Graham Jenkins (1916 - 1996)

Born 22 May 1916 in Balwyn, Victoria, Australia

Ancestors

Died 1996 at about age 79 in Hong Kong

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Biography

Graham Jenkins was born on 22 May 1916 in Balwyn, Victoria, Australia, the son of Elsa Sarah Jenkins and Percy Northumberland Jenkins.^[1][2]

At the start of his journalism career, he was a local newspaper reporter including at one time a member of the Camperdown Chronicle literary staff.^[3] Later, working with AAP-Reuters, he was a correspondent in Indonesia, Malaya, China and Africa.^[4]

In April 1949, Graham and a second journalist, George Vine, were detained for 20 hours at the Nationalist garrison headquarters in China, after Chinese authorities objected to their published press coverage.^[5][6] It's suggested that the pair had been sentenced to death,^[7][8] before Clyde Farnsworth was able to secure their release.^[9]

Not long after his stay in Chinese custody, Graham was for about a year with AAP-Reuters head office in London. He returned to Asia around June 1950 as correspondent in Indo-China.^[4]

By 1952, his base was Hong Kong,^[10] and by 1958 he had moved on to an appointment as Reuters manager in Singapore. According to a remembrance published in January 2017, during this time, Graham "liked to recall how he often beat The Times man and novelist Graham Greene to the front page of The Times [during the French Indochina war] by using the old Reuters technique of cabling stories in short "takes" of 4 to 5 paragraphs. Greene filed his dispatches in long slabs of more than 1,000 words."^[11]

Graham left Reuters in 1958, before stints as general manager at Singapore's Straits Times, the Hong Kong Standard and The Star (which he launched in Hong Kong with Aw Sian).^[12]

Graham died in 1996 in Hong Kong.^[13]

Sources

1. ↑ Birth record: 9014 / 1916. BDM Victoria. https://www.bdm.vic.gov.au/research-and-family-history/search-your-family-history.
   (Name: Graham JENKINS); (Place: BALWYN, VIC); (Mother: Elsa Sarah GRAHAM); (Father: Percy Northumberland)
2. ↑ "Graham Jenkins." In Australian World War II Nominal Roll, 1939-1945. Retrieved 15 April 2020 by Clare Spring from https://records.myheritagelibraryedition.com/research/record-10750-502524/graham-jenkins-in-australian-world-war-ii-nominal-roll.
3. ↑ "Personal." 6 June 1939. Camperdown Chronicle, p. 2. Retrieved 15 April 2020 by Clare Spring from https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22999404.
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1} "New job for 'Argus' man." 17 June 1950. The Argus (Melbourne), p. 5. Retrieved 15 April 2020 by Clare Spring from https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22836343.
5. ↑ "Two newsmen released by Chinese." 27 April 1949. The Argus (Melbourne), p. 4. Retrieved 15 April 2020 by Clare Spring from https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22724884.
6. ↑ "Communists object to reports." 27 April 1949. Cairns Post, p. 1. Retrieved 15 April 2020 by Clare Spring from https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/42623136.
7. ↑ Michael Nelson (24 December 2016). "Graham Jenkins was also condemned with George Vine." The Baron. Retrieved 15 April 2020 by Clare Spring from https://www.thebaron.info/comment/graham-jenkins-was-also-condemned-with-george-vine. Archived 15 April 2020 at https://web.archive.org/web/20200415085700/https://www.thebaron.info/comment/graham-jenkins-was-also-condemned-with-george-vine.
8. ↑ "Obituary: George Vine." The Baron. Retrieved 15 April 2020 by Clare Spring from https://www.thebaron.info/news/article/2016/12/22/obituary-george-vine. Archived 25 July 2017 at https://web.archive.org/web/20170725184100/http://www.thebaron.info/news/article/2016/12/22/obituary-george-vine.
9. ↑ "Chinese release pressmen." 27 April 1949. Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate, p. 3. Retrieved 15 April 2020 by Clare Spring from https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/134354943.
10. ↑ "Democrats' candidate has mixed political ancestry." 29 July 1952. Examiner (Launceston), p. 2. Retrieved 15 April 2020 by Clare Spring from https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/52907107.
11. ↑ Ernie Mendoza (1 January 2017). "Remembering Graham Jenkins." Retrieved 15 April 2020 by Clare Spring from https://www.thebaron.info/comment/remembering-graham-jenkins. Archived 15 April 2020 at https://web.archive.org/web/20200415092101/https://www.thebaron.info/comment/remembering-graham-jenkins.
12. ↑ "Jenkins back in the fold." January 1990. The Correspondent, p. 13. Retrieved 15 April 2020 by Clare Spring from https://issuu.com/fcchk/docs/1990-01/7.
13. ↑ "FCC History and Archives." The Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong, Retrieved 15 April 2020 by Clare Spring from https://www.fcchk.org/fcc-history-and-archives/. Archived 8 August 2018 at https://web.archive.org/web/20180808175653/https://www.fcchk.org/fcc-history-and-archives/.