Eve of a Hundred Midnights
Page 11
Just after Mel’s arrest, conditions were becoming tense along Indochina’s border with Siam (Thailand). With his replacement for the United Press headed to Hanoi, Mel drove with de Lisle through Laos before meeting up again with Moats in Saigon, then traveling with both to Cambodia, where he would report on some of the border tensions. In Laos, he was struck by the sight of the “perfect blue sky,” the elephants and tigers, and the villages squeezed between the Mekong River and palm jungles.
“The trouble out there with modern planes and guns all taking part seems unbelievable,” he wrote. It was December, and the French were happy with Mel’s coverage of the Thai border, but the Japanese continued to pressure Vichy to expel him. Consul Reed reported to the State Department that the colony’s secretary-general thought it would be wise for Mel to leave on the next boat, which was departing on December 26.
Mel lamented that he would miss Christmas. He admitted that he kept finding ways to stay away from home and said it “ruined his humor” that his return had been delayed so frequently. But Mel’s actions don’t seem to have coincided with his words. He was getting deeper into his story even as he told his family and Shirlee that he desperately wanted to go home. As much as he insisted he would try to buy the earliest ticket home and apologized for not writing enough, it was clear that Mel’s heart was in Asia.
“Am terribly sorry because two months ago I would have bet my stamp collection that I would be home,” he wrote. It’s hard to believe he really wanted to go home, or at least, that he hadn’t changed his mind.
“I must say that to date this trip to the Orient has been a good one, and I feel that the time has been well spent,” he wrote to his mother. “I have a feeling that I’ll be coming back again—just as I did four years ago.”
By New Year’s Eve, Mel was back in Hong Kong. He stayed at the Phillips House, a missionary residence where he’d often stayed during weekends away from Lingnan. In fact, four years earlier he had stayed in the exact same room while visiting Hong Kong for the same holiday.
In Hong Kong—which was becoming a sort of bookend for the transitions in Mel’s life—he was happy to give up his pistol and reconnect with friends from Chungking. This was a particularly busy visit, full of meetings with friends and official contacts. The visits helped Mel show off his knowledge and experience to powerful figures. This Mel was a confident man far removed from the wide-eyed kid who had first visited Hong Kong four years earlier, and even the uncertain reporter who’d arrived in Shanghai a year previously without a job.
In Hong Kong he ate lunch with Ed Snow and Bob Neville, the foreign editor of a New York paper called PM, and went to parties hosted by Emily Hahn, the doyenne of The New Yorker. He had lunch with England’s top spy in the region and with Hong Kong’s chief colonial administrators. He also took tea privately with Madame Sun, with whom he now felt comfortable speaking candidly about the affairs of the nation that her husband had led out of monarchy just a couple of decades earlier.
Finally, during his last hours in China, Mel met with Madame Sun’s sister, Mayling, the Generalissimo’s wife. In this frank conversation about wartime strategy with the country’s most powerful woman, Mel helped Madame Chiang develop an idea that would soon grow into one of the war’s most romanticized fighting forces.
“Madame Chiang asked me if I’d be interested in getting an American volunteer air force, after I suggested it as the only solution to China’s very weak position right now,” Mel said. Soon the American Volunteer Group, or “Flying Tigers,” the squadron of mercenary American flyers who fought the Japanese, was born.
In Hong Kong, Mel also received a letter from Mo Votaw, the professor with whom he had shared his office at the Press Hostel in Chungking. Votaw told Mel that Holly had a plan to have Mel come back to work at XGOY if Mel wanted to. But he warned that Mel would have to temper his expectations until the engineering staff at XGOY got its act together. That, Votaw cautioned, would require getting the engineers to cooperate with the station’s programmers.
“We thought of having a showdown with them, but finally decided it would mean more disruption than anything else, and more stink than good, so for the time being we must simply go on doing our best and hoping the others will see the light and be willing to do their best,” Votaw wrote.
But Mel didn’t want to accept that offer, at least not yet. Now he actually did want to go home.
