Joseph C. Harsch

Joseph C. Harsch
Born	May 25, 1905 Toledo, Ohio
Died	June 3, 1998
Occupation	Journalist
Years active	1929-1998
Known for	Reporting on World War 2 and the 1930s

Joseph C. Harsch (May 25, 1905 – June 3, 1998) was a newspaper, radio, and television journalist - a foreign correspondent whose good fortune as a news reporter was his knack for being present at locations where historical events were occurring. He spent more than sixty years writing for the Christian Science Monitor and at the time of his departure from his stationing in London he was named as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE Hon).

Joseph Close Harsch was born in Toledo, Ohio, the son of Paul Harsch, a real estate salesman, and his wife Lela. When Paul Harsch became a Christian Scientist, he raised his sons in the faith, which would lead to a career-long affiliation for Harsch as a reporter. Joseph Harsch studied history at Williams College in Massachusetts, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1927 after writing a thesis on the Hundred Years' War. Later, he traveled to Corpus Christi, Cambridge where he received a bachelor's degree from Cambridge University in 1929. Later that same year, Harsch went to work as a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor in Washington, D.C.

At the outset of the Great Depression, Harsch was a newly hired young reporter at the Monitor in Washington D.C. covering Herbert Hoover as the magnitude of the economic crisis began to unfold, and was still there when Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the New Deal with measures to counteract it. In 1939, Harsch was in London when Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany. It was the beginning of a number of first-hand accounts of events that shaped history.

Shortly after England's declaration of war, Harsch traveled to Berlin, where his reporting made him the first to cover World War II from both sides. On his way to the Soviet Union during a stopover in Hawaii, Harsch and his wife were asleep when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor began. He often repeated the story of how he awakened his wife in their hotel room, saying "Listen to this, dear. You have often asked me what an air raid sound like. This is a good imitation."

Incredibly, Harsch found himself in Australia following General Douglas MacArthur's failed defense of the Philippines, and was present to record MacArthur's prophetic pledge, "I shall return."

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