Today, September 16th, in 1911,
Wilfred Graham Burchett,
an honest journalist,
is born.
Burchett began his career in journalism in 1940 when he obtained
accreditation with the Australian Associated Press, to report on
the revolt against the Vichy French in the South Pacific colony
of New Caledonia. He recounted his experiences in his book
- 'Pacific Treasure Island: New Caledonia'.
Historian Beverly Smith, said that Pacific Treasure Island describes
Burchett's view of "the way in which Australian culture and mores,
as they emerged from the pioneers' experience... could develop in
harmony with those of the liberated peoples in neighbouring Asia".
Burchett was wounded while reporting on Britain's campaign in
Burma. He also covered the US advance in the Pacific under
General Douglas MacArthur.
Hiroshima
Burchett was in Okinawa when he heard on the radio that
"the world’s first A-bomb had been dropped on a place
called Hiroshima".
He was the first Western journalist to visit Hiroshima, after the atom
bomb was dropped, arriving alone by train on September 2, the day
of the formal surrender of Japan, after a thirty-hour train
trip ---- in breach of MacArthur's orders.
During his reporting, he ran into a press junket organised by
Tex McCrary for promoting the US Army Air Force and later
referred to the group as "housetrained reporters"
participating in a "cover-up".
His Morse code dispatch was printed on the front page of the
Daily Express newspaper in London on 5 September 1945.
Entitled "The Atomic Plague" ---- and with the subtitle
"I Write This as a Warning to the World", it began:
''In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the
city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously
and horribly – people who were uninjured by the cataclysm
– from an unknown something which I can only describe
as atomic plague. Hiroshima does not look like a
bombed city. It looks as if a monster steam-
roller had passed over it, and squashed it
out of existence. I write these facts as
dispassionately as I can in the hope
that they will act as a warning to
the world.''
MacArthur had imposed restrictions on journalists' access to
bombed cities - and had censored reports of the destruction
caused by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Civilian
casualties were downplayed and the deadly lingering
effects of radiation were dismissed.
The New York Times published a front-page story with the headline
'No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin'. Military censors suppressed a
25,000 word story about the bombing of Nagasaki submitted by
George Weller of the Chicago Daily News.
Burchett's report was the first in the Western media to mention
the effects of radiation and nuclear fallout and was, therefore,
a major embarrassment for the US military.
Burchett lost his press accreditation and was ordered to leave
Japan, although this order was later withdrawn. His camera,
containing photos of Hiroshima, was confiscated while he
was documenting persistent illness at a Tokyo hospital.
The film was sent to Washington - and classified as
''secret'' - before being released..... in 1968.
Burchett wrote about his experiences
in his book, 'Shadows of Hiroshima'.
Burchett returned to Australia in 1950 and campaigned against
Robert Menzies’ bill to ban the Communist Party. In 1951,
Burchett travelled to the People's Republic of China as
a foreign correspondent for the French communist
newspaper L'Humanité.
After six months in China, he wrote 'China's Feet Unbound', which
supported the new Chinese government of Mao Zedong. In July
1951, he and UK journalist Alan Winnington... made their way
to North Korea, to cover the Panmunjom Peace Talks.
Burchett investigated - and confirmed - claims by the North Korean
government that the US had used Germ warfare in the Korean War.
During his investigation, he observed "clusters of flies and fleas on
the snow-covered hillsides", which the North Korean military said
were infected with bubonic plague. In his 1953 book about the
Korean war, 'This Monstrous War', he wrote:
''My main interest in the camps --- was to interview American airmen.
The testimony of those who admitted to taking part in germ warfare
has already been published. I talked to all of these airmen at length
and on several occasions. I am convinced that the statements they
made are accurate and were made of their own free will.''
The US military's Far Eastern Command (FEC), wanted to silence
Burchett by "exfiltrating" him from North Korea but its request
to the Australian government for permission, which included
a $100,000 inducement (over $1,000,000 in 2022 dollars),
was turned down.
Instead, the FEC established a smear campaign against
Burchett --------- backed by the Australian government.
On 21 December 1951, Burchett achieved a major scoop
by interviewing the most senior United Nations POW,
US General William F. Dean, and organising for
photographs of Dean to be taken.
The US claimed that Dean had been killed by the North Koreans
and intended using his ''death'', as leverage in negotiations
with the North Koreans. It was angry that Burchett
reported that he was alive.
In his autobiography Dean entitled a chapter "My Friend Wilfred
Burchett" and wrote "I like Burchett and am grateful to him".
