by Frank Brady
Bobby had been giving Ellsworth, his agent, about $5,000 a year to pay the storage cost and some minimal taxes on property—five lots—that he owned in Clearwater and Tarpon Springs, Florida, which were originally owned by his grandfather (Bobby bought them from his mother in 1992). Those various expenses came to about $4,000 a year; the $1,000 left over was for Ellsworth’s management. The storage room was registered under the names of “Claudia Mokarow and Robert D. James,” and since Ellsworth was paying the charges year after year, it is possible that the storage company had no idea that the material in the bin belonged to Bobby Fischer. Somehow Ellsworth had blundered—either through carelessness or a clerical error—and didn’t pay $480 that was owed, and as contractually agreed upon, the company had the right to dispose of the storage room’s contents. As soon as Ellsworth discovered his mistake, he felt guilty about it, and one can understand how heartbreaking it was to Bobby: “My whole life!” he said, outraged.
Ellsworth actually realized his error in time to attend the auction and buy back $8,000 worth of the material, not bidding on comic books and other memorabilia that he believed—wrongfully, as it developed—would no longer be of any interest to Fischer. Harry Sneider, Fischer’s former physical trainer, accompanied Ellsworth to the auction and Sneider’s son subsequently traveled to Budapest with twelve boxes of material. When he handed them over, Bobby said, “Where’s the rest?” He claimed to have had at least one hundred boxes in his storage unit and maintained that what had been brought to him was only one percent of his belongings.
He just wouldn’t let it rest. Before he was done, he gave thirty-five radio broadcast interviews—they all found their way online—most of them through a small public radio station in the Philippines and some lasting almost two hours, expounding on his theory that he was a victim of a conspiracy that involved a Jewish cabal, the U.S. government, the Russians, Robert Ellsworth, and the Bekins Storage company.
It seemed that Bobby had lapsed over the years into a state of increasingly frequent paranoia, believing as he did that people and organizations, bonded in a conspiracy, were out to persecute him. It was as if he had a form of Tourette’s syndrome where, plagued by a temporary storm in his mind, he couldn’t stop himself from denigrating Jews in the vilest terms: His hate rhetoric just spewed out and he couldn’t—nor did he want to—control it. He was not delusional nor did he have hallucinations—that anyone knows of—so he could not be labeled psychotic. (One psychiatrist, Dr. Magnus Skulasson, who knew Bobby well toward the end of his life, insisted that the term “psychotic” definitely didn’t apply to him.) Indeed, removed from stressful situations (such as the loss of his possessions at Bekins), he was completely in touch with reality and could be charming, friendly, and even rational (if limited to certain topics) at times. Dr. Anthony Saidy, one of Bobby’s oldest and closet friends, wrote a letter to Chess Life about Bobby’s broadcasts in which he stated: “His paranoia has worsened through the years, and he is more isolated than ever in an alien culture.” Saidy added that the media were exploitative in publishing the most hideous of Bobby’s statements, that the press should leave him alone.
When Bobby read Saidy’s comments he was furious. He lambasted Saidy for living in the United States, a truly alien culture by his definition, and called Saidy a Jew (he is not).
The smell of camphor trees in Kamata, a suburban section of Tokyo, intrigued Bobby. Many of the Japanese would scoop up or pluck the aromatic leaves and boil them and inhale the steam, claiming that it was good for colds; others felt that camphor steam could be harmful. Regardless of who was correct, the trees drew people’s attention, including Bobby’s. If you picked up just a few of the fallen leaves and crushed them in your hands, you could smell their pungent scent. Bobby increasingly relied on homeopathic remedies as an alternative to prescription drugs for his aches or pains, and he was always looking for natural cures; this quest for medicinal herbs may have plunged him into trouble.
