George GIFFEN [c.1911-2006]

George's son, Ian Gill, writes:

I should correct one entry. My father George Giffen relocated to Canada in 1946, not 1958. After Liberation, he spent six months helping to get the SCMP up and running and then he left to rejoin his family in Canada, where he had a wife, Erma, and a daughter, Dianne.

I am currently helping Philip Cracknell with a blog he is writing based on the wedding photo of George Giffen and Erma Hadley in Hong Kong in 1938, so more information will be available when that is completed.

Meanwhile, I attach a lengthy obituary that my New Zealand journalist friend Kevin Sinclair wrote in the SCMP about George Giffen after he died in December, 2006. I contributed the photo and a chunk of the text to the obituary, as Kevin acknowledged.

I picked up several copies of the SCMP in Hong Kong on my way to Vancouver where I was invited by my half-sisters, Dianne Fowler and Linda Sverdrup, to give a eulogy at the memorial service for George. It was a moving footnote to a relationship that had begun when I met George in Canada in 1985.
Best,
Ian 

George Giffen's obituary:

George Giffen, publisher of the South China Morning Post's first post-war edition and a lifelong newspaperman, has died at the age of 95, writes Kevin Sinclair 
1368 words 
4 January 2007 
South China Morning Post 
12 
English 
(c) 2007 South China Morning Post Publishers Limited, Hong Kong. All rights reserved. 

Headline: Champion of the Press

On August 30, 1945, the atmosphere in Hong Kong was tense and uncertain. Two weeks earlier, Emperor Hirohito had announced the surrender of his forces but Hong Kong was still under Japanese military occupation.

In the Wyndham Street offices of the South China Morning Post, the Japanese executives who had put out the English-language occupation newspaper, Hong Kong News, refused to accept reality. 

Three Post staff had bravely gone to the office, demanding space to put out the first edition of their newspaper since the surrender of British forces three years and eight months earlier. 

They were the editor, Australian-Chinese Henry Ching, who had spent the desperate war years in the city, the general manager Benjamin Wylie, and journalist George Giffen - both recently released from internment at Stanley. 

Despite the refusal of the Japanese occupants to co-operate, Ching and Giffen set about preparing to publish. Ching was in the office and Giffen went out into the streets to gauge the mood of the public. 

Then he came running back: "The British fleet is coming in!" Giffen grabbed a chair and a typewriter and pounded out the news, while Ching edited it. 
Veteran employee Lam Yung-fai got the paper set in type and printed. Soon after, the first post-war edition of the Post was being handed out free on the streets.  The issue was a humble single sheet printed on one side, 13cm wide and 28cm deep. "EXTRA," it was headed, "Fleet entering." 

The news was momentous. The British fleet was coming into the harbour, ending not only the grim occupation but also uncertainty about the immediate future. The city was seething with rumours about an approaching Nationalist army advancing to liberate Hong Kong. 
There was also talk of an American fleet about to arrive and worry among the survivors of the pre-war government that their US allies might hand the city over to the Kuomintang. 

The next day, a single-sheet newspaper of normal format appeared under the joint masthead of the South China Morning Post and the Hong Kong Telegraph. On the back page there was a small panel announcing that the paper had been printed and published by George Wood Giffen for the South China Morning Post. 

Giffen, a newspaperman all his life, died recently in Vancouver, Canada, aged 95. Although he left Hong Kong a few months after the city was liberated, he helped write a vibrant chapter in the life of the city at a critical time. Giffen died at Delta View Habilitation Centre last month. Before his retirement in the 1960s, he had worked for leading newspapers in British Colombia. He also worked for the Canadian federal government in Ottawa, where he wrote articles for the agriculture and commerce departments, speeches for officials and made radio programmes for government departments. 

Born in Surrey, England, Giffen was a journalist all his life. When he was recruited by the Post in 1933, he was a reporter on the Barking Gazette. He had earlier worked on the noted Derbyshire Times. 

