclysmic conflict that engulfed Asia after China and Japan went to war.

In addition to photos, Lascher will share one-of-a-kind documents and artifacts from Jacoby’s five years as an exchange student in Guangzhou, as a freelance reporter in Shanghai, Chungking and Hanoi, and, finally, as the Manila-based “Far East” bureau chief for Time Inc. who witnessed the first dramatic months of war between Japan and the U.S. Lascher will also revisit Jacoby’s daring escape from the Philippines capital with his new wife and fellow journalist, Annalee Jacoby, which began minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, 1941 as the pair leapt from a burning Manila waterfront to begin the adventure described in Lascher’s critically-acclaimed 2016 book, Eve of a Hundred Midnights: The Star-Crossed Love Story of Two WWII Correspondents and Their Epic Escape Across The Pacific.

Jacoby’s photographs — which Lascher curated, digitized, and contextualized for A Danger Shared — and Lascher’s accompanying writing together connect present-day readers with the pivotal yet often overlooked subject of the war’s devastating impact on Asia as well as the broader ramifications of the conflict between China and Japan still felt today.

Come celebrate the launch of A Danger Shared: A Journalist’s Glimpses of a Continent at War, a new book featuring a young American foreign correspondent’s striking, previously-unpublished World War II-era photographs of China, Vietnam, and elsewhere in Asia during. This event will feature readings from the book as well as Melville Jacoby’s own writing, displays of his photos (including prints), and more. There will also be opportunities to examine historic documents and other artifacts from Mel's time as a student and reporter in China, as well as a few surprises.

Presented by the Nealis program in Asian Studies

Eve of a Hundred Midnights tells the true story of two newlywed war correspondents’ island-hopping run for their lives across the Pacific after the fall of Manila. Lascher charts the career of Melville Jacoby, who covered China and the Philippines during World War II, and recounts how Mel’s love for China and journalism brought him into the orbit of MGM scriptwriter-turned-journalist Annalee Whitmore, who he married in Manila barely a week before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Lascher, a relative of Jacoby's, will discuss the book and how journalists like Mel and Annalee brought the oft-neglected conflict in China and the Philippines to U.S. audiences. Lascher will also discuss how he used archival sources from private and institutional collections to bring the Jacobys’ story to life.