In God We Trust
Correspondents and journalists based in Japan were the first to arrive in Korea to cover the war, and they were followed by correspondents who flew in from all over the world to cover the war on the Korean peninsula. In the early days of the war news reports were not censored, but unlike today's news, correspondents' reports did not stream live from the war front. Early reports had to be sent to Japan via air transport, and from there they were transmitted worldwide. Eventually news releases were censored, which created another whole set of problems for war correspondents--especially those opposed to the war or those who witnessed the war one way, but were required to report it quite another way. Correspondents, photographers and cameramen had to rely on the American army for communications, transportation, and housing. Also, although war correspondents were technically "protected" by international conventions, that was not the case when they were in the field covering the progress of the war. Most front-line correspondents (as opposed to "headquarters correspondents") carried weapons--and sometimes they had to use them. In spite of the dangers they faced while trying to cover the war in Korea, by September 1950 there were 238 war correspondents in Korea and eventually there were 270. Some correspondents lost their lives or were wounded while trying to report the progress of the war. Others who survived it have since written books and articles about their memories of being in Korea as war correspondents.*
On this page is an incomplete list of civilian and military war correspondents. To add more names and information to this new page of the Korean War Educator contact us.
*[KWE Note: In her memoir of the Korean War, Korean War correspondent Marguerite Higgins wrote, "Despite the much-publicized 270 accreditations to the Korean War, there were never to my knowledge more than sixty-odd correspondents actually at the front at any one time, and the average was closer to twenty."]
American War Correspondents
Foreign War Correspondents
Short Biographies of War Correspondents
Correspondents Killed in Action in Korea
Facts and Trivia
Reference Material
Howard Benedict, a former Associated Press aerospace writer, served as the executive director of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation for 14 years, an organization of more than 30 former astronauts which raises money for college science and engineering students. He retired from the foundation's staff in 2004 but continued to serve on its board of directors until he passed in 2005. Through 2002 the foundation had awarded more than $1.5 million in scholarships. It is located in the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville, Fla., just outside a gate to NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
Before joining the foundation in 1990, Benedict was senior aerospace writer for The Associated Press for 31 of the 37 years he worked for the wire service. He covered more than 2,000 missile and rocket launches and wrote the main story on the first 65 U.S. human space flights - from Alan Shepard's pioneering flight in 1961 to the 34th space shuttle mission in 1990. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including two as the top AP writer of the year, in 1969 for his coverage of the Apollo moon missions and in 1986 for his reports on the space shuttle Challenger explosion. He twice received the National Space Club's Media Award, in 1972 and 1990, and he has received 12 awards from the Aviation/Space Writers Association.
While with the AP, Benedict spent two years as a White House correspondent, from 1975-77 during the presidency of Gerald Ford. This was during a lull in the space program.
Benedict has written three books about space: "NASA: A Quarter Century of Space Achievement," published in 1984; "NASA, The Journey Continues," in 1990, and "At Home in Space," in 1995. He was co-author, with astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, and NBC's Jay Barbree, of the 1994 best-seller, "Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon". The book spent 11 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, reaching as high as No. 3. The book was made into a four-hour documentary by TBS.
Benedict was born April 23, 1928, in Sioux City, Iowa, and earned his journalism wings working with the Sioux City Journal as an intern during his high school and college years. After high school, he served in the U.S. Army for two years, 1946-48, and during part of that period he wrote for the base newspaper in Camp Lee, Virginia. In 1949, he enrolled in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and worked on the school newspaper. When the Korean War started in June 1950, Benedict was recalled into the Army as a reservist. Because of his newspaper background he was assigned to the military newspaper, Stars & Stripes, based in Tokyo, Japan.
He was assigned to cover the headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur until MacArthur was relieved by President Harry Truman in May, 1951. Then he was assigned as a Stars & Stripes war correspondent, writing about the Korean war and then covering the Panmunjom peace talks that eventually led to a truce. With the peace talks underway, Benedict and other reservists were released, and in January, 1952, he returned to Northwestern, which he left a year later to join The Associated Press - with assignments in Salt Lake City and New York City before being named Cape Canaveral correspondent in 1959.
Born June 14, 1904 in New York, New York, Margaret White attended Columbia University, University of Michigan, Western Reserve University and Cornell University. She began her career as an industrial and architectural photographer in 1927 and in 1929 was hired by Fortune magazine. She became one of the first four staff photographers for Life magazine in 1936. She covered World War II for Life and became the first woman photographer attached to the United States Armed Forces.