He’d arrived in Tokyo on January 28, 2000, after first announcing to his friends that he’d be gone from Budapest “for a few months” and storing everything in Benko’s apartment. He never returned. In Japan, he had a standing invitation to stay with Miyoko Watai, the president of the Japanese Chess Association, a woman he’d known since 1973, when he first visited the country, seeking a venue for his upcoming yet never-played match with Karpov. Over the years they’d corresponded, and she’d visited him both in Los Angeles and in Budapest. Miyoko, one of the strongest women players in Japan, admitted that as a chess player Bobby was her idol and that before meeting him she’d read everything about him she could find and had played over every one of his games. She was in love with him.
To his friends, though, Bobby denied that there was a romantic relationship with Miyoko, who was two years younger than him.
Bobby was still looking for a woman who could bear him a child, and hoped he would meet a number of young Filipina women, among whom he might find a candidate. So Bobby began a routine of flying back and forth between Tokyo and the Philippines, staying in Japan just shy of three months (for immigration purposes) and then doing the same in the Philippines, and living—to some extent—a life similar to the one in the film The Captain’s Paradise, where the protagonist has a wife in two separate ports and rotates visits to each. In Bobby’s case, he wasn’t married, but he was intimate with Miyoko in Tokyo and with other women in the Philippines, and this back-and-forth philandering went on for several years.
Bobby and Miyoko, both in their late fifties, lived a quiet life in the quiet suburb of Tokyo called Ikegami, traveling to various onsen—hot springs—going to movies, taking long walks, sitting in the park, where no one seemed to recognize Bobby, and just living what could be called an unremarkable but romantic middle-class life. A rare false note was struck when Bobby and Miyoko attended a screening of the American film Pearl Harbor. When the Japanese Zeroes began bombing the ships in Battleship Row and destroyed the USS Arizona, Bobby began clapping loudly. He was the only one in the theater to do so—much to the embarrassment of the Japanese. He said that he was shocked that no one else joined in.
But then the three months were up, and just before the flag fell on the immigration clock, Bobby would scoot off to the Philippines.
Life in Baguio City, about 130 miles from Manila, was somewhat more exotic than Tokyo. Half of the city’s population consisted of university students (some 150,000 of them), so the opportunity to meet the type of girls Bobby preferred (young and beautiful) was greater than in Japan. Curiously, though, during those periods when Bobby was in Japan he didn’t stray from Miyoko.
In the Philippines Fischer was hosted by an admirer at the Baguio Country Club for his first three months, played tennis every day, and met and dined with Torre and occasionally with the dignified Florencio Campomanes, the former president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE). Eventually, Bobby leased a home in the same compound where Torre lived and, as a constant dinner guest, often enjoying the cooking of Torre’s wife.
At a party hosted by Torre at the country club in early 2000, Bobby met an attractive young woman named Justine Ong, who changed her name to Marilyn Young, a Filipina of Chinese extraction, and they began dating. Several months later, she announced that she was pregnant. The idea of abortion was abhorrent to Bobby and he refused to even discuss it. At the birth of the child, named Jinky, Marilyn had Bobby’s name recorded on the birth certificate as the father. He promised to support mother and child, as he did, buying them a home in the Philippines, sending occasional gifts to the child, and money to Marilyn. His friends have said that he wasn’t certain that the child was his, but just as he was supported by Paul Nemenyi, not knowing whether Nemenyi was his father, he would do the same for Jinky, and even stand in as the child’s titular father. This arrangement went on for seven years, with Bobby sending greeting cards to the young girl signed “Daddy,” and having mother and child visit him later on. One of his friends who observed them together s
aid that Bobby treated little Jinky with affection, but he didn’t seem as close to her as one would expect if he thought she was truly his daughter.
In one of Bobby’s broadcasts (August 9, 2000) from Tokyo to Radio Baguio, he made mention of having been arrested in Japan around that time on a “trumped-up drug charge” but gave very little other information about it except to say that he was in jail for eighteen days before being released and how absurd it was because he took no drugs, not even aspirin. The arrest took place in the spring or summer of 2000, and it received no publicity that this writer could find; it’s possible that the Japanese authorities, not knowing who Fischer was, simply saw a foreigner coming frequently in and out of the country with a backpack of herbs—the profile of a drug dealer—and interrogated him. Knowing Bobby’s penchant for noncooperation with authority figures, he might well have been incarcerated more for his attitude than anything else.
