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Harold John Timperley (1898–1954) was an Australian journalist, known for reporting inChina in the 1930s and writing the bookWhat War Means (1938) based on it. The Japanese historianHora Tomio describedWhat War Means as "a book which shocked awake Western intellectuals".[1]
Born in Bunbury Western Australia, Timperley started his journalistic career in Perth, Western Australia aged just 16 working as a cadet reporter for theDaily News. In 1916 he enlisted in the 22nd reinforcement for the 11th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and in January 1918 he was shipped to France to join his battalion which was involved in some of the fiercest fighting that year. Upon returning to Australia in 1919, Harold returned to the Daily News but later joined the staff of Perth'sWest Australian Newspaper where he remained until departing for Hong Kong in 1921 to work at theChina Mail.. Later in China, we worked for Reuters and reported for theManchester Guardian from 1928, based inBeiping (1921–1936),Shanghai (1936 – Apr? 1937, Sep 1937 – Apr 1938) andNanjing (May? – Sep 1937). He became an advisory editor of ASIA magazine in 1934 (see ASIA of November, 1938). He married Elizabeth Chambers in Nanjing in August 1937.
After the Japanese invasion, his accounts for theGuardian were some of the firsthand information most easily available in the West. His cables from Shanghai, although at times censored, formed the basis for some early writing on theNanjing massacre from 1937 to 1938.
Timperley left Shanghai forLondon early April 1938. There, he published the bookWhat War Means, which was edited by him and contains direct testimony as well as official documents. It received great attention, being published in the US under the titleThe Japanese Terror in China. Its content has been contested by Japanese historians, includingMinoru Kitamura.[2] Minoru Kitamura proposed a view that Timperley did not appear as a witness inNanjing War Crimes Tribunal andInternational Military Tribunal for the Far East because he might have been a spin doctor.[3]
He continued to write on topics connected with Japan, including the nationalist thinkerYoshida Shoin, until the end of thePacific War. From 1943, he worked for theInformation Office ofUnited Nations (Allied Powers). From 1946, he worked forUNRRA at its Shanghai office. In 1947, theUnited Nations Security Council established the Good Offices Committee forIndonesia to sponsor negotiations between the country and theNetherlands, and Timperley was assigned as Deputy Principal Secretary (later to an Acting Principal Secretary) of the committee (from May 1948?) until 20 October 1948. Afterward, he worked forUNESCO inParis.
Leaving UNESCO in 1950, Timperley went to Indonesia as a technical advisor to the IndonesianMinistry of Foreign Affairs. However atropical disease forced him to leaveJakarta for London in 1951. Not long after his arrival in London, he came in touch with theReligious Society of Friends and was admitted to the membership in 1952. From January 1954, he threw himself into supporting theWar on Want campaign and acted as full-time voluntary office worker. He organized the first War on Want Conference in May 1954.
On 25 November 1954, he was found unconscious in bed and taken to aCuckfield hospital, but he died the following day (26 November 1954).
