Eve of a Hundred Midnights
Page 35
76 “the 20th Century caught up”: MJ, “Unheavenly City” (unpublished article draft), Summer 1941, Chungking (Chongqing), China.
76 “Moving the entire government”: Mitter, Forgotten Ally, p. 174.
77 “most raided city”: MJ (writing as “Mel Jacks”), “China’s ‘Most Raided City,’” This World (San Francisco Chronicle Sunday magazine), September 8, 1940, p. 11.
77 “Chungking is probably”: MJ, “Unheavenly City,” p. 1.
77 “evil and new”: Carl Mydans, More Than Meets the Eye. New York: Harper & Bros, 1959; reprint, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974, p. 40.
78 “Few foreigners desert”: MJ, “Unheavenly City,” p. 2.
80 “If you are a correspondent”: Ibid, p. 7.
82 “those days in Chungking”: THW, letter to Peggy and Tillman Durdin, August 30, 1955, Frank Tillman Durdin Papers, MSS 95, Special Collections and Archives, University of California at San Diego.
83 They were, as the author: Peter Rand, China Hands. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995, p. 195.
83 “I don’t know how, if ever”: THW, August 30, 1955 letter.
84 “like suction cups plopping”: MJ, “Monsieur Big-Hat (or) Chungking Interlude,” unpublished short story, summer, 1940, Chungking (Chongqing), China, p. 5.
86 “You get to know Chinese officials”: MJ, “Unheavenly City,” p. 7.
89 “Thank you, NBC”: MJ, NBC radio broadcast, April 17, 1940.
90 “Not the easiest capital”: MJ, cable to DH, June 17, 1941, Chungking (Chongqing), China, p. 1.
91 “When you are climbing”: MJ, “Unheavenly City,” p. 3.
94 she’d censored it heavily: MJ, “China’s First Lady” (prepublication article draft), May 4, 1940, Chungking (Chongqing), China.
95 “The atmosphere between”: John Oakie, letter to MJ, April 11, 1940, San Francisco, CA, p. 2.
96 “Learning to bum cigarettes”: MJ, “Unheavenly City,” p. 8.
96 “You damn a government bureau”: Ibid, p. 5.
Chapter 4: The Haiphong Incident
100 “I feel that your initiative”: Hollington K. Tong, “Ref. No. 838” (letter to MJ, July 15, 1940, Chungking (Chongqing), China.
104 “The French have given”: MJ as collated by AWJF, “Notes on Indo-China,” typewritten copy of handwritten summaries collected fall, 1940, p. 2.
105 They’d liked his earlier reporting: Robert Bellaire, letter to MJ, September 11, 1940, Shanghai, China.
106 “In one way or another”: MJ, letter to Bellaire, October 9, 1940, Hanoi, French Indochina (Vietnam), p. 2.
106 Bellaire had thought: Bellaire, September 11, 1940 letter.
107 “foreign correspondent, ahem”: MJ quoted in Shirlee Austerland, “Tues,” letter to ESM, Fall, 1940 (specific date unavailable), San Francisco, CA.
107 “Sometimes that takes a lot”: MJ, October 9, 1940 letter, p. 2.
108 “From the Manila broadcasts”: Ibid, p. 3.
111 She even sent a telegram: Austerland, telegram to MJ October 28, 1940, San Francisco, CA.
111 “frantically querying”: MJ, telegram to United Press Shanghai office, October 2, 1940, Hanoi, French Indochina (Vietnam).
112 “If there are chances”: MJ, October 9, 1940 letter, p. 1.
112 “I have been told”: MJ, letter to Bellaire, November 1, 1940, Hanoi, French Indochina (Vietnam), p. 1.
112 The situation became so bad: MJ, letter to Charles S. Reed, November 12, 1940, Hanoi, French Indochina (Vietnam), p. 1.
113 A U.S. flag still flew: French officials stopped his cable: MJ, cable draft 128, translated from French, November 21, 1940, Haiphong, French Indochina (Vietnam).
