Friday, June 26, 2020

In Search of... Y. F. Yeh

Remember the old Leonard Nimoy-hosted In Search of... shows? (The link will take you to one on astrology--just in time for the upcoming full moon!) This post doesn't really have anything to do with that show, but I am in search of something--or rather, someone.

My fellow Kerrologists and I are trying to figure out the identify of the writer of this letter to Kerr. A partial transcription of the letter by Kerr indicates that the author is the same person as the writer who sent letters to Kerr under the name "Antenna." As this letter indicates, the writer, Y. F. Yeh, had taken a job in 1949 working for the British shipping company Butterfield and Swire. As of the date of the letter (1954), he was working in the Keelung office.

Not surprisingly, it's kind of difficult to find out more about Y. F. Yeh of Butterfield and Swire based on what we have. I did find the archives of John Swire & Sons Ltd (at SOAS), which look interesting but I'm guessing wouldn't include anything on Yeh (in fact, there's no online finding aid).

After finding out through the first article in this journal (pdf) that the Chinese name of Butterfield and Swire is/was 太古輪船公司, I found some references to the company on Taiwan's 國史館 website. It looks, though, like most of the materials predate Mr. Yeh's time.

I've also tried the Taiwan Biographical Ontology database, though I'm not sure Yeh would count as an "elite." (And not knowing the characters for "Y. F." doesn't help...)

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