As much opportunity as Mel was leaving behind in Asia, on New Year’s Eve he finally began to come to terms with just how long he had been away from home. It had been more than a year since he’d first left for Shanghai, and many people awaited his return.
First, there was Chilton Bush, his professor and mentor back at Stanford. Bush had told Mel when they’d corresponded that summer that he thought Mel should write a book informed by his experiences in China, and that the Institute for Pacific Relations, he suspected, would publish it. He had seen Mel’s career progress rapidly and knew he was on the verge of something significant. He told Elza as much after she wrote to find out whether Mel was making wise decisions for himself. Bush believed the United Press would go to great lengths to hire Mel as a regular contributor, not just as a stringer.
“He is extremely modest,” Bush wrote to Mel’s mother. “I don’t think he has an inferiority complex, but is just modest, which is a characteristic that makes him friends. At the same time he has an unusual amount of courage which speaks for itself in what he does.”
Though Mel would return to the United States newly emboldened by his experiences in Indochina and Chungking, and do so with an established network of professional contacts willing to go to similar lengths, leaving Asia wasn’t easy—not then, not when so much was possible for his future, in which “there are a thousand and one things that I could do.”
Shirlee Austerland had also waited a long time for Mel to come back. She’d anxiously anticipated every bit of news about him throughout this long, dangerous year. Mel had left for China at the peak of their romance. The entire time he was there Shirlee wrote him and Elza frequently.
But paradoxically, now that Mel was finally on his way home, Shirlee—who continuously asked when he might return and whether she should come down to Los Angeles to be there when his ship arrived—suddenly decided she was done waiting for Mel. When the Tarakan reached Manila, Mel phoned Shirlee for the first time in ages. She told Mel that he had taken too long to come home. She ended things, gently but firmly.
In his letters and in person, Mel had easily expressed to his mother how much he loved and valued Shirlee, but he was never able to do the same with Shirlee herself. As much as Mel said he loved and missed her, the Chungking air had settled into him. For months he had put off deciding where Shirlee fit in his life. His great adventure through Indochina may have cemented his love of journalism and Asian affairs, but it only stretched the patience of Shirlee, who had tired of Mel’s empty promises to return. By the time Mel finally did arrive in the United States—even before he made it to the mainland—he knew his love affair with Shirlee had disintegrated.
“I gave up a chance, in fact several chances out here, to come home and decide on Shirlee,” he told his mother as he informed her that, when he contacted Shirlee, she had indicated—diplomatically—that things were over between them. Mel was “disheartened” that things turned out that way, especially because of the opportunities he’d just passed up, but, he said, “I’ll be home soon and all will work out. One way or the other.”
Elza, meanwhile, was the person Mel most looked forward to seeing in California. He didn’t want a big scene when his ship arrived in Los Angeles. He was exhausted. The idea of his many relatives coming to greet the ship, then offering their opinions on his relationship and career prospects, was too stressful for him.
“Hope only you and MM [Manfred Meyberg] are meeting me—Please no family,” he requested, underscoring “please” three times. “Also would be swell if the family didn’t barge in the very first night so
I could talk to you both.”
Once he was on his way home through Manila, Mel wrote Elza a more candid letter. It was her birthday. He hadn’t planned to miss the date for a second year in a row, and he admitted that he knew the toll his long travels must have had on her, not to mention what she must have felt when she heard about the arrest in Indochina and about other dangers he’d encountered over the past year.
This letter, as Mel indicated, was one of the most honest he’d ever written to her. “It seems so terribly long that I’ve written a letter like this to you, that I’m almost ashamed,” he wrote.
And then on second thought I know you understand I am always thinking about you and a letter makes no difference anyhow.
There have been times during the past months when I’ve felt that I should come home. I know how reports of the Far East must sound. But then again, I have always felt the whole world is so upset and that I’m so much better off comparatively, that we should just be grateful and nothing else.