114 “The French police”: MJ, letter to Charles S. Reed, November 21, 1940, Hanoi, French Indochina (Vietnam).
114 Another writer later recounted: Moats, Alice-Leone. Blind Date with Mars. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1943, p. 73.
115 “Four days later”: Joseph Grew, State Department bulletin 1700, November 26, 1940, as reprinted at Foreign Relations of the United States, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Japan: 1931–1941, p. 704, University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries, Digital Collections (UWMDC), digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=turn&entity=FRUS.FRUS193141v01.p0800&id=FRUS.FRUS193141v01&isize=text.
115 “By that time”: Moats, Blind Date with Mars, p. 73.
116 “dismal, grimy place”: Ibid.
117 Consul Reed reported: “The Consul at Hanoi (Reed) to the Secretary of State,” as reprinted at United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1940 (The Far East), UWMDC, digicoll.library .wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=turn&entity=FRUS.FRUS1940v04.p0251&id=FRUS.FRUS1940v04&isize=M&q1=jacoby, p. 243.
119 “We thought of having a showdown”: Maurice Votaw, letter to MJ, January 4, 1941, Chungking (Chongqing), China.
119 “He is extremely modest”: Chilton R. Bush, letter to ESM, January 25, 1941, Stanford, CA.
Chapter 5: A True Hollywood Story
125 Shippey wrote that: Lee Shippey, “Lee Side o’ L.A.: Direct from Indo-China,” Los Angeles Times, February 22, 1941.
126 “I thought that I would”: MJ, letter to Mary White, February 17, 1941, Los Angeles, CA.
128 Leland had been: Anna Liakas, “War Correspondent and Author Spends Last Days on Captiva,” Sanibel-Captiva Islander (Captiva, FL), February 22, 2002.
128 Then, in 1934: “Whitmore; Ex-Housing Official in So. Cal Dies,” clipping from unknown publication, October 1942.
129 For a while she even: Lloyd Shearer “Will the real Robert McNamara Please Stand Up,” Parade magazine, March 5, 1967.
129 “Eyes closed, expression”: AWJF, “Mischa Elman Gets Concert Series Ovation,” Stanford Daily 84, no. 22 (November 2, 1933), p. 1.
130 “Annalee ‘New Theater’”: Irv Jorgi, “Greek Gals Get Cash to Clinch Royal Rat Race,” Stanford Daily 87, no. 21 (April 10, 1935).
130 “Why do supposedly intelligent”: AWJF, “Fair Sex Lacking in Grid ‘Savoir Faire,’” Stanford Daily 88, no. 44 (November 22, 1935), p. 10.
131 netted a dark green: “Co-eds Cut Capers in Cute Campus Clothes,” Stanford Daily 91, no. 19 (February 26, 1937), p. 6.
131 Shelley Mydans wrote: Shelley Mydans, “Book-of-Month Author,” Stanford Alumni Review (December 1946), p. 11.
132 “Extracurricular work on”: “Poppa Time Swings Around Another Cycle as the Daily Toddles On,” Stanford Daily 89, no. 62 (May 27, 1936), p. 4.
133 “used to being the first”: Anne Fadiman, conversation with the author, January 4, 2013.
133 “In spite of her quick”: S. Mydans, “Book-of-Month Author,” p. 12.
134 “Travelers in the Middle West”: AWJF, “Viewing the News: Midwest Dust Storms—Pettengill,” Stanford Daily 87, no. 24 (April 15, 1935), p. 2.
135 No doubt Burgess: Chilton Bush, letter to ESM, December 30, 1943.
135 “journalist through and through”: Fadiman, January 4, 2013 conversation.
136 A job anywhere: “Stanford ‘Kids’ Write Scenario: ‘Andy Hardy Meets Debutante,’” Stanford Daily, July 7, 1940, p. 4.
137 “Annalee didn’t know”: Sidney Skolsky, “Hollywords and Picturegraphs,” Syndicated Column, April 24, 1942.