During the Korean War she worked as war correspondent and traveled with South Korean troops. She was stricken with Parkinson disease in 1952, but continued to photograph and write, retiring from Life magazine in 1969. She died August 27, 1971 in Stamford, Connecticut.
Malcolm Browne was born April 17, 1931 in New York City. He was drafted during the Korean War and spent two years working for Pacific Stars & Stripes. After discharge he worked for various newspapers, joining the New York Times in 1968. He worked for The Times on and off from then through the Persian Gulf War in 1991. While working for the Associated Press in 1964, his reporting from Vietnam won him a Pulitzer Prize.
Before becoming a journalist he worked as a chemist. In 1977 he became a science writer, serving as senior editor for Discover magazine. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and photographer who died August 27, 2012.
Born James Myron Cannon in Sylacauga, Alabama, he changed his middle name to his father's in 1939. He served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and held assignments in Africa, Italy, the Middle East, India, China and Southeast Asia. He was discharged in 1946 with the rank of captain. He was employed by the Baltimore Sun in 1949 and requested to be sent to cover the Korean War when it broke out in 1950. He spent 18 months in Korea covering such actions as the American troop withdrawal from the Yalu River. He was wounded in action. He left the Sun in 1954 and worked briefly for Time Magazine before taking a job with Newsweek. He later became an aide to Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller in 1969, served as assistant for domestic affairs to President Gerald Ford in 1975, was chief of staff to Senator Howard H. Baker of Tennessee, and became an aide to President Ronald Reagan. James Cannon died on September 15, 2011 in Arlington, Virginia at the age of 93.
[Obituary found in Stars & Stripes, December 28, 2008.]
Former Stripes chief photographer, war correspondent
Sandy Colton dies at 83
William J. "Sandy" Colton, a Stars and Stripes Korean War correspondent and later the chief photographer of the paper's Pacific edition, died Christmas Day 2008 after a long battle with cancer.
He was born in Johnstown, New York, October 5, 1925, son of the late Charles Sands, Sr., and Mary Adamovich Sands. He was later adopted by the late Dr. Sidney J. Colton of Johnstown.
Colton attended St. Patrick's, Knox Junior High, and Johnstown High School, Crockett High School in Crockett, Texas, and graduated from Gulf Coast Military Academy in Gulfport, Mississippi in 1944. He later briefly attended the University of Louisville.
Colton had a distinguished career as a writer, photographer, editor and historian. While an enlisted man in the Air Force, he wrote the initial history of what was later to become the Air Force Research and Development Command, for which he was later offered but declined a commission as an Air Force historian. At that time he was in Korea as a feature writer for Stars and Stripes, "having too much fun covering the war" to accept. He later became Stripes' chief photographer, and traveled extensively throughout the Pacific, Asia and the Middle East as a writer-photographer before returning to the U.S. in 1961.
He served as picture editor of the Washington, D.C,, Star newspaper during the Kennedy and Johnson years, and went on to hold various editing positions with the Associated Press in New York, where he served as picture editor for a number of books published by the AP, designed a color slide service for television that is still in use today, supervised the transition from black-and-white to color photography for AP photographers, designed and equipped new universal color darkrooms for AP photo bureaus in the U.S., participated in various photographic research and development projects, and kept AP photographers equipped with the latest photographic equipment and films.
Colton supervised and photographed a number of major stories, including the early space shuttle launches. He also photographed, produced and presented multi-screen slide shows about new technologies used by the AP, as well as informational shows about various parts of the country for AP Publishers and Managing Editor's meetings. He retired in 1984 as AP's director of photography and photography columnist for AP Newsfeatures.
Colton was the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the J. Winton Lemon Award from the National Press Photographers Association for "outstanding technical achievements and years of service to the profession," as well as awards from the New York Press Photographers Association, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Kodak and Ilford, among others.
Colton was a Life member of the National Press Photographer's Association and the White House News Photographers Association, past member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, New York Photographic Administrators, the Circle of Confusion, and honorary member of the University of Missouri's Kappa Alpha Mu photojournalism fraternity and the Order of Kentucky Colonels. Locally, he belonged to the Bleecker Fish and Game Club and Gloversville's American Legion, Post 137.
After retirement, Colton continued to work with young photojournalists as an active member of the Eddie Adams Workshop, an annual free workshop for one hundred young photojournalists from around the world. He was presented the first of what has become an annual award at the workshop, the Eddie Adams Award, named for the now-deceased Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who began the workshop in 1988 with a number of friends who volunteer their time and expertise. Colton was a close friend of Adams, and served as an instructor and staff member at the workshop since its beginning.
