Wilfred Graham Burchett (16 September 1911 – 27 September 1983) was an Australian journalist known for being the first western journalist to report from Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb, and for his reporting from "the other side" during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
Burchett began his journalism at the start of World War II, during which he reported from China, Burma and Japan and covered the war in the Pacific. After the war he reported on the trials in Hungary, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Portugal during the Carnation Revolution, and on Cambodia under Pol Pot. During the Korean war he investigated and supported claims by the North Korean government that the US had used germ warfare. He was the first western journalist to interview Yuri Gagarin after Gagarin's historic first flight into outer space. He played a role in prompting the first significant Western relief for Cambodia after its liberation by Vietnam in 1979. He was interviewed in 1970 about his career as a journalist, which can be accessed at the National Library of Australia.Burchett, W.; de Berg, H. (interviewer) (1970). Wilfred Burchett interviewed by Hazel de Berg in the Hazel de Berg collection [sound recording], National Library of Australia. Retrieved 28 April 2026.
He was a politically engaged anti-imperialist who always placed himself among the people and events about whom he was reporting. His reporting antagonised both the American and Australian governments and he was effectively exiled from Australia for almost 20 years before the incoming Whitlam government granted him a new passport.
In the 1970s Burchett launched defamation action after being accused of being a KGB operative.
Early life Burchett was born in Clifton Hill, Melbourne in 1911 to George Harold and Mary Jane Eveline Burchett (née Davey). His father was a builder, a farmer, and a Methodist lay preacher with radical convictions who "imbued [Burchett] with a progressive approach to British India, the Soviet Union and republican China". He spent his youth in the south Gippsland town of Poowong and then Ballarat, where Wilfred attended the Agricultural High School. Poverty forced him to drop out of school at fifteen and work at various odd jobs, including as a vacuum cleaner salesman and an agricultural labourer. In his free time he studied foreign languages, mainly French and Russian.
In 1937 Burchett left Australia for London by ship. There he found work in a Jewish travel agency Palestine & Orient Lloyd Ltd which resettled Jews from Nazi Germany in British Palestine and the United States. It was in this job that he met Erna Lewy, née Hammer, a Jewish refugee from Germany, and they married in 1938 in Hampstead. He visited Germany in 1938 before returning to Australia with his wife in 1939. After his return to Australia he wrote letters to newspapers warning against the danger of German and Japanese militarism. After the declaration of war by Britain, he became sought after as "one of the last Australians to leave Germany before the war".
Career as a journalist, 1940–1978
Second World War 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 next travelled to the then Chinese capital, Chongqing, becoming a correspondent for the London Daily Express and also writing for the Sydney Daily Telegraph. He was wounded while reporting on Britain's campaign in Burma. He also covered the American 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 from Tokyo on 2 September, the day of the formal surrender of Japan, after a thirty-hour train trip in breach of MacArthur's orders. He was unarmed, and carrying rations for seven meals, a black umbrella and a typewriter. During his reporting, he ran into a press junket organised by Tex McCrary for promoting the United States 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:
On this "scoop of the century", which had a worldwide impact, Burchett's byline was incorrectly given as "by Peter Burchett".
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. In response, US officials accused Burchett of being under the sway of Japanese propaganda. Burchett lost his press accreditation and he was ordered to leave Japan, although this order was later withdrawn. In addition, 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 secret before being released in 1968.Goodman, Amy. The Exception to the Rulers, Verso - London, 2003 US military encouraged the journalist William L. Laurence of The New York Times to write articles dismissing the reports of radiation sickness as part of Japanese efforts to undermine American morale. Laurence, who was also being paid by the US War Department, wrote the articles the US military wanted even though he was aware of the effects of radiation after observing the first atomic bomb test on 16 July 1945, and its effect on local residents and livestock.Goodman, Amy and David, The Baltimore Sun, "The Hiroshima Cover-Up", 5 August 2005.
Burchett wrote about his experiences in his book, Shadows of Hiroshima.
Eastern Europe After three years in Greece and Berlin working for the Daily Express, Burchett began reporting on Eastern Europe for The Times. He covered some of the post-war political trials in Hungary, including that of Cardinal Mindszenty in 1949, and of the communist László Rajk, who was convicted and executed the same year. Burchett described Rajk as a "Titoist spy" and a "tool of American and British intelligence".Burchett wrote a play "based on the Hungarian spy trials", entitled The Changing Tide, see Bibliography.
In his autobiography, Burchett later admitted that he began to have doubts about the trials when one of the Bulgarians repudiated his signed confession.Wilfred Burchett, Memoirs of a Rebel Journalist : The Autobiography of Wilfred Burchett (2005), edited by Nick Shimmin and George Burchett, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, New South Wales. , pp 323-24. Hungarian Tibor Méray accused Burchett of dishonesty regarding the trials and the subsequent Hungarian Revolution of 1956 which he opposed.Méray 2008, pp. 113–127, pp. 146–147.
Korean War, 1950–1953 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 British journalist Alan WinningtonSee "Alan Winnington, 1910–1983", A Compendium of Communist Biographies, Graham Stevenson's website. made their way to North Korea to cover the Panmunjom Peace Talks. While in Korea he reported from the Northern side for the French communist newspaper Ce soir and the American radical publication National Guardian.
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:
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 with the backing of the Australian government. Australian journalist Denis Warner suggested Burchett had concocted the claim that the USA was engaging in germ warfare and pointed out the similarity of the allegations to a science fiction story by Jack London, a favourite author of Burchett's.Warner, Denis, Not Always on Horseback: An Australian Correspondent at War and Peace in Asia, 1961–1993; St Leonards: Allen and Unwin; 1997; pp. 196–197. However, Burchett's former colleague and veteran anti-communist, Tibor Méray, confirmed Burchett's insect observation in his critical memoir On Burchett.Méray 2008, pp. 73–76. Burchett's finding was later supported by a 2010 report by al-Jazeera.
Burchett visited several POW camps in North Korea, comparing one to a "luxury resort", a "holiday resort in Switzerland", which angered POWs who had been held under conditions that violated the Geneva Conventions.Gavan McCormack, "Korea: Burchett's Thirty Years' War," in Ben Kiernan (ed.), 1986, p. 169. Historian Gavan McCormack wrote that Burchett regretted this analogy, but said that the factual basis of the description was confirmed by POW Walker Mahurin.Gavan McCormack, "Korea", in Ben Kiernan (ed.), 1986, p. 170. Similarly, Tibor Méray reports a "Peace Fighter Camp" which had no fences.Méray 2008, pp. 64–65.
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 had claimed that Dean had been killed by the North Koreans and had intended using his death as leverage in negotiations with the North Koreans. It was consequently angry that Burchett reported 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 state of the war.William F Dean and William L Worden, General Dean's Story, The Viking Press, New York, 1954, pp. 239, 244.
In his study of war correspondents, The First Casualty, Phillip Knightley wrote that "in Korea, the truth was that Burchett and Winnington were a better source of news than the UN information officers, and if the allied reporters did not see them they risked being beaten on stories".Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo, (revised edition), Prion, London, 2000, p. 388.
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