137 This shorthand was so cryptic: S. Mydans, “Book-of-Month Author,” p. 11.
137 “She did it good enough”: Skolsky, “Hollywords and Picturegraphs.”
137 “When I talk about odds”: “Stanford ‘Kids’ Write Scenario,” p. 4.
137 At one point, Fitzgerald: Fadiman, conversation with the author, July 31, 2014.
138 “never let anyone forget that”: “Stanford ‘Kids’ Write Scenario,” p. 4.
138 “I couldn’t help but learn”: Ibid.
138 At Stanford, Seller: “Prize Winning Play Will Be Read by Masquer’s,” Stanford Daily, November 6, 1934.
139 “Their names are on the screen”: �
�Stanford ‘Kids’ Write Scenario,” p. 4.
139 “Daphne, the ‘deb,’ he decides”: Bosley Crowther, “Movie Review: Andy Hardy Meets Debutante (1940),” New York Times, August 2, 1940.
139 “Annalee Whitmore is”: Skolsky, “Hollywords and Picturegraphs.”
139 “She was at heart”: Michael Churchill, “Bull Session: Honeymoon on Corregidor,” Stanford Daily, February 3, 1942.
140 “she found the prospect”: Sorel, Nancy Caldwell. The Women Who Wrote the War. New York: Harper Perennial, 2000, p. 141.
141 In school he and Mel’s: AWJF, “Dear Mother and Dad #2,” letter to ESM and MM, Fall 1942.
Chapter 6: “I’ll Be Careful”
144 “For they are the largest”: HRL, speech at United China Relief dinner, March 26, 1941, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, NY.
152 Asking his constituents: “Mrs. Nicholson Sends News of Baltimore ‘China Week,’” Mount Vernon Hawk-Eye, March 6, 1941.
153 Lee was a daredevil: Rebecca Maksel, “China’s First Lady of Flight,” Air and Space magazine (Smithsonian Institution), Washington, D.C., July 23, 2008, airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/chinas-first-lady-of-flight-1725176/?no-ist (accessed April 18, 2015).
153 “Said Shirlee”: MJ, letter to THW, March 12, 1941, New York, NY.
153 “For [the Chinese] are the largest”: HRL, speech at United China Relief dinner.
157 “He is in close touch”: Otis P. Swift, letter to Selective Service Local Board 98 Chairman, April 3, 1941, New York, NY.
159 Aware of himself: HRL, “One Beautiful Day,” speech for United China Relief, Los Angeles, CA, April 25, 1941.
160 The animator agreed: HRL, telegram to Corinne Thrasher, April 27, 1941, Beverly Hills, CA.
162 Aside from the Luces: Departure record for American Clipper NC 18606, April 28, 1941, San Francisco, CA, and April 30, 1941, Honolulu, HI.
162 There was also a British: Maochun Yu, The Dragon’s War: Allied Operations and the Fate of China, 1937–1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003).
163 And one woman on board: Sarah Kadosh, “Laura Margolis Jarblum: 1903–1997,” in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, March 1, 2009, Jewish Women’s Archive, jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/jarblum-lauramargolis.
163 who was secretly traveling: Phyllis Gabell, listed on the passenger manifest as a representative of the British Ministry of Economic Warfare, was also a member of the United Kingdom’s Special Operations Executive.
167 As Teddy White and: AWJF and THW, Thunder Out of China. 2nd ed. New York: William Sloane Associates, 1961 (originally published in 1946), p. 76.
167 “The Communist-Kuomintang”: MJ, letter to DH, June 9, 1941, Chungking (Chongqing), China, p. 1.
Chapter 7: “Nothing but Twisted Sticks”
171 “Fires lit the city”: MJ, cable to DH, June 7, 1941, Chungking (Chongqing), China.
