Keyes Beech; Long-Time Reporter Headed Times Bureau in Thailand
Keyes Beech, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who headed The Times’ Bangkok bureau from 1979 until his retirement in 1981, has died of emphysema at age 76.
Beech, who died Thursday in a Washington hospital, was a longtime international correspondent and author.
He won the Pulitzer for his coverage of the Korean War in 1951 while serving as Far East correspondent for the old Chicago Daily News.
Beech, who began as a copy boy in St. Petersburg, Fla., had a career that spanned five decades, including positions as a feature writer with the Akron Beacon Journal and Washington correspondent for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
He also was among the first group of correspondents to enter mainland China under Communist rule in 1957.
His books included “The U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima,” “Not Without the Americans,” “Uncommon Valor” and “Tokyo and Points East.”
Beech had retired from the Daily News but agreed to take over this newspaper’s bureau in Thailand for a short time. There he reported on pirates preying on Vietnamese refugees, famines in Cambodia, Laotians fleeing Vietnamese troops, prostitution in Thailand, racial tension in Malaysia and many diverse concerns in remote corners of Southeast Asia.
He is survived by his wife, Yuko, of Bethesda, Md.; a daughter and two sons.
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