Collin

this is the fischer.jp website, archived on the wayback machine. the question is who actually ran it as i don't believe we know (correct me if i am wrong). my theory is it was someone close in his inner circle in japan which explain the third person and the website being .jp, but bobby supplied his opinions and the many documents. there's way too many personal documents, scans of his passport, letters, radio transcripts and his opinion for this to be just some random fan with no connection to him.

the header image in one of the version is a picture of bobby at twelve years old, taken in lincoln, nebraska which is the same picture used for the cover of The Unknown Bobby Fischer, by John Donaldson and Eric Tangborn, Seattle 1999. it's striking because that kid hadn't become the person who would later fill a website with this kind of hate. maybe it was chosen because it was the cover of the book, maybe bobby chose it himself because he still saw himself as that boy. maybe someone else chose it to soften the message. either way, the contrast between the innocent photo and what follows is jarring.

the site also includes a direct plea for political asylum, dated july 15, 2004, two days after his arrest. it claims bobby was "viciously attacked brutalized seriously injured and very nearly killed" during the detention, it shows how terrified he was of being sent back to the us. the address listed is miyoko watai's, his longtime partner who he married while in detention. any country willing to offer him asylum was supposed to contact her, and eventually iceland did.

the "free bobby fischer" section was part of the campaign when he was detained in japan. a canadian journalist named john bosnitch visited fischer in the detention center and set up the "committee to free bobby fischer," arguing his case before immigration tribunals and coordinating a nine-month legal campaign. the site lists government contacts: the red cross, the japanese prime minister, the us congress, even president george w. bush. and asks you to write to them. i wonder how many people actually did.

there's this section about alcohol being banned in the detention center while cigarettes are freely available which was already referenced in the Jan 17 2005 radio interview. the site takes a study from the washington post about alcohol possibly helping memory and uses it to argue that the japanese government is either full of "ignorant fools" or "deliberately trying to debilitate and kill their prisoners."

then there's the bob ellsworth section which is ugly. ellsworth was a friend who tried to help, he spent over $8,000 of his own money buying back fischer's belongings after the storage unit was sold (admittedly after missing a payment so it was taken over by the storage company). the site calls him a "jewish liar, embezzler and thief" and says "it's good to be a jew in the jew-controlled united states." a man who tried to save bobby's archives got turned into an enemy.

the site also includes a letter from bobby to the editors of encyclopaedia judaica asking for his name to be removed. buried in all the hate, there's also bobby talking about chess. specifically, his variant fischer random chess (or chess960), which he announced in 1992 and formally introduced in 1996. for people unaware and curious, the idea was to randomize the starting position of the back pieces so that memorizing openings becomes useless.

there's a full table of his live radio interviews from 1999 to 2006: 34 of them. he gave these from hungary, the philippines, iceland, colombia, russia. this is where most of his antisemitic and anti-america rants came from. the site treats them like primary sources, which i guess they are.

and then there's the unavoidable to mention: the pure antisemitism. "jews are bad people. they're like poisonous mushrooms." he says the holocaust is a hoax. he shares a transcript where he calls jews "parasites," "liars," "thieves," "murderers."

there's also a message to radio stations all over the world, saying bobby wants to give more live interviews and to contact him directly at a docomo.ne.jp email address.

dunno if this is old news or not, but i've found that fischer directly mentions fischer.jp on multiple occasions in interviews found on the site, confirming that he at least some involvement. interestingly enough, in some mentions of the site (pictured) fischer refers to fischer.jp as his.

in the 2001 interview (which also has the first mention of fischer.jp), fischer makes an offhanded comment about having his interviews from the time saved on a minidisc. if we presume that fischer understood technology enough (in other sections of the interviews he discusses other websites and certain content on them which makes it more likely that he did), then there is a possibility that some interviews on the site were provided by fischer himself. in 2002, fischer also adds that he is able to recieve comments and emails through the site.

fischer's wording when discussing the site is incredibly vague. the majority of the time he simply says "the site" or "that site" when referring to fischer.jp, only saying "my site" explicitly twice. however, from my skimming i could not find any place where fischer credits any other person with assistance in making fischer.jp. then again, that might just be due to his egocentric personality, especially during this "wilderness era". like many other things about fischer, everything is really up in the air

update: here are some additional excerpts where fischer talks about fischer.jp. he says that fischer.jp is his own some additional times, with even the transcriber of the interviews adding that fischer himself posted material onto the site. but, one moment that's put at the bottom of this visual is very important: fischer says: "i had it put on my website", basically confirming the general consensus: fischer provided material, but was not directly editing the website. in the screencap above the one just mentioned, fischer says that content on the site takes a few days to publish. though this could be because of the state of the internet at the time, it also could be because the content needs time to make its way to a second party.

