Starred in the ‘I Love Lucy’ of Japan

She and husband wrote for Chicago Dailynews

famed for landing on Iwo Jima in 1945 with the 28th Marine Regiment, which raised the flag on Mount Suribachi in an iconic, powerful photograph.

Mrs. Beech died last month at age 86 in Hawaii.

She was born Linda Mangelsdorf in Boston to a father who was a geneticist for the sugar-cane growers of Hawaii, said her friend, Susan Mcintosh.

The family moved to Hawaii when Linda was 3. She became fluent in Japanese from a family maid who was Nisei — born in America of Japanese parents.

The Mangelsdorfs lived near Pearl Harbor during the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attacks. She went outside to hear the commotion and told Mcintosh the fighter planes were so close “she could see the faces of the Japanese pilots.’ Later she helped monitor radar for the military in Honululu. One quiet evening, she stepped away from her post and saw a nearby phone. Not knowing it was top-security clearance, she called her parents and told them they wouldn’t have to go to an air raid shelter that night.

“Someone tapped her on the shoulder, and it was Admiral Nimitz,” commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Mcintosh said. He was unhappy that she’d hinted about radar observations on a phone line. “He said, ‘Young lady, do you know what you’ve just done? What you have just done could have made the war last four more years,’ ” Mcintosh said.

But he let her go with that stern warning, Mcintosh said. Later, when first lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited Hawaii, “Admiral Nimitz was coming up the aisle,” Mcintosh said. “Her mother said to her: ‘Linda — did Admiral Nimitz just wink at you?’ ”

After the war she traveled to Japan to work as an analyst, where she met Keyes Beech. “Keyes went by the foreign correspondents’ club to pick up his mail and saw Linda there,” Mcintosh said, “and [he] said, ‘who’s the new blonde?”

When her husband reported from Korea for the Chicago Daily News, Mrs. Beech worked as a correspondent for the Honolulu Advertiser.

She also wrote articles for the Chicago Daily News, including one about her chil- dren watching TV shows in Japan involving “Buharobiru” (Buffalo Bill) and “Kit-u Kasa” (Kit Carson).

It was at Tokyo’s foreign correspondents’ club where a director spotted her ordering off the menu in flawless Japanese. That led to her being cast in “Blue Eyes Tokyo Diary.”

She was fearless, said her son, Barnaby Beech. Once, while on a tour of Afghanistan, her group approached a frozen river in a camper. The group analyzed whether the ice was strong enough to support the vehicle. Not Mrs. Beech.

“Basically,” Barnaby Beech said, “She said, ‘Let’s do it.’ ’’

The Beeches were friendly with the Marshall Field family, vacationing with them in Maine and Florida, Barnaby Beech said.

Linda and Keyes Beech later divorced. After the war, Mrs. Beech earned a doctorate in psychology, Mcintosh said. She moved to the Big Island of Hawaii and worked in the mental health field. She became locally famous for living in a well-appointed treehouse in the Waipio Valley that she sometimes rented out to visitors.

Mrs. Beech is also survived by her sister, Charlotte Holmes, and two grandchildren.