Perhaps the most horrendous of Bobby’s broadcasts came on September 11, 2001. He was called by Radio Baguio in the Philippines (he was living in Tokyo at the time) to comment on the attacks in the United States on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The interview was his shortest, only twelve minutes, but it created an international fury since it was picked up in its entirety online. Bobby’s polemic was a full-frontal attack on a suffering nation.
In speaking his mind, Bobby had no idea—or if he did, maybe he didn’t care—that he was sealing his fate with the U.S. government, Jews around the world, and the vast majority of the American people who felt wounded and outraged over the carnage of the 9/11 attacks and Bobby’s blasphemy concerning them. To say that Bobby’s broadcast was one of the most hateful by an American in the history of radio would not be an exaggeration. Following is a transcribed version of some of his comments:
Fischer: Yes, well, this is all wonderful news. It’s time for the fucking U.S. to get their heads kicked in. It’s time to finish off the U.S. once and for all.
Interviewer: You are happy at what happened?
Fischer: Yes, I applaud the act.… Fuck the U.S. I want to see the U.S. wiped out.
Fischer: The United States is based on lies. It’s based on theft. Look at all I have done for the U.S. Nobody has single-handedly done more for the U.S. than me. I really believe this. You know, when I won the World Championship in 1972, the United States had an image of a football country, a baseball country, but nobody thought of it as an intellectual country. I turned that all around single-handedly, right?
Fischer: But I’m hoping for a Seven Days in May scenario, where sane people will take over the U.S.…
Interviewer: “Sane people”?
Fischer: Sane people, military people. Yes. They will imprison the Jews; they will execute several hundred thousand of them at least.…
Fischer: I say death to President Bush! I say death to the United States. Fuck the United States! Fuck the Jews! The Jews are a criminal people. They mutilate [circumcise] their children. They’re murderous, criminal, thieving, lying bastards. They made up the Holocaust. There’s not a word of truth to it.… This is a wonderful day. Fuck the United States. Cry, you crybabies! Whine, you bastards! Now your time is coming.
Earliest known photograph of Bobby Fischer, sitting on his mother’s lap in 1944, when he was one year old. Regina Fischer was homeless when she gave birth to Bobby, and they first lived in a shelter for indigent mothers. MCF photo
Bobby’s mother, Regina, and her husband, Gerhardt Fischer, while in France during the 1930s. Though Gerhardt’s name is on Bobby’s birth certificate, it is not certain that he was Bobby’s father. MCF photo
Chess can be studied virtually anywhere, and Bobby was seldom without a chess board. One night, exasperated, Regina lightly tapped her nine-year-old son on his head with her bare foot: “Get out of the bathtub!” MCF photo
The ebullient Carmine Nigro, Bobby’s first chess teacher, visited New York’s Washington Square Park in 1955, where Bobby was playing in an outdoor tournament. MCF photo
Before he became obsessed with chess, Bobby dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. Here he is wielding a bat for his grade school’s team during a game in Brooklyn, in 1955. dailynewspix
Bobby engaged in a systematic regimen of reading every chess book in the Brooklyn Public Library and memorizing what was most helpful in each. Here he is, at age fourteen, reading a volume of Alexander Alekhine’s best games. FB Photo
Bobby at fourteen, interrupted while playing a game with his friend, teacher, and mentor, Jack Collins. MCF photo
Regina picked up her son at the Manhattan Chess Club many a late evening and escorted him home on the subway. Here he’s fallen asleep with his head on his mother’s shoulder. This snapshot was taken by Bobby’s sister, Joan. MCF photo
In 1958, after being refused an extension of his visa in Russia because of his rude behavior, Bobby arrived in Yugoslavia with his sister, Joan. JAT, the Yugoslavian airline
Although Bobby had played some speed games against Tigran Petrosian in Moscow, this game at the Portoroz International, in 1958, was their first formal encounter. They drew. Yugoslavian Chess Federation
David Bronstein was one of the strongest players in the world in 1958, but was only able to draw his game with Bobby, which created a sensation, proving that Bobby was of World Championship caliber. Yugoslavian Chess Federation
Regina Fischer, a frequent protester, at the head of a peace march in Moscow, 1960. She went from there to East Germany, where she completed her medical degree. Planet News, Ltd.