175 The images also caused: M. M. Kornfeld, Russell Fitzpatrick, and Charles Kreiner, “Slaughter in China,” letters to the editor, Life, August 21, 1941, p. 4.
176 “Well, my friend, the ball”: MJ, letter to THW, June 2, 1941, Chungking (Chongqing), China, p. 2.
177 Indeed, Lattimore showed: MJ, “How Japan Moved into Indo-China,” Asia (May 1941), p. 228.
179 “They got the view”: MJ, letter to DH, June 17, 1941, Chungking (Chongqing), China, p. 1.
180 “Now that the shelter”: Ibid., p. 2.
180 “But aside from living”: MJ, letter to DH, July 12, 1941, Chungking (Chongqing), China, p. 3.
180 “press elsewhere in the world”: Ibid, p. 4.
181 “not entirely satisfied”: Ibid, p. 5.
182 This “heckling”: Ibid, p. 2.
183 “The streets are drab”: MJ, letter to DH, July 11, 1941, Chungking (Chongqing), China, p. 2.
183 “What it did gain”: C. Mydans, entry from June 21, 1941, notebook 3 (emphasis in the original) (quoted courtesy of the Mydans family).
Chapter 8: “He Types on the Desk, and I Type on the Dressing Table”
190 It was August: Skolsky, “Hollywords and Picturegraphs,” April 24, 1942.
191 “I admit we’d”: AWJF, letter to ESM and MM, November 29, 1941, Manila, the Philippines.
192 “Chungking was no place”: “The Press: In Line of Duty,” Time, May 11, 1942.
192 “a Norwegian-captained”: Norwegian National Archives voyage records listed in Siri Holm Larson, “M/S Granville,” Warsailors.com, September 21, 2011, www.warsailors.com/singleships/granville.html (accessed November 7, 2015).
192 “Passengers are about”: AWJF, letter to Thomas Seller, September 11, 1941, Manila, the Philippines.
193 “It takes brains”: S. Mydans, “Annalee Jacoby,” Book-of-the-Month Club News, p. 6.
193 “Maybe people are right”: AWJF, September 11, 1941, p. 2.
194 The plane ended up: Rand, China Hands, p. 216; details corrected by Anne Fadiman, July 31, 2014.
197 She said as much four decades: MacKinnon and Friesen, China Reporting, pp. 50–51.
199 Other risks included: AWJF, broadcast script for radio station XGOY – 9638 K.C., Sept. 26, 1941, 6:30 A.M. PST, Chungking (Chongqing), China.
199 “From obscurity to overnight”: Ibid.
201 “did all they could”: AWJF, November 29, 1941 letter.
202 The first time Annalee: Rand, China Hands, p. 216.
202 On a visit to: Carl Warren Weidenburner, Inside Wartime China (2009), an adaptation of the original 1943 edition (Chungking: Chinese Ministry of Information, December 1, 1943), available through China-Burma-India: Remembering the Forgotten Theater of World War II, at the web page cbitheater.com/wartime/wartime.
202 Later she would write: AWJF, November 29, 1941 letter.
204 “It seemed altogether different”: Ibid., p. 2.
206 Mel’s eleven-year-old cousin: Jackee S. Marks, “Jackee’s Poem to Melville,” October 17, 1941, Los Angeles, CA.
208 “A good thing you are”: Hollington K. Tong, “Ref. No. 3462” (letter to MJ), November 18, 1941, Chungking (Chongqing), China.
208 She later told Time’s: ESM, March 28, 1942 letter.
209 Manila was relatively: William J. Dunn, Pacific Microphone, Military History Series. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1988, p. 20.
209 “The government of President”: Ibid.
214 “It was my only time”: Ibid., p. 54.
217 On November 14: Lee, They Call It Pacific, p. 1.
217 “tall, dark, husky, handsome”: MJ, “Manila Cable 37,” to DH, Dec. 25, 1941, Manila, the Philippines.