There have been many times, of course, that I’ve been in some sort of danger, but I must say it doesn’t bother me a bit. Particularly when I know so many others are facing the same things. I suppose I’m a full-fledged fatalist now—with a small measure of caution thrown in—(that’s between us) . . .
Chapter 5
A TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY
Nineteen-forty-one was a fulcrum, dividing war and peace, history and modernity, West and East, uncertainty and direction, opportunity and frustration. It marked a boundary between two vastly different frontiers. Soon after the beginning of this pivotal year, for Mel as well as for the world, he was back in the United States searching for a career in journalism.
Mel arrived in Los Angeles on February 10. As happy as he was to see Elza, Manfred, and his dog Elmer, he was restless. His time in Chungking and then Indochina had shown him a world rapidly changing, and he had proven to himself that he was ready to report on those changes. Having lost Shirlee, Mel now turned his attention fully to his work.
A little over a week after returning, he spent an afternoon with the Los Angeles Times columnist Lee Shippey, who wanted to discuss Mel’s experience in Indochina, especially his views on what Japan’s increased influence there meant for the rest of Asia. The following Saturday, Shippey recounted their conversation in his “Lee Side o’ L.A.” column.
Shippey wrote that, according to Mel, “those who believe Japan is bankrupt, economically weak and almost exhausted by its war in China are merely wishful thinkers.” While pillaging much of China, Japan was teaching its children, Mel said, that “it is Japan’s duty and destiny to rule all Asia and get the British, French and Americans out of that part of the world,” as part of its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Mel then detailed for Shippey multiple examples of Japan’s military advantages over China and its successes in Indochina. He also predicted the exact strategy that Japan would ultimately employ when it turned its military ambitions toward the Western colonial possessions straddling the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
“Jacoby says Japan will not stick its neck out but will certainly take the Dutch East Indies, Singapore and the Philippines when it sees the chance and only positive action by this country can prevent it.”
Mel didn’t remain long in Los Angeles.
“I thought that I would want to stay at home for a while,” he wrote to Teddy White’s mother in a letter a week after he returned. “But now I find that I am anxious to return to China.”
Mel was so anxious to return to China that he left Los Angeles again only a week after he had arrived home, this time on a trip, first to San Francisco and then to the East Coast, in search of an opportunity that would take him back to Asia. It would be a trip full of reunions: with companions from his travels, with colleagues from his days in Shanghai and Chungking, with contacts he’d written to but hadn’t met in person, and with dear friends from his Stanford days. One such reunion, which began as a simple phone call to a minor acquaintance from the Stanford Daily, would be life-changing.
Mel was busy as soon as he reached the Bay Area. It seemed like every hour he was at a different meeting. He met with editors at the San Francisco Chronicle and the United Press, had lunch with his Stanford mentor, Chilton Bush, visited contacts in Chinatown whom his friends in Chungking had asked him to see, and secured a strong letter of recommendation to the president of NBC from a friend in the radio business.
While in San Francisco, Mel also met with friends, including his old chum John Rice, another Stanford alum who had worked at the Daily. Rice was the friend who hosted Mel while he was taking Chinese lessons from George Ching before he left for Shanghai in 1939.
Seeing Rice helped mute any residual sting Mel felt about Shirlee Austerland’s decision to end their relationship. When they were at Stanford, San Francisco was a popular escape for Mel, Rice, and other students. On this visit, after Mel was done with his appointments, he ate dinner at John’s apartment, and then the two of them set out for a night on the town.
It was like old times. During the reunion, Mel and John swapped stories about what their old friends were up to, and John was reminded of one of their former colleagues at the Daily. The question John asked Mel seemed insignificant at the time, but it began a chain of events that would do much more than help Mel quickly get over Shirlee.
Did Mel remember a woman named Annalee Whitmore?