Bobby played three games against Mikhail Tal in Curaçao, in 1962, just before the flamboyant Russian became ill and was hospitalized. Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Collection
Banned from traveling to Havana in 1965, Bobby sat in a closed room in New York’s Marshall Chess Club and played his opponents by teletype. After he defeated Vassily Smyslov, the two analyzed their game by phone. The Queens Borough Public Library, Long Island Div., New York Herald-Tribune Photo Morgue
William Lombardy (left) and the bearded Miguel Quinteros, both grandmasters, served as Bobby’s seconds at the 1972 match. Icelandic Chess Federation
Regina Fischer, wearing a blond wig as a disguise, secretly visited Bobby in his hotel room during his match in Iceland. Bobby was preparing for his next game against Boris Spassky. MCF photo
In 1972 Fischer finally reached the summit of chess, playing in Iceland for the World Championship against Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union. Icelandic Chess Federation
At the banquet after he had won the match, Bobby, who often seemed uninterested in women, surprised the assembled dignitaries by dancing with an Icelandic beauty. Icelandic Chess Federation
Back in the United States, Bobby had become America’s hero by defeating the Soviet Union. In New York, on the steps of City Hall, Mayor John Lindsay awarded Bobby a gold medal and a Proclamation of Acclaim. Dailynewspix
After winning the championship, Bobby appeared on a number of television shows and received unprecedented media coverage. Here he is in late 1972 on The Merv Griffin Show, thinking about a move. Courtesy of The Merv Griffin Show
In 2004, Bobby was imprisoned in Japan for traveling without a valid passport, and was threatened with extradition back to the United States. Icelandic friends worked to free him, but after ten months in jail, bearded and haggard, Bobby appeared to be a broken man. Einar Einarsson
Miyoko Watai visited Bobby daily while he was in jail in Japan. Subsequently, she cared for him during his illness in Iceland, where friends said they were an affectionate and loving couple. Einar Einarsson
Bobby, nearing the end of his life, walking down a country road near Álpingi, the site of Iceland’s original parliament. Founded in AD 930 during the Viking era, Iceland’s national parliament is the oldest in the world and still in existence. Einar Einarsson
The last known photographic portrait of Bobby Fischer, who had become an Icelandic citizen, taken at 3 Frakkar (3 Coats), his favorite restaurant in Reyk
javik. Einar Einarsson
14
Arrest and Rescue
BOBBY FISCHER WAS a non-convicted felon-at-large with a ten-year prison sentence hanging over his head. After nine years of the government’s apparent lack of interest in pursuing him, however, he really didn’t feel like a fugitive. He traveled almost anywhere and did virtually anything he wanted to do, was a multimillionaire, had a woman who loved him, and although he was a man without a country, a modern-day Flying Dutchman hauntingly roaming the seas, he felt relatively secure. Then everything went amiss when he discovered that his memorabilia had been auctioned off; it was as if he’d lost not just old letters and score sheets, but a part of his inner being.
In a real sense, he’d lost himself—his grip was slipping.
It was a conspiracy, he conjectured, and the United States government and the Jews were responsible. He wanted the world to know about his devastating loss. That was when the radio broadcasts started. Most were aired over a small station in Baguio City, and if he’d gone on the air at that same station ten years earlier, he probably could have continued to live as he had since 1992, since so few listeners were normally tuned in. In 2001, though, with the Internet rapidly expanding, his rants were heard all over the world, and what he said brought renewed scrutiny by the United States government.