Colton, who retired to a log cabin he and his wife built with friends in Bleecker, claimed that his greatest achievement is to be known to young professional photographers today as the "father of Jay and Jimmy Colton!"
He is survived by his loving wife, Irene, of Bleecker, and two sons by a previous marriage to Sanae Yamazaki: Jay Colton, retired associate picture editor at Time magazine, who lives with his wife Moira and son Christopher in Manhattan, and James Colton, picture editor of Sports Illustrated, who lives in North Massapequa on Long Island with his wife Catherine and sons Shane and Ken. A sister, Patricia Knight, lives in Mira Loma California. There are also numerous nieces and nephews. Colton was predeceased by three brothers, Robert and Thomas Sands of Johnstown and Charles Sands Jr., of Glen Arm, Maryland.
Viewing will be at Barter & Donnan Funeral Home, Johnstown, N.Y., Friday January 2nd, from 6 to 8 p.m. A funeral Mass will be held on Saturday January 3rd at 11:00 a.m. at St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Church (where he was once an altar boy) in Johnstown, N.Y. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Eddie Adams Workshop or the Stars and Stripes Museum and Library.
Born January 23, 1916 in Kansas City, Missouri, David Douglas Duncan joined the Marine Corps after Pearl Harbor. He was a combat photographer in World War II while serving in the USMC, and was a civilian photographer on the front lines during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. He served as a combat photographer for the Marines from 1943 to 1946, and was honorably discharged on February 1, 1946. He was the recipient of a Purple Heart for wounds received in action in the South Pacific. He was hired as a staff photographer for Life Magazine soon after discharge in 1946, and held that position for many years. Among his most famous combat photographs were those taken during the Korean War, many of which were compiled into a book entitled, This is War!. Proceeds of the book went to the widows and children of Marines who were killed in the Korean War. Duncan is also known for his outstanding photographs of Pablo Picasso.
Michael J. Greene was born on April 7, 1928 in Wheeling, West Virginia. He graduated from Central Catholic High School in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1945. He then enrolled at the University of Notre Dame and earned a bachelor of arts degree in English in 1949. From September 1949 until March 1950, he attended graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. He was inducted into the Army in January 1951 and served as a "Stars and Stripes" reporter with the 7th Division in Korea. He was discharged in October 1952, and ran a small business in Florida for a year. He joined a Catholic newspaper in Kentucky, the "Louisville Record", as assistant editor in October 1953. He stayed with the "Record" until 1958, when he became associate editor of the "Baltimore Catholic Review".
In 1959, Greene moved to Kansas City to accept the position of managing editor with the diocesan newspaper "Catholic Reporter". He worked closely with editor Robert Hoyt and executive editor Fr. Vincent Lovett. The "Reporter" attracted readership from outside the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, and the staff considered expansion into a national paper. In 1964, Greene suggested the idea to John Fallon, who recruited Frank Brennan as a fundraiser. Greene, Fallon, and the rest of the group approached Bishop Charles Helmsing, who approved the project and permitted the new paper to share facilities and staff with the diocesan "Catholic Reporter". The first issue of the "National Catholic Reporter" was published on October 28,1964. Greene was publisher of the "NCR" while remaining managing editor of the diocesan "Reporter". For the national paper, his responsibilities included promotion of subscription sales and financial management. He resigned from the "NCR" in September 1965, having a personality conflict with "NCR" editor Hoyt. He was succeeded as "NCR" publisher by Donald J. Thorman. For his work with the diocesan "Catholic Reporter", Greene received a Best News Story award from the Catholic Press Association in 1964.
[KWE: Source - Notre Dame Archives. Green died December 30, 2012.]
Born in Hong Kong on September 3, 1920, Higgins was educated at the University of California, from which she graduated in 1941. She received a Masters degree in journalism from Columbia University. In 1942 she was hired by the New York Tribune and 1944 she became a war correspondent in Europe. She covered the Nuremberg Trials.
She was a war correspondent in Korea from June through December 1950 and covered the Inchon landing in the 5th wave at Red Beach. In 1951 she published the book, War in Korea: The Report of a Woman Combat Correspondent. That same year she won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and was voted Woman of the Year by the Associated Press news organization.
She covered news stories in Vietnam in 1953, the Soviet Union in 1955, and then made repeated trips to Vietnam. Her book, Our Vietnam Nightmare, was published in 1965. She was in Vietnam in 1965 when she came down with the tropical disease leishmanasis. She returned to the United States for recovery but died on January 3, 1966. In honor of her career as a war correspondent, she was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Marks enlisted in the Army in 1937. During World War II he served with the 550th Airborne Battalion in Sicily, Italy, and southern France. He was twice wounded and received a Silver Star for gallantry in action. He was taken Prisoner of War during the Battle of the Bulge.