218 Still, Mel was impressed: Ibid.
218 “I could see him”: AWJF, November 29, 1941 letter.
220 It didn’t matter that: Ibid.
221 While on their way: Lee, p. 29.
222 Annalee’s and Mel’s friends: AWJF, November 29, 1941 letter.
Chapter 9: Infamy
224 “We saw the boat off”: AWJF, November 29, 1941 letter, p. 3.
224 In a saccharine coda: “Named Pandas,” Milwaukee Journal, November 30, 1942 p. 1.
224 MacArthur’s press aide: LeGrande Diller, letter to ESM, February 2, 1944, San Francisco, CA.
225 As the historian Eric Morris: Eric Morris, Corregidor: The End of the Line. Briarcliff Manor, NY: Stein and Day, 1981, p. 23.
226 War was a near-certainty: MJ, “Confidential” (cable to DH), December 6, 1941, Manila, the Philippines.
227 “saw some screwy headline”: MJ, “This Is Our Battle” (unpublished manuscript), March 18, 1942, somewhere at sea, p. 4.
227 “By noon the first day”: AWJF, “Ours Is Full of Holes,” Douglas Airview (Van Nuys, CA) (August 1942), p. 4.
228 “MacArthur’s men wanted”: MJ, “This Is Our Battle,” p. 9.
229 “The whole picture seemed”: Ibid., p. 4.
229 “Those days were eye-openers”: Ibid., p. 9.
230 Shortly after the war: Ibid., p. 7.
231 “The Manila
countryside”: MJ, “Manila Cable No. 34” (cable to DH), northern Luzon front, the Philippines, December 23, 1941.
233 The story of the battle: MJ, “Manila Cable No. 38” (cable to DH), Manila, the Philippines, Dec. 26, 1941.
234 Manila nights were: MJ, “This Is Our Battle,” p. 13.
236 “The ugliness of war”: Ibid, p. 9.
237 “There are no uniforms”: MJ, “Cable No. 42” (cable to DH), December 26, 1941.
238 “The last two weeks”: AWJF, April 10, 1942 letter.
239 “China days had taught us”: MJ, “In the air somewhere in Australia,” p. 4.
239 For a time: MJ, “This Is Our Battle,” p. 14.
240 “Congratulations”: HRL, cable to MJ, December 26, 1941.
241 “I was scared then”: MJ, “This Is Our Battle,” p. 13.
241 “None of us knew”: Dunn, Pacific Microphone, p. 160.
242 “just a stone’s throw”: MJ, “This Is Our Battle,” p. 14.
242 “The same thing”: Ibid.
243 “Anything to stay”: Lee, They Call It Pacific, p. 151.
243 “By the time we’e [sic] finally”: AWJF, April 10, 1942 letter.
244 The U.S. Army Transportation Service: Gibson and Gibson, Over Seas, p. 226.
245 “It still seemed better”: AWJF, April 10, 1942 letter.
245 “Carl and Shelley decided”: Ibid.
245 It is often the case: Sorel, p. 160.
247 They had to leave behind: AWJF, April 10, 1942 letter.
248 Another journalist in Manila: Royal Arch Gunnison, So Sorry, No Peace. New York, NY: The Viking Press, 1944, p. 50.
249 now he watched: MJ letter to ESM and MM, April 10, 1942, Melbourne, Australia. Additional accounts were made by Carl Mydans.
249 “Annalee supplied”: Lee, They Call It Pacific, p. 153.
249 Unfortunately, they couldn’t find: Ibid.; MJ, April 4 cable.
251 “Soon we’ll be in the Indies”: MJ, April 4 cable.
251 “We could just barely make out”: MJ, “This Is Our Battle,” p. 15.
Chapter 10: Into the Blackness Beyond
257 “We scrambled”: AWJF, April 10, 1942 letter.
257 “That was our introduction”: MJ, “This Is Our Battle,” p. 16.