Harrison Forman Diary, Malaysia, November 1950

Harrison Forman, journalist and photographer, writes in this diary about his travels to Malaysia during the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960), the effort by communists to force the British Colonial government from Malaysia. In Kuala Lumpur, Forman interviews non-native rubber plantation owners who have fortified their homes with barbed wire, flood lights and the local police force to protect themselves from "bandits" (possibly referring to the rebels of the Malayan National Liberation Army, the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party). In an interview with Sergeant Hussin Bin Bulat, a trained police officer, who tells stories of the violence, a driver in a garage was killed, the railroad station burned, and a bus full of passengers were robbed then released before burning the bus. Forman speaks with another plantation owner who says despite owners who had been killed in Bentong, others insist on remaining because of the money to be made and family obligations. In a section title "Flying Newsboy," Forman interviews two employees of a newspaper owned by Hu Wenhu (Forman refers to him as Aw Boon Haw), an entrepreneur best known for manufacturing the heat rub Tiger Balm. They discuss their unique job of delivering newspapers by airplane. Forman visits and talks with representatives at several schools. At the "Anglo-Chinese School" he tours the library that a representative of the United States Information Service (USIS, which becomes the United States Information Agency), Miss Margaret Katherine Beadles, helped organize. He interviews the librarian, Reverend T.R. Doraisamy and they talk about his appreciation for the American way of educating students to be patriotic, socially conscious citizens. Dr. Herbert H. Peterson, originally from St. Louis, Missouri, was brought by the Methodist Church to Malaysia to rebuild the school after the Japanese occupation during the Second World War (1939-1945). They talk about the need for textbooks and teachers, the difficulty of foreign exchange controls, and students' nationalities and career interests. Forman ends the diary interviewing J.G. Joseph, Principal of the Teachers Training College and Professor Mason at Raffles College,University of Malaysia. They both talk about their views on teacher training, operations of the schools, student enrollment, and the influence of American teaching methods.The diaries are part of the Harrison Forman Papers 1931-1974 housed at the Special Collections & University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries. UWM Libraries received the dairies on a loan from the Special Collections & University Archives at the University of Oregon Libraries and digitized them to accompany the digital collection of Forman's photographs. The diaries were digitized to provide research materials for the Forman's negatives scanned as part of the NEH grant project "Saving and Sharing the AGS Library's Historic Nitrate Negative Images.