After his World War II service he was discharged and studied motion picture TTC photography. He then reenlisted in the Army in the late 1940s just in time to see action in the Korean War as a photographer with the 71st Signal Service Battalion. He was the first Army photographer to parachute into Korea with the 187th RCT and received two Bronze Stars for heroic actions in Korea.
After Korea he joined the Army Pictorial Center at the Astoria Studios on Long Island, New York. In 1953 Master Sergeant Marks was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary short subject for Operation Blue Jay (Greenland icecap). He was also cameraman for numerous films aired on the Army's national broadcast television program, "The Big Picture".
He retired from active duty in 1960 but stayed with the Army Pictorial Service until it closed in 1970. He was transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground as a scientific and technical cameraman, and retired from there in 1992. In addition to his career in photography he was a long distance cyclist. He died May 16, 1997.
Born October 29, 1921 near Santa Fe, New Mexico, Bill Mauldin took up political cartooning at the age of 17 years. In 1940 he joined the Army and served as a rifleman iin the 180th Infantry, 45th Division. He was transferred to Stars & Stripes in 1944. He created the renowned characters "Willie and Joe", receiving his first Pulitzer Prize as a result. At age 23 he was the youngest Pulitzer Prize recipient in history. Following World War II he wrote articles and books, starred in Hollywood movies such as Red Badge of Courage, and ran for Congress.
During the Korean War he was a war correspondent for Collier's magazine. He revived "Willie and Joe", making Joe a war correspondent in Korea writing home to Willie stateside. He earned his second Pulitzer Prize in 1959, and then moved to the Chicago Sun Times in 1962 where his cartoons were syndicated. He retired from cartooning in 1991 due to health reasons and died January 22, 2003. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Born February 12, 1905 in Dalhart, Texas, he served in the Army Air Corps as an aerial photography instructor. He then worked for the Associated Press in the Pacific Theater during World War II. "Noel volunteered to cover the Korean War and accompanied the 7th Regiment of the 1st Marine Division. On his way to Chosin Reservoir, he was trapped with a marine unit by enemy forces, but they fought their way free. Two months later, on November 29, 1950, after a convoy was trapped near the reservoir, he went for help in a jeep but was intercepted and captured by enemy forces. He spent the next 32 months in communist prison camps. He unsuccessfully attempted to escape three times, once only failing because he wouldn't leave behind an ill fellow prisoner. He was even able to take exclusive pictures for the AP from inside the camps. Noel was freed in 1953 as a result of Operation Big Switch." Frank Noel died in Gainesville, Florida on November 29, 1966.
Born on June 22, 1927 in Honolulu to Choonha and Shinbok Park, Sarah was a Korean-American journalist. She studied at American University in Washington, D.C. and the University of Hawaii and then began living and writing in Asia for the International News Service and Reuters agency of Great Britain. She was hired by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1950 and then sent to cover the Korean War from the winter of 1952 through spring 1953. "Park reported that it was necessary for troops to use candles in areas around the frontline, as there was no electricity at that time. From this report, Hawaiian residents started a campaign, 'Candles for Korea' which saw approximately 150,000 candles sent to troops to boost morale." In January 1953 she was made an honorary member of the 7th Division and later Col. Arthur B. Chun wrote to the Star-Bulletin, "Undaunted and without flinching, she stood side-by-side with men of the 3rd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Division, all under intense fire from the enemy on the Korean frontier. She walked their trails, their trenches, their rugged hills and witnessed their agonizing, perilous moments. She was more than a war correspondent or an observer: she was the understanding ‘buddy' from home who appreciated everything anyone did." Sarah Park died at the age of 30 when the small plane she was aboard crashed into the Pacific Ocean on March 9, 1957 while covering a tsunami warning. Also killed was Paul Beam, owner of the plane, who died the next day. Surviving the crash was photographer Jack Matsumoto. Sarah Park is buried at Diamond Head Memorial Park in Oahu next to her mother.
