George Weller
Encyclopedia
George Anthony Weller was an American
novelist, playwright
, and Pulitzer Prize
-winning journalist
for The New York Times
and Chicago Daily News
. He was a native of Boston
and a former editorial chair of The Harvard Crimson
.
Weller's reports from Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing were censored by the United States
military but appeared in a book in 2002.
He studied acting in Vienna, Austria as the only American member of Max Reinhardt's theater company. Weller was named to the Balkan reporting team of The New York Times, and during the 1930s also published two novels, numerous short stories, and freelance journalism from around Europe.
Weller was married twice, first in 1932 to artist Katherine Deupree (1906–1984) of Cincinnati, with whom he had a daughter Ann. They divorced in 1944, and in 1948 he married reporter Charlotte Ebener (1918–1990): their marriage ended with Charlotte's death.
In 1957 Weller had a second child, Anthony, by the British ballet teacher and scholar Gladys Lasky Weller (1922–1988), with whom he maintained a relationship for over thirty years.
for his work.
He wrote a pamphlet "The Belgian Campaign in Ethiopia" published by the Belgian Information Center as part of its World War II dissemination of information favorable to Belgium and to Belgium's role in the Belgian Congo, a valuable colony then and for many previous decades. This pamphlet is based on 1941 interviews with Belgian officers who led an army consisting of troops who had been local black police in the Belgian Congo, then Belgium's African colony and originally the personal property of King Leopold of Belgium's royal family. The interviews described and celebrated the surrender of Italian General Gazzera, and were conducted following the conclusion of the Belgian campaign, a "trek of 2,500 miles through jungle swamps and desert wastes." Hardships, heroism and aggressive action against a numerically superior Italian force are reflected as well as the role of the Belgian Congo Army's victory in assisting WWII Allied efforts to oppose the Axis in the colonial sphere. Based on articles first published in the Chicago Daily News, this pamphlet joined such publications as King Leopold Vindicated in the repertoire of the Belgium Information Center. Office of Strategic Services
(OSS, predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency) officers were involved with United States government and military personnel in securing the supply from the Shinkolobwe mine of most of the uranium critical to production of the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima that brought World War II to an end. Anthony Mockler in his definitive work Haile Selassie's War: The Italian-Ethiopian Campaign, 1935–1941 states that "troops from the Belgian Congo had reached their 'theatre of operations'—the Baro Salient—in February 1941".
George Weller reported from Singapore in January 1942. At 8:15 a.m. January 31 the British blew a 70-foot gap in the causeway to Johor. On February 15, 1942, British forces in Singapore surrendered to the Japanese. Giles Playfair, then of the Malaya Broadcasting Corporation, in an entry dated January 29 writes: "Outside the bank I met George Weller who told me that he was off to Java this afternoon and bade me a fond farewell." Weller's reports from Singapore would be published the next year in the book Singapore is Silent.
Weller's War includes articles which were published (wholly or in part) by Chicago Daily News, Boston Globe(August 31 and September 1, 1945) and London Daily Telegraph(September 1, 1945). Weller's reporting on Nagasaki remains one of his lasting legacies.
From their base in Rome, Weller's wife Charlotte, herself a newspaper writer, often accompanied him on assignments, including Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
Weller died at his home in San Felice Circeo, Italy, on December 19, 2002 at the age of 95.
, for a story on an emergency appendectomy performed within a submarine in enemy waters, in which the crew had to use a tea strainer and spoons. He was not on the submarine; he interviewed crew members who were eyewitnesses.
General Douglas MacArthur
honored him by conferring a special distinction: "It is a real pleasure to me to award you the Asiatic-Pacific Service Ribbon in view of your long and meritorious services in the Southwest Pacific Area with the forces of this command. You have added luster to the difficult, dangerous and arduous profession of War Correspondent.". Weller was also awarded a 1954 George Polk Memorial Award
and a Nieman Fellowship
at Harvard.
Late in life he received Italy's Premio Internazionale di Giornalismo. He also provided the inspiration for longtime friend Sean O'Faolain's 1974 short story Something, Everything, Anything, Nothing.
The Atomic Energy Commission's successor agency the Department of Energy was asked for all records by or about George Weller from September 1945 and after. Assigned to the Executive Secretariat a search was conducted of documents in the Record Storage maintained by the History Division: nothing was found.