from my skimming, there is no mention of who is helping him with providing content for fischer.jp. in earlier interviews, a man by the name of bobby ang explains that he is in contact with fischer and added his email and interviews to his *own* website, pinoychess. i initially thought that maybe ang could've also ran fischer.jp for fischer, but in a later interview it is very apparent that fischer wants nothing to do with him after he had allegedly uploaded false information onto pinoychess. in fact, i find it very likely that fischer had fischer.jp made after cutting ties with ang, as the first mention of fischer.jp is in the same interview. fischer continues to discuss fischer.jp after this rant, making it clear that ang was not the one running fischer.jp.

this is the fischer.jp website, archived on the wayback machine. the question is who actually ran it as i don't believe we know (correct me if i am wrong). my theory is it was someone close in his inner circle in japan which explain the third person and the website being .jp, but bobby supplied his opinions and the many documents. there's way too many personal documents, scans of his passport, letters, radio transcripts and his opinion for this to be just some random fan with no connection to him.

the header image in one of the version is a picture of bobby at twelve years old, taken in lincoln, nebraska which is the same picture used for the cover of The Unknown Bobby Fischer, by John Donaldson and Eric Tangborn, Seattle 1999. it's striking because that kid hadn't become the person who would later fill a website with this kind of hate. maybe it was chosen because it was the cover of the book, maybe bobby chose it himself because he still saw himself as that boy. maybe someone else chose it to soften the message. either way, the contrast between the innocent photo and what follows is jarring.

the site also includes a direct plea for political asylum, dated july 15, 2004, two days after his arrest. it claims bobby was "viciously attacked brutalized seriously injured and very nearly killed" during the detention, it shows how terrified he was of being sent back to the us. the address listed is miyoko watai's, his longtime partner who he married while in detention. any country willing to offer him asylum was supposed to contact her, and eventually iceland did.

the "free bobby fischer" section was part of the campaign when he was detained in japan. a canadian journalist named john bosnitch visited fischer in the detention center and set up the "committee to free bobby fischer," arguing his case before immigration tribunals and coordinating a nine-month legal campaign. the site lists government contacts: the red cross, the japanese prime minister, the us congress, even president george w. bush. and asks you to write to them. i wonder how many people actually did.

there's this section about alcohol being banned in the detention center while cigarettes are freely available which was already referenced in the Jan 17 2005 radio interview. the site takes a study from the washington post about alcohol possibly helping memory and uses it to argue that the japanese government is either full of "ignorant fools" or "deliberately trying to debilitate and kill their prisoners."

then there's the bob ellsworth section which is ugly. ellsworth was a friend who tried to help, he spent over $8,000 of his own money buying back fischer's belongings after the storage unit was sold (admittedly after missing a payment so it was taken over by the storage company). the site calls him a "jewish liar, embezzler and thief" and says "it's good to be a jew in the jew-controlled united states." a man who tried to save bobby's archives got turned into an enemy.

the site also includes a letter from bobby to the editors of encyclopaedia judaica asking for his name to be removed. buried in all the hate, there's also bobby talking about chess. specifically, his variant fischer random chess (or chess960), which he announced in 1992 and formally introduced in 1996. for people unaware and curious, the idea was to randomize the starting position of the back pieces so that memorizing openings becomes useless.

there's a full table of his live radio interviews from 1999 to 2006: 34 of them. he gave these from hungary, the philippines, iceland, colombia, russia. this is where most of his antisemitic and anti-america rants came from. the site treats them like primary sources, which i guess they are.

and then there's the unavoidable to mention: the pure antisemitism. "jews are bad people. they're like poisonous mushrooms." he says the holocaust is a hoax. he shares a transcript where he calls jews "parasites," "liars," "thieves," "murderers."

there's also a message to radio stations all over the world, saying bobby wants to give more live interviews and to contact him directly at a docomo.ne.jp email address.

dunno if this is old news or not, but i've found that fischer directly mentions fischer.jp on multiple occasions in interviews found on the site, confirming that he at least some involvement. interestingly enough, in some mentions of the site (pictured) fischer refers to fischer.jp as his.

in the 2001 interview (which also has the first mention of fischer.jp), fischer makes an offhanded comment about having his interviews from the time saved on a minidisc. if we presume that fischer understood technology enough (in other sections of the interviews he discusses other websites and certain content on them which makes it more likely that he did), then there is a possibility that some interviews on the site were provided by fischer himself. in 2002, fischer also adds that he is able to recieve comments and emails through the site.

fischer's wording when discussing the site is incredibly vague. the majority of the time he simply says "the site" or "that site" when referring to fischer.jp, only saying "my site" explicitly twice. however, from my skimming i could not find any place where fischer credits any other person with assistance in making fischer.jp. then again, that might just be due to his egocentric personality, especially during this "wilderness era". like many other things about fischer, everything is really up in the air