Humanitarian Robert "Bob" Pierce was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa in 1914. He moved with his family to southern California in the mid-1920s. He attended Pasadena Nazarene College and studied for the ministry. From 1937 to 1940 he spent time traveling across California working as an evangelist. In 1940 he was ordained into the Baptist ministry and soon thereafter he became involved with the Los Angeles branch of the World War II-era "Youth for Christ" (YFC) movement. In response to the horrific needs of Korean refugees and war orphans, Dr. Pierce founded the international Christian aid organization, World Vision and later Samaritan's Purse. The stories he shared from the Korean battle front were released regularly by the UPA and used in major publications. They also laid the foundations for what is now the largest child sponsorship program in the world. Dr. Pierce was also a prolific movie maker and his movie, The 38th Parallel, is considered one of the most historically accurate and significant in existence because he was in Korea two months before the war broke out and then went back immediately to get more footage after it erupted…returning to places that were now nothing but burning cinders. He was the subject of the book, Bob Pierce: This Thing I Do, by Franklin Graham with Jeanette Lockerbie. Dr. Pierce died in 1978 of leukemia.
Born in Maine and graduate of Bowdoin College, John Rich joined the Marine Corps in 1942 and made four D-day landings in the Pacific Theater. After discharge he worked for NBC. During the Korean War, Rich arrived in Korea less than a week after the war broke out and stayed there for three years. He covered the ceasefire talks on NBC's The Today Show and in 2010 released a book entitled, Korean War in Color: A Correspondent's Retrospective on a Forgotten War. The book includes 173 color photographs that Rich took in Korea with his Nikon camera. John Rich is a Peabody Award winner who lives in Maine. He was the only war correspondent to photograph the Korean War in color film.
Ray Richards was born in Minot, North Dakota, and was educated at Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Missouri. He began his journalism career in 1910 as a reporter on the Tulsa (Oklahoma) Daily World. He later worked in Montana, Colorado, Honolulu, California, and Washington, D.C. before assignment to Korea.
He became assistant city editor of the Denver Post and city editor of the Morning Post in 1927 and 1928. In Los Angeles he was with the Examiner and the Associated Press, and in Honolulu he was on the staff of the Star-Bulletin for four years.
Richards returned to the United States from the Far East in 1941 and rejoined the staff of the Examiner. A year later he was appointed Washington correspondent for the newspaper. He also served the Milwaukee Sentinel's Washington Bureau.
He returned to the Far East in 1949 and joined the International News Service at the outbreak of the Communist invasion of South Korea. In the first days of the fighting he obtained the first dramatic accounts of the invasion's progress by flying low over the battle lines.
Information about his death appeared in the Milwaukee Sentinel newspaper on July 12, 1950 in the form of the following news article written by fellow war correspondent John Rich, under the title, "Ray Richards Loses Life in Korea":
Ray Richards Loses Life in Korea
"Korea Advance U.S. Headquarters, July 11, 1950 (INS) - A frontline officer reported to U.S. Field Headquarters in Korea Tuesday night that two American war correspondents were killed in Monday's fighting--the first newsmen to lose their lives in the Korean conflict. They were presumed to be INS reporter Ray Richards, special war correspondent out of the Washington Bureau of the Milwaukee Sentinel, and the other Hearst papers and corp Ernie Peeler of the Army newspaper, Pacific Stars & Stripes.
A dispatch to headquarters from regimental adjutant Captain Downey told of two correspondents being killed but did not identify them. His dispatch was believed to confirm earlier reports the Army received that Richards and Peeler were victims of a Communist assault that overran an American front line outpost they were visiting to obtain eyewitness descriptions of the fighting.
Captain Downey reported that American troops were not able to recover the bodies of the two correspondents because, "things are still awfully hot up there."
Richards, 36, was last heard from Sunday night after going to the front to view wreckage of enemy tanks smashed in an American air raid along the Chonan-Taejon road. His last dispatch filed Sunday just before he returned to the front gave eyewitness descriptions of the famed American "Lost Battalion" which fought its way through encircling Red forces north of Chonan to rejoin its regiment.
Homer Bigart, war correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune, was the only newsman to survive the Communist onslaught. In a July 10 copyrighted dispatch to his newspaper, he wrote, "Richards, Peeler and I were the only newsmen on hand when a Communist force almost trapped an American force in a forward position. The Americans avoided annihilation only by great luck and managed to withdraw, but at the cost of severe casualties and all their heavy equipment. Not until late today (Monday) was it established that Richards and Peeler were dead. I saw them last night (Sunday) down the road. They told me they intended to spend the night there, hoping to get a jeep ride back to headquarters to file their stories of the coming battle."