Of course Mel did. She had been a copy editor and then an occasional night editor when he was a reporter at the Daily before he left for Lingnan, and she was famous at the paper for having become the first woman in eighteen years to serve as its managing editor. They weren’t close, but Mel remembered Annalee. She had been a smart, no-nonsense editor when he was at the paper. The Stanford Daily had been only the beginning of her career. As John explained, she’d accomplished much more since graduating from Stanford. What was more? She was deeply curious about China, the war there, and efforts to support the Chinese people, and she was eager to meet someone who knew more about the country.
In 1916, four months before Mel Jacoby was born, Anne Sharp Whitmore lay across the kitchen table of a farmhouse in Price, Utah. It was May 27, weeks after Anne’s due date. Finally, there in the kitchen, Anne gave birth to her first child. She and her husband Leland compounded their first names and dubbed the twelve-pound baby girl Annalee. The first of the Whitmores’ four children, Annalee took pride in her tabletop origin throughout her life. It was a story she told whenever she was asked about her upbringing.
When Annalee was a child, Leland Whitmore had worked at a bank. In October 1929, when Annalee was thirteen years old, the stock market crashed, destroying the financial sector and setting into motion the Great Depression. Annalee’s father lost his job almost immediately. The Whitmores’ money and social status vanished almost as quickly. Like countless other hard-on-their-luck families, the Whitmores moved to California. After a few months in Berkeley, they settled in Piedmont, another Oakland suburb.
Having lost everything in the Depression, the Whitmores had to work hard to scrape by after settling in California. Leland had been an amateur pilot before losing his banking job. At first he earned money selling real estate by flying clients in homebuilt airplanes over available properties. It still wasn’t easy to make ends meet. Then, in 1934, as the Roosevelt administration laid out its New Deal policies, Leland Whitmore went to work at the newly created Federal Housing Administration (FHA), where he made a successful, lifelong career for himself.
Meanwhile, as Elza Meyberg had done a decade earlier in Los Angeles, Leland and Anne Whitmore converted to Christian Science. This adopted faith buoyed the Whitmores’ spirits in the lean times of the Depression. However, the religion never became a significant part of their daughter’s life.
To help support her family, Annalee worked a series of summer jobs. In one office position she held during high school, she typed so hard and so long that by the end of each day her fingers bled. Though Annalee labor
ed tremendously for her family, she still had fun. For a while she even dated Robert McNamara. The future secretary of defense was a fellow Piedmont High student.
Despite her family’s challenges, and perhaps in part because of them, Annalee—who had an extraordinarily high IQ of 170—excelled in school and was a voracious reader. Family legend holds that at just five years old Annalee read Edith Hull’s The Sheik. She decided then and there to become a writer. Whenever Annalee had a question as a child, her mother urged her to look for answers in a book. When she matriculated at Stanford in 1933, she earned the highest score anyone had ever received on the English A entrance exam. She was so far advanced when she began her studies at Stanford that she entered as a sophomore. Annalee maintained her commitment to academic rigor at the school and graduated as part of its Cap and Gown Society.
Annalee had been the first female editor at Piedmont High School’s student paper. This was the first of many times when she was the “first woman” so-and-so. However, she was never motivated explicitly by feminism; she was driven instead by her passion for writing and language. At Stanford, Annalee joined the staff of the student paper, the Stanford Daily, where she started out reviewing plays and other performing arts.
“Eyes closed, expression intent, Mischa Elman last night justified all predictions regarding his second Stanford concert, exceptional power and depth of feeling setting this former child prodigy apart as a violinist of the first rank,” opened Annalee’s first bylined story in the Daily. In the piece, Annalee displayed the descriptive flourish she would develop throughout her career. Her style featured visual detail that may have seemed extraneous for a simple profile of a visiting musician, but brought to life a routine story that might otherwise have been overlooked.
Annalee’s intricate description may have been a vestige of her uncannily accurate photographic memory, but at least on the fall day this article was published, her evocative style enlivened the Daily’s otherwise dull front page (with the exception of an uncredited football story that ran the same day in which the anonymous writer described fullback-turned-quarterback Frank Alustiza as “that chunky lad from Stockton with the questioning eyes.”)