Weller stated in his article published in the Chicago Daily News Saturday August 14, 1965: "The original notes and the original stories are buried in a family attic in New England."
In the foreword to his Weller's final book, First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War, Walter Cronkite
wrote:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
novelist, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, and Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and Chicago Daily News
Chicago Daily News
The Chicago Daily News was an afternoon daily newspaper published between 1876 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois.-History:The Daily News was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Dougherty in 1875 and began publishing early the next year...
. He was a native of Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
and a former editorial chair of The Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper of Harvard University, was founded in 1873. It is the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates...
.
Weller's reports from Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing were censored by the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
military but appeared in a book in 2002.
Life and career
Weller was born in Boston on July 13, 1907, and graduated from the Roxbury Latin School in 1925 and Harvard College in 1929. During his senior year at Harvard, Weller wrote the book and co-wrote the lyrics for the 83rd annual Hasty Pudding Club musical comedy production Fireman, Save My Child!He studied acting in Vienna, Austria as the only American member of Max Reinhardt's theater company. Weller was named to the Balkan reporting team of The New York Times, and during the 1930s also published two novels, numerous short stories, and freelance journalism from around Europe.
Weller was married twice, first in 1932 to artist Katherine Deupree (1906–1984) of Cincinnati, with whom he had a daughter Ann. They divorced in 1944, and in 1948 he married reporter Charlotte Ebener (1918–1990): their marriage ended with Charlotte's death.
In 1957 Weller had a second child, Anthony, by the British ballet teacher and scholar Gladys Lasky Weller (1922–1988), with whom he maintained a relationship for over thirty years.
World War II
In December, 1940, soon after the beginning of World War II, Weller began working for the Chicago Daily News Foreign Service and covered the war in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific as one of the war's great correspondents, winning in 1943 a Pulitzer Prize1943 Pulitzer Prize
-Journalism awards:*Public Service: Omaha World-Herald For its initiative and originality in planning a state-wide campaign for the collection of scrap metal for the war effort...
for his work.
He wrote a pamphlet "The Belgian Campaign in Ethiopia" published by the Belgian Information Center as part of its World War II dissemination of information favorable to Belgium and to Belgium's role in the Belgian Congo, a valuable colony then and for many previous decades. This pamphlet is based on 1941 interviews with Belgian officers who led an army consisting of troops who had been local black police in the Belgian Congo, then Belgium's African colony and originally the personal property of King Leopold of Belgium's royal family. The interviews described and celebrated the surrender of Italian General Gazzera, and were conducted following the conclusion of the Belgian campaign, a "trek of 2,500 miles through jungle swamps and desert wastes." Hardships, heroism and aggressive action against a numerically superior Italian force are reflected as well as the role of the Belgian Congo Army's victory in assisting WWII Allied efforts to oppose the Axis in the colonial sphere. Based on articles first published in the Chicago Daily News, this pamphlet joined such publications as King Leopold Vindicated in the repertoire of the Belgium Information Center. Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
(OSS, predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency) officers were involved with United States government and military personnel in securing the supply from the Shinkolobwe mine of most of the uranium critical to production of the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima that brought World War II to an end. Anthony Mockler in his definitive work Haile Selassie's War: The Italian-Ethiopian Campaign, 1935–1941 states that "troops from the Belgian Congo had reached their 'theatre of operations'—the Baro Salient—in February 1941".
George Weller reported from Singapore in January 1942. At 8:15 a.m. January 31 the British blew a 70-foot gap in the causeway to Johor. On February 15, 1942, British forces in Singapore surrendered to the Japanese. Giles Playfair, then of the Malaya Broadcasting Corporation, in an entry dated January 29 writes: "Outside the bank I met George Weller who told me that he was off to Java this afternoon and bade me a fond farewell." Weller's reports from Singapore would be published the next year in the book Singapore is Silent.
Weller's War includes articles which were published (wholly or in part) by Chicago Daily News, Boston Globe(August 31 and September 1, 1945) and London Daily Telegraph(September 1, 1945). Weller's reporting on Nagasaki remains one of his lasting legacies.
After the war
In 1946 Weller covered the 1946 Greek war against partisan guerrillas. For many years he covered the Balkans, Mideast and Africa from Rome, where he headed the Daily News bureau until retiring from the newspaper in 1975.From their base in Rome, Weller's wife Charlotte, herself a newspaper writer, often accompanied him on assignments, including Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
Weller died at his home in San Felice Circeo, Italy, on December 19, 2002 at the age of 95.