May 04, 1987|By United Press International - Robert Vermillion, combat correspondent for United Press International during World War II and the Korean conflict, has died of complications arising from diabetes, his wife said. He was 72. Mr. Vermillion, who jumped with British and American paratroopers during his years as a war correspondent, had moved to Sun City (California) in 1978 after a 20-year career at Newsweek magazine, his wife, Betty, said. He died Saturday.
Mr. Vermillion joined United Press in Philadelphia during the Depression years. He was working in New York City when World War II broke out and was dispatched overseas, where he covered front-line combat in Italy and Africa. He was in Greece when Allied troops liberated the country in 1944, and lived in the Mediterranean country for a year covering the guerrilla war waged by communist insurgents.
After serving as UPI bureau chief in Miami, Mr. Vermillion was assigned to report from Korea when communist forces invaded the south in 1950. Mr. Vermillion left UPI in 1954 when he and his wife founded their own newspaper, the Okinawa Morning Star, on the Japanese island. The couple sold the newspaper three years later and returned to the United States, where Mr. Vermillion took a job as a general editor for Newsweek. When the Okinawa Morning Star was founded it was edited by Bob Prosser and Bob Vermillion and published by John Servaites and Edward Kennedy.
Born in 1895, Nora Waln was a female correspondent who covered General Patton's Army during World War II. She also served as a correspondent in Communist China and Mongolia. In Korea she was a front-line correspondent who was on the Manchurian border when the Chinese communists began their attack. She narrowly escaped. She was a correspondent for Saturday Evening Post and Atlantic Monthly. After the war she gave talks about her experiences on the lecture circuit. She died September 27, 1964.
There were 18 war correspondents killed in action during the Korean War.
British correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. World War II correspondent who then went to Korea to cover the war there. Buckley was killed in a jeep/land mine accident that also killed fellow Brit Ian Morrison on August 12, 1950. Also killed in the accident was Col. Unmi Nayar, a former Indian army public relations officer during World War II who was in Korea as India's representative on the United Nations Commission. Buckley was soon to retire as a war correspondent, but he died in a hospital soon after the jeep accident. Nayar was killed instantly. Buckley was 45 years old. He had been a correspondent since 1940, and his reporting from several fronts in World War II won him an international reputation. Buckley studied military history at Oxford.
An International News Service correspondent, age 23, from Beverly Hills, California, he was killed on September 7, 1950 when the C-24 cargo plane that was taking him and other correspondents back to Korea exploded and crashed shortly after leaving base in southern Japan. Emery had returned to Tokyo for a rest on August 23 after suffering three wounds in a night patrol action across the Naktong River west of Taegu. He was a former Pacific Stars & Stripes editor.
War correspondent for Time and Life. Formerly Hong Kong Bureau Chief for Time, Fielder died July 22, 1950 by machinegun fire as he leaving Communist-captured Taejon. He had been transferred to Korea from Hong Kong one week after the war started. Age 33, he was the son of Baptist missionaries in China and a veteran of the United States Marine Corps.
Aviation editor of the New York Journal of Commerce, Graham was sent to Korea to cover the Pacific airlift of the Korean War. He drowned on March 3, 1951 when a Navy Douglas Skyraider failed to take off and crashed into the Pacific.
A correspondent with Seoul Shinmun, he was killed June 29, 1950 while covering front-line action with South Korean army units.
Norfolk (Virginia) Journal and Guide war correspondent. Died July 27, 1950 with 25 others when the military plane carrying him to Korea crashed off the coast of Japan. Hinton was the first African-American war correspondent to be killed in either World Wars or Korea. He was the managing editor of the Norfolk Journal and Guide, on loan as a pool correspondent to the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association. He was 46 and a graduate of Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Age 22, he was a Japanese-American from Wen, New York who was a cameraman for Telenews, an affiliate of International News Service. He was killed in the same crash as Frank Emery. He had returned to Tokyo from Korea on August 31st and was returning to the Korean front.
Moore worked for The Oklahoman until 1937, and then he was hired by the Associated Press. He left to serve as an Army Major in Korea in 1946, returning to AP in 1948. He was serving as an AP correspondent in Korea when he and tank commander Lt. Samuel R. Fowler were killed by North Koreans in Masan on July 31, 1950.
British correspondent with The Times. Morrison was a World War II correspondent who then went to Korea to cover the war there. While covering the war in the South Pacific during World War II, Morrison contracted dengue fever, tropical ulcers, amoebic dysentery, and recurrent malaria. He had also been in two plane crashes and was wounded twice. He was based in Singapore when the Korean War broke out. On August 12, 1950, the jeep in which he and two others were riding hit a land mine and blew up. He was killed instantly. He was 37 years old.