He expressed thanks, for Burchett's "special kindness" in
improving his conditions, communicating with his family,
and giving him an "accurate" briefing on the war.
In 1956, Burchett arrived in Moscow as a correspondent.
For the next six years he reported on Soviet advances
in science and the rebuilding of the post-war Soviet
economy. In one dispatch Burchett wrote:
"A new humanism is at work in the Soviet Union - which makes
that peddled in the West look shoddy - for it starts right down
in the grass roots of Soviet society; its all-embracing sweep
leaves behind no underprivileged".
In 1962 ----- Burchett began writing on the war in Vietnam ----- from
the North Vietnamese perspective. Beginning in November 1963,
Burchett spent six months in southern Vietnam with Viet Cong
guerrillas, staying in their fortified hamlets and travelling
underground in their network of narrow tunnels.
After US President Kennedy increased the funding for the war in
Vietnam, Burchett wrote: "No peasants anywhere in the world
had so many dollars per capita lavished on their extermination".
He described Ho Chi Minh as "the greatest man I’ve ever met, with
all the modesty and simplicity that goes with human greatness".
He described Saigon as "a seething cauldron in which hissed
and bubbled a witches' brew of rival French and American
imperialisms, spiced with feudal warlordism and fascist
despotism" and decried the regime of South Vietnam
under Ngo Dinh Diem as "an Asian neo-fascism no
less dangerous for world peace, than European
fascism" was during the 1930s.
Bertrand Russell wrote that "If any one man is responsible
for alerting Western opinion to the struggle of the people
of Vietnam, it is Wilfred Burchett".
Burchett published numerous books
about Vietnam and the war.
After hearing of Portugal's Carnation Revolution of 25 April in 1974,
Burchett took the first aeroplane from Paris to Lisbon --- and spent
months interviewing members of the military, fishermen, farmers,
and people in charge of cooperatives, which served as a source
for the book "The Captains’ Coup".
This book would remain unpublished in English until 2025, its
manuscript being considered lost for years then found at the
National Library of Australia by Daniela Melo and Timothy
Dale Walker, but was published in Portuguese, in 1975,
under the title ----- "Portugal depois da revolução dos
capitães" ("Portugal after the Captains' Revolution").
Burchett visited Phnom Penh in May 1979, and wrote in The
Guardian about the desperate situation in Cambodia. The
Phnom Penh government ...drew up a list of required
emergency relief which Burchett took to London,
where he read it out at an all-party meeting
in the House of Commons.
He said that the governments in both Vietnam and Cambodia had
assured him that relief would be welcome --- and that "a great
many human beings are starving - and need your help".
The UK government did nothing in response to Burchett's request
since the newly elected government of Margaret Thatcher had
joined the US strangulation of Vietnam -- which continued for
18+ years... after Vietnam had beaten the US in their war...
and cut all food aid to Vietnam and Cambodia.
However, Jim Howard, a technical officer for Oxfam was
at the meeting and was moved to arrange for the first
significant Western relief to Cambodia.
In 1955, Burchett's British passport had ''gone missing,''
believed stolen, and the Australian Government
refused to issue a replacement and asked
the British to do the same.
He again requested an Australian passport in 1960 and 1965
but was denied both times. A further request in July 1968
was rejected by prime minister John Gorton.
For many years Burchett held a Vietnamese laissez-passer
which grew so large due to the additional pages that
needed to be added each time he travelled, that
Burchett said he needed an attache case
to carry it.
While Burchett was attending a conference in Cuba, Fidel Castro
learned about his passport problem, and issued him with a
Cuban passport. Matters came to a head in 1969 when
Burchett was refused entry into Australia to attend
his father's funeral.
The following year his brother Clive died, and Burchett flew to
Brisbane in a privately chartered light plane as the Gorton
government had threatened commercial airlines with
steep penalties for flying Burchett into the country.
He was allowed entry, triggering a media sensation.
In 1972, an Australian passport was finally issued to Burchett
by the incoming Whitlam government which said there was
no evidence to justify its continued denial. Writing in The
Australian, Greg Lockhart described the previous
governments' actions as "a remarkable breach
of the human rights of an Australian citizen" -
in which it "simply exiled him for 17 years".
In 2011 -- Vietnam celebrated Burchett's 100th birthday
with an exhibition in the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi.
He had written of the French and US policy:
''The Vietnamese must be made to feel
that they are racial inferiors, with no
right to a national identity.''