About Wilfred Burchett
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. 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. 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 spent his youth in the south Gippsland town of Poowong and then Ballarat, where Wilfred attended the Agricultural High School.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.