Born in Palmers Green, London, Derek Pearcy was taken to Australia by his parents in December 1938, aged 12, as fears of war mounted in Europe. He attended North Sydney High school and joined the Sydney Daily Telegraph as a copy boy, rising to become a reporter for the daily and Sunday editions. Towards the end of World War Two, Pearcy served in the Royal Australian Air Force.
After the war, he went to Japan and worked on BCON, the Osaka based newspaper of the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces. When that newspaper closed Pearcy moved to the English language Japan News in March 1950, the year war broke out in Korea between the Communists and United Nations forces.
The Japan News ‘loaned' Pearcy to the joint Reuters-AAP (Australian Associated Press) team covering the conflict. The secondment lasted two months and was followed by another in May 1951. On 25th May Pearcy, described by colleagues as a hard working and popular journalist with a loud guffaw, celebrated his 25th birthday with other war correspondents at a warfront U.N. command post. Next day Pearcy set out on another reporting assignment. At 5.15pm his jeep ran over a mine and he was killed instantly. It happened 100 yards outside a command post of the Canadian 25th Brigade, some 10 miles (16 kilometres) north east of Uijongbu, north of Seoul and not far from the border that now divides North and South Korea. A Canadian army press officer and a British army driver died with him.
Pearcy had been due to leave Korea two weeks later and planned to return to Sydney and set up home with his parents. Having spent the years of World War Two in Australia, they had gone back to England in 1949. But only two years later they decided to return to Australia to live. When Pearcy died his parents were aboard a liner approaching Melbourne. His brother went out by launch and broke the news to them.
Killed in action in Korea. A brief story on the last page of Pacific Stars & Stripes July 28, 1950, reported that Corporal Peeler was missing in action. He, International News Service correspondent Ray Richards, and a jeep driver had last been seen heading toward a front line infantry battalion. Later reports said they ran into a North Korean tank. They were never seen again. Peeler formerly worked for various San Bernardino newspapers and radio stations and had been in Tokyo about six months when he was killed. Before joining Stars & Stripes, Peeler worked for INS in Los Angeles from 1931-41 and later, from 1945-49. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II and was recalled during the Korean War, serving as a corporal. He was 38.
Correspondent for the Agence France-Presse, he was killed in a plane crash on July 27, 1950 en route to Korea.
Correspondent for the Agence France-Presse, he was sent to Korea to take Maximilen Philomenko's place after he was killed. de Premonville was killed February 12, 1951 by machine-gun fire while traveling with a raider patrol in central Korea. A veteran of the French Resistance during World War II, he had been wounded earlier in Korea. See also Reference section for book he co-authored about the Korean War.
Killed July 10, 1950. See Short Bio section.
A 20-year old International News photo cameraman and reporter from Honolulu, he was killed in the same crash as Frank Emery. He had returned to Tokyo for a break from Korea on August 31, 1950. Journalist and photographer, died in a plane crash/explosion with eleven others, heading back to Korea to cover the war there. He had a Japanese wife and was Great-grandson of the Union's Civil War General William Starke Rosecrans. Time Magazine wrote: "A dark, wiry little man who usually sported a billy-goat beard, 30-year-old Charlie Rosecrans-had covered World War II in the Pacific almost from start to finish, was in Tokyo when a new war sent him to Korea."
A Hilton Press and London Picture Post correspondent, he was killed in a plane crash en route to Korea July 27, 1950.
A Chicago Sun-Times correspondent, he was killed in a plane crash en route to Korea, July 27. 1950. A Catholic layman who was well-respected in journalism and religious circles, he was one of the founders of the Religion Newswriters Association.
Stars & Stripes Museum and Library contact information: Stars and Stripes Museum/Library, 17377 Stars & Stripes Way, P.O. Box 1861, Bloomfield, Missouri 63825; ph. [Please enable JavaScript.]. See also Stars & Stripes page on the Korean War Educator.
Anderson, Fay and Richard Trembath. Witnesses to War: The History of Australian Conflict Reporting. Melbourne University Press. 2011. See the chapter, "Cold War Conflicts and the Wars of Decolonisation", which provides an overview of the challenges faced by Australian war correspondents in Korea.
Baudy, Philippe; Bromberger, Serge; de Premonville, Jean-Marie; and de Turenne, Henri, co-authors. Return to Korea: Tales of 4 War Correspondents on the Korean Front. Rene Juilliard, publisher. 1951. Jean-Marie de Premonville was killed the same year the book was published when he was shot down by machine gun fire while riding with a patrol during the battle of Chipyong-ni on February 12, 1951.
