charles foreign corresponden

Since its founding in 1945, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan (FCCJ) has been a haven for working journalists. From its origins at "No. 1 Shimbun Alley" in the ruins of Tokyo immediately after World War II, the club quickly took on a life of its own. At times it became like a miniature United Nations, meeting the needs of hundreds of foreign journalists from around the world, who used it as a working press center as well as a social oasis.

Club members, who include several Pulitzer Prize winners, have personally witnessed and reported on some of the most momentous events of the last half century-the end of World War II and the occupation of Japan; the revolution in China; the Korean War; Vietnam and the student riots of the 1960s; the height of the Cold War; Japan's economic miracle and the subsequent collapse of the "bubble" economy; the death of Emperor Hirohito; and much more.

Foreign Correspondents in Japan gives an intimate and colorful look at these journalists who covered Asia for the rest of the world during five decades of sweeping change, and provides first-person accounts of history as it was being written.