A war of words

Thirty years ago when Hamish McDonald was Asia Correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald in Japan, he was given a box of papers by a departing journalist. The box contained a large manuscript and photographs that detailed the amazing life of Charles Bavier. Born in Japan in the late 1800s, the illegitimate son of a Swiss businessman, Charles was brought up by his father's Japanese mistress, before setting off on an odyssey that took him into China's republican revolution against the Manchus, the ANZAC assault on Gallipoli and British counter-intelligence in pre-war Malaya. Bavier's journey finally led him into a little-known Allied psych-war against Japan as part of the vicious Pacific War, where his unique knowledge of Japanese culture and language made him man of the hour. This is the story of a man regarded at times as a spy by both the Allies and the Japanese, but who remained true to the essential humanity of both sides of a dehumanised racial conflict. Though far from the glory he craved, Bavier saved thousands of lives in the South-West Pacific: the Japanese soldiers who surrendered and the Americans and Australians they would have taken with them. This book traces the extraordinary life of Charles Bavier and is based on his own diaries and three decades of research by journalist and author Hamish McDonald.