Burchett, Wilfred. Again Korea. New York. International. 1968. Wilfred Burchett's memoir is said to be the only full-length Korean War war correspondent memoir that covers the events surrounding the armistice negotiations period of the Korean War.
Casey, Steven. "Wilfred Burchett and the UN Command's media relations during the Korean War, 1951-52". Original citation: Journal of History, 74. Also available online through LSE Research at http://eprints.lse.ac.uk. An in-depth study of war correspondent Wilfred Burchett.
Cutforth, Rene. Korean Reporter. 1952. William Clowes & Sons Ltd., London. Cutforth was a BBC special correspondent from December 1950 until the end of July 1951. The entire book is about his experiences in Korea from the time his plane landed until the time he left.
Dille, John. Substitute for Victory. Doubleday & C., 1954. An analysis of the Korean War by John Dille, war correspondent for Life magazine.
Ebener, Charlotte. No Facilities for Women. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 1955. Charlotte Ebener was a news correspondent who spent November/December 1946 in pre-Korean War South Korea after spending time previously in Manchuria. She wrote free-lance articles about Korea 1946 for Newsweek. Chapter IV of this book is entitled, "The Thirty-Eighth Parallel" and tells of Ebener's impressions of Korea at the time, including visits with Mr. and Mrs. Syngman Rhee.
Higgins, Marguerite. War in Korea: The Report of a Woman Combat Correspondent. 1951. The Country Life Press, New York. A 223-page book with photo illustrations by Life photographer Carl Mydans, War in Korea highlights the experiences of correspondent Marguerite Higgins from the time she arrived in Korea in June through December 1950.
Hill, Dick. Battle Talk! Memoirs of a Marine Radio Correspondent. Beaver's Pond Press. 288 pages. Softcover with audio CD. Fifty years after serving in Korea Hill found a seabag full of lost tapes recorded during the Kean War, including a rare interview with the Splendid Splinter, Ted Williams.
Hume, Bill. "Babysan: A Private Look at the Japanese Occupation". Bill Hume. Kasuga Boeki K.K., 1953. Bill Hume was a cartoonist for Stars & Stripes.
Jenks, John. "Consorting with the Enemy: American Reporters and 'Red Sources' at the Korean Truce Talks, 1951-1953." Journal of Conflict Studies, Volume 22, No. 1 (2002). Information arrangements between American and Communist-affiliated journalists during the truce talks.
Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty. 1975, The Johns Hopkins University Press. See Chapter 14, "Korea, The United Nations' War 1950-1953", pp. 365-390. This chapter describes positive and negative aspects of American and foreign war correspondents who covered the Korean War in-theatre. There is discussion about pre-censorship in the early days of the war, as well as the censored reporting that later followed. He also discusses the reporting of atrocities and a variety of interesting facts about the life of war correspondents based in Korea during the war years. London-based Knightley, an investigative journalist with the Sunday Times for twenty-some years, is critical in general of American war correspondents.|
Mauldin, Bill. Bill Mauldin in Korea. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York. 1952. The Korean War version of "Willie and Joe", Army characters created by Mauldin during World War II. In Bill Mauldin in Korea, Joe is now a war correspondent writing home to Willie, who lives stateside.
Pacific Stars & Stripes: The First 40 Years 1945-1985. Chapter contents related to the Korean War include: The Occupation Years 1945-1950; The Korean War 1950-1953; After Korea 1953-1970.
Rich, John. Korean War in Color: A Correspondent's Retrospective on a Forgotten War. Published by Seoul Selection, 2010. Color photographs of a wide variety of subjects in Korea during the war years--everything from natives to military brass.
Schumack, Ray. News Dispatches from the Korean War. AuthorHouse. 2012. The author served as a Stars & Stripes correspondent while serving in the United States Army. His work is about the 3rd Division in Korea.
Shinn, Bill. The Forgotten War Remembered: Korea 1950-1953: A War Correspondent's Notebook and Today's Danger in Korea. Hwa-bong Sin (publisher), 1996. A war correspondent's perspective of the fighting for Seoul, Pusan Perimeter, Inchon landing, and negotiations at Panmunjom.
Stone, I. F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. Monthly Review Press, Spring 1952. Stone was a columnist for the New York Daily Compass when he began to research the war after noticing that British and French correspondents were writing about the Korean War differently than American correspondents.
Thompson, Reginald. Cry Korea. Published in Britain November 1951. Thompson was an experienced war correspondent who was critical of the conduct of the war and of the senseless destruction of the country.