PIM associate

editor dies

Malcolm Salmon, associate editor of PIM for the last ten years has died.

Mr Salmon had a long and distinguished career in journalism. His first contact with the Pacific region was as a young rating on HMAS Australia during World War 11.

He once said of his war service that ratings were sent to cruisers either because they were thought to be officer material or for disciplinary purposes. He said he was one of the few who were selected in the first category and ended up in the second.

He was on the Australia when she was devastatingly bombed by Japanese kamikaze aircraft.

After the war Mr Salmon entered journalism. A long-time colleague said of his early working life: “Faced with the prospect of being groomed for management positions, he decided that was not for him. He took a sharp left turn and joined the Communist Party ... His early experiences helped shape his cosmopolitan know ledge and understanding and, while he remained vigorously Australian, deepened his sense of the oneness of humanity.”

Mr Salmon worked for the Tribune newspaper before he resigned from the party. He later joined PIM as a sub editor His work as a journalist took him to France, Spain, England and Southeast Asia as well as the Pacific.

Noted for his fluency in and love for the French language, he spent considerable periods in North Vietnam during the Vietnam war.

One of the first western journalists to interview Ho Chi Minh, Mr Salmon conducted the conversation in French, simultaneously transcribing it in English in Pitmans shorthand. The North Vietnamese later preferred his version as the official transcript of the interview.

It was this knowledge of the French language that enabled Mr Salmon to bring an added dimension to PlM’s coverage of the region.

He aimed to get across important messages in a style

that had immediacy, validity and literary integrity. In particular his personal convictions meant that PIM gave full and sympathetic support to the aspirations of the people of the Pacific islands.

Sadly, an old PIM tradition of having regular literary lunches has gone. However, there are many people associated with the Pacific islands who came to know those meetings over the last decade and were able to meet with Malcolm Salmon and come to appreciate his wit, his adherence to a humane philosophy and his bonhomie.

It was fitting that one of his colleagues said in a eulogy: “He was concerned above all with the right of all nations to self-determination, the right to develop their econo mies and cultures in peace and democracy and freely exchange material and cultural values.

“He was deeply concerned that Australia should live in peace and friendship with all peoples, and he had a long

association with the peace movement,”

Bill Coppell

Mr Malcolm Salmon