By the time the Union flag was lowered at the end of the Battle of Hong Kong, he was editor of the Post's sister newspaper, the Hong Kong Telegraph. With British and other "enemy aliens", he was interned at Stanley Camp for the long and bitter years of the Japanese occupation. 
His finest hour came as the second world war ended. For Giffen and the newspaper he served, as for all of Hong Kong and its people, the invasion and occupation had been a time of danger and hardship. 

Their story is told in SCMP: The First Eighty Years written in 1983 by Robin Hutcheon, a distinguished former editor of the Post (1967-1986). 

Giffen's son, Ian Gill (he adopted his mother's name), lives in Manila. He talked to his father at length about adventures in newspapers in Hong Kong in the 1930s. Mr Gill said his father had answered an advertisement for a journalist's job on the Post. "The voyage to Hong Kong in the Japanese passenger vessel Nippon/Kaiser Suwa Maru was a grand adventure for a young man from depression-stricken London," Mr Gill said. 

One of the first stories covered by Giffen gave him a taste of the times. 
"A ship from Qingdao was carrying people to Hong Kong," Giffen told his son. "It was boarded in Mirs Bay by pirates from a junk who didn't bother the children but robbed everybody else." 

Although pre-war Hong Kong was a romantic city, the journalist's work was often humdrum. Giffen reported crime, civil claims, military affairs, courts martial and speeches at the national days of the numerous consulates-general. 

The paper translated many items from Chinese newspapers, especially about nearby warlords. It also paid much attention to athletic clubs and printed results of lawn bowls, tennis, cricket, soccer, water polo, rugby, shooting and, of course, horse racing. 

Giffen recalled towards the end of his long life that his job as a reporter meant "a lot of waiting, drinking, rickshaw riding and boredom". 
But there was also an active social life. At a weekend beach party, he met a young Canadian woman who was secretary for the harbour master. 
Giffen and Erma Hadley married in 1938 and lived above the lower Peak tram station. The young couple did not have long to enjoy married life. The Japanese invasion of China was proceeding at a fast and bloody pace. Giffen's wife was evacuated back home to Canada; they didn't see each other for years. 

When Japanese aircraft started bombing Hong Kong at dawn on December 8, 1941, Giffen moved into the office of the Telegraph. Many of the staff of the Telegraph and the Post were serving in either the army or as volunteers. He kept putting out the paper until the surrender on Christmas Day. 

In Stanley camp, Giffen shared a large room and verandah at St Stephen's Block with four Post staffers: general manager Ben Wylie, journalists John Luke, Dick Cloake and Vincent Jarrett, and two businessmen. They enjoyed the comparative luxury of a bathroom shared by only seven people.

Suddenly, in the torrid summer of 1945, there were rumours of a new type of massive bomb destroying Japanese cities. Then there was talk of a Japanese surrender but Hong Kong was still caught in the iron grip of the occupation forces. 

Although suffering from years of scanty rations and diseases such as beriberi, Giffen was one of the first to leave the internment camp. He headed straight for the South China Morning Post building in Wyndham Street; he was one of the few surviving staff in reasonable health. 
At the office, he was delighted to find editor Henry Ching, and the pale and thin Englishman became the acting general manager. 

Once the pair had persuaded the Japanese to leave the Post offices, Giffen buckled down to finding newsprint and staff, and putting out an issue of the newspaper. He recalled "walking up and down Wyndham Street asking people to turn off their fans and lights so that we could get more power and get the press to run {hellip} and they obliged". 

Another task was finding newsprint. "It was a wild time as people were celebrating. I had to go around the city in a rickshaw and visit the Chinese paper firms and try to confiscate rolls of newsprint so that we could go to press," Giffen told his son. 

For three months, Giffen was listed as the South China Morning Post's publisher. 

By 1946, although the city was still devastated and battered, things were returning to a semblance of normality. A few months later Giffen left for Canada and a reunion with the young wife he had not seen for six years. 

George Wood Giffen is survived by a son and two daughters, seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. A memorial service will take place at the Delta View Habilitation Centre in Vancouver on Saturday. 

RTHK's Hong Kong Heritage show on 26th Dec 2015 starts with an interview with Ian Gill about his mother Billie's life and her experiences in Stanley camp, and Ian's later search to find his father, George Gifffen.