Eve of a Hundred Midnights (42 page)

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.