Professional honors
Weller won a 1943 Pulitzer Prize for ReportingPulitzer Prize for Reporting
The Pulitzer Prize for Reporting was awarded from 1917 to 1947.-Winners:*1917: Herbert Bayard Swope, New York World, for articles which appeared October 10, October 15 and from November 4 daily to November 22, 1916, inclusive, entitled, "Inside the German Empire."*1918: Harold A...
, for a story on an emergency appendectomy performed within a submarine in enemy waters, in which the crew had to use a tea strainer and spoons. He was not on the submarine; he interviewed crew members who were eyewitnesses.
General Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army. He was a Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the...
honored him by conferring a special distinction: "It is a real pleasure to me to award you the Asiatic-Pacific Service Ribbon in view of your long and meritorious services in the Southwest Pacific Area with the forces of this command. You have added luster to the difficult, dangerous and arduous profession of War Correspondent.". Weller was also awarded a 1954 George Polk Memorial Award
George Polk Awards
The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States.-History:...
and a Nieman Fellowship
Nieman Fellowship
The Nieman Fellowship is an award given to mid-career journalists by The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. This award allows winners time to reflect on their careers and focus on honing their skills....
at Harvard.
Late in life he received Italy's Premio Internazionale di Giornalismo. He also provided the inspiration for longtime friend Sean O'Faolain's 1974 short story Something, Everything, Anything, Nothing.
Legacy
The Notes to Last Train from Hiroshima state: "As it was, Weller's notes were confiscated and classified. Later, his carbon copies were stored and replicated (in edited form) as internal military and Atomic Energy Commission documents—and in time, they became more or less gospel."The Atomic Energy Commission's successor agency the Department of Energy was asked for all records by or about George Weller from September 1945 and after. Assigned to the Executive Secretariat a search was conducted of documents in the Record Storage maintained by the History Division: nothing was found.
Weller stated in his article published in the Chicago Daily News Saturday August 14, 1965: "The original notes and the original stories are buried in a family attic in New England."
In the foreword to his Weller's final book, First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War, Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
wrote:
"This is an important book—important and gripping. For the first time in print we can read the details of the nuclear bombardment of Nagasaki, Japan, as written by the first American reporter on the terrible scene ... [George Weller's] reports, so long delayed but now salvaged by his son, at last have saved our history from the military censorship that would have preferred to have time to sanitize the ghastly details ... Also delayed by MacArthur's censorship were Weller's dispatches from his visits to American prison camps [w]here he uncovered the Japanese military's savage treatment of their American prisoners ... There is so much in this volume that we never knew or have long forgotten. This volume of the last generation's history is an important reminder, a warning to inspire civilian vigilance."
Fiction
A novel of undergraduate life at Harvard. A novel of linked short stories of the American panorama.. A novel of wartime Greece. Burlesque show at "the old Willis". Accompanying this short story is a biographical entry titled "Last Man Out". However, the information provided contains no reference to Nagasaki, nor to the prisoner of war camps in Japan although the story is based on events at Omuta (Fukuoka #17 Kyushu).Non-fiction
many publicity photos of Lamarr pages 32–40. War reporting. Eyewitness account of the fall of Singapore. Political history. For young readers. For young readers. (Later published under the name All About Submarines.) unpublished manuscript. An anthology containing Weller's “Flight from Java,” a 1942 dispatch concerning his escape.Plays
- Walking Time
- Farewell, Ulysses
- Second Saint of Cyprus
- Friendly Relations
- The Impossible Immortals (a comedy in three acts). This play takes place in Italy after World War II, during the years of the rivalry between Santayana and Berenson.
External links
- The Guardian: "Disease X is still snatching away lives." Weller was the first western reporter to reach Nagasaki but his dispatches on radiation illness among the people were suppressed by U.S. censors. His original news stories were published for the first time 60 years after they were written in The Daily Mainichi, Japan's oldest newspaper, but are no longer online. The Guardian (London) published excerpts.
- The city as Weller saw it in September 1945: Catholic Church in Nagasaki "torn down like gingerbread" by the atom bomb.
- The Crimson: "Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Dies at 95"
- Interview with Anthony Weller on Weller's War
- A Look Back at the Censored Dispatches of Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist George Weller - video report by Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...