Remembering Jim Frederick

Before he became the renowned author of one of the most important books to be written about the war in Iraq, Jim Frederick was an accidental Tokyo bureau chief.

When he arrived in Tokyo in late 2002 at the ripe old age of 31, it was as Time magazine’s roving Asian business correspondent. He was still in the process of relocating from New York where he was a senior editor at Money magazine, to Time’s Asian headquarters in Hong Kong.

Jim was brought in to do a story on Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s bank reforms parachuting in to interview a few people, write up the story, expecting to return to furnish his still empty Hong Kong apartment within a week.

Instead, Jim stepped into a bureau in flux. Time’s Tokyo bureau had been chief less for months, staffed mostly by stringers and crippled by rivalries among trial bureau chiefs. At their best, foreign bureaus, with their size, distance from the politics of the mothership and proximity to their subjects, can be homey, efficient and exciting places to work. But back then we more resembled Heart of Darkness than anything else.

As an interned turned stringer, I was at the end of my rope. In the post 9/11 world of international journalism, Tokyo was far off the grid, and full time employment seemed just as distant. I was working several jobs to make ends meet, and the frustration of being mixed up in the politics of a giant machine that wouldn’t commit to me was overshadowing the joy of reporting for one of the world’s most iconic news organizations.

Jim saw the mess and while fully intending to return to his new life in Hong Kong, got to work repairing the bureau while reclaiming Tokyo’s rightful place in Time’s coverage. With the authority and compassion of a seasoned manager, Jim convinced me, along with another stringer, to keep the faith until the company freed up the budget to get us fully on board. One week turned into two, then a month, then three months somewhere along the way, Jim accepted the interim bureau chief position and pretty soon Time stopped looking for a new bureau chief altogether.

For the next four years, Jim, with his youthful Midwestern optimism, turned us cynical stray cat like stringers into loyal, committed staff reporters, and Tokyo became known as a close knit, highly functional bureau genuinely passionate about redefining Japan coverage. He was one of those rare journalists who relished being boss and was damn good at it. That he wrote fantastically about Japan’s show business, Edo period Buddhist art and Bank of Japan’s monetary policy goes without saying. Jim was also a natural leader, who led not only by example but was also deeply caring, generous with his time and energy to anyone who asked.

Outside of the office, Jim was the life of the party. He was a Time bureau chief of yesteryear tall, handsome and infinitely charming, he entertained sources and any colleagues who came through Tokyo alike, treating them like kings and queens. Jim could drink most anyone under the table and often did, sending them home with massive hangovers and unforgettable albeit fuzzy memories. I’ve yet to meet another foreign correspondent who can disarm foreign ministry officials to a point where they insisted on showing us the “Japanese salaryman way of drunken ness,” tying their neckties around their heads in a posh Roppongi restaurant in the wee hours of the night.

Jim won exclusive access to the most sought after stories of the time in Japanan interview with U.S. Army sergeant Charles Jenkins, who spent half a century in North Korea before being released in 2004 to Japan, the home country of his wife who was snatched off the shores of Sado Island by North Korean kidnappers. Jim left Tokyo in 2006 to become a senior editor in London, but the relationships he cultivated in the U.S. military ultimately led to his 2010 master piece, Black Hearts: One Platoon’s Descent Into Madness in Iraq’s Triangle of Death.

Much has been written about the importance of Black Hearts, most recently in Jim’s obituaries in the New York Times and the Washington Post. When I first heard that he would be spending months in Iraq to write an immensely difficult book about the war, what I remembered was one of the first conversations I had with Jim in 2002 about where he saw himself in 10 years. Non profit PR, or consulting, maybe. Perhaps still in journalism. But definitely not in some war zone, Jim said.

In the same stretch of conversation during his first weeks in Tokyo as the reluctant interim bureau chief, I often asked him what kept him from abandoning a messy situation to pick up where he left off in Hong Kong. Jim said he couldn’t leave knowing that he was in a position where he could right the wrongs. Sometimes duty calls and you have to rise to the task. Jim always went over and beyond, redefining the role for those who came after him.

Jim took the helm of Time International after the publication of Black Hearts. To those who knew him, it wasn’t all that surprising that his frustration with that position of not having the freedom to use his power for good led him to leave the prestigious role in 2013, and take his bride and soul mate, Charlotte, on a year of traveling the world.

During the 12 years that I knew him, Jim had checked off a great deal of what was in his bucket list including an extended stay in Tokyo with Charlotte to experience the city in a way that his work got in the way of doing 10 years ago.

One day before he passed away from a heart attack while on his exercising machine at the tender age of 42, Jim wrote on his Facebook wall that he and Charlotte were starting a media consulting company called Hybrid Vigor Media. Life suited Jim so well. I’m honored to have known and worked with him, and still a little angry about the injustice of having to sum it up.

Toko Sekiguchi reported for Time magazine from 2001 to 2007. She currently works as a Tokyo correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.