Cambridge District Scout Archive
53rd Cambridge ASM 1933
Ian Ernest McLeary Morrison was the Australian, son of a journalist based in China, who moved to Cambridge in 1919. He attended Trinity College Cambridge before returning to the Far East. Morrison became an English professor at Sapporo, Japan’s Hokkaido Imperial University until 1937, at which point he took the position of secretary to British Ambassador to Japan. He, like his father, was a journalist. Later he held the post of Deputy Director for the British Ministry of Information at Singapore.
He was appointed Times correspondent and attached to the Australian forces in New Guinea. He was ‘Mentioned in Dispatches’ for his work with the New Guinea Force, during which he was in a plane crash. He had earlier been bombed and was later shot in the hand. His role in New Guinea is unclear but the force was involved with Intelligence gathering amongst other tasks.
Ian Morrison did correspond directly with the Foreign Office during the war and he is described as ‘Times Journalist, sometime intelligence operative’ in ‘The British Army in the Far East’
After the war he remained in Singapore and had an affair with the Doctor and later author Han Suyin who wrote ‘A Many-Splendoured Thing’ which was made into a successful film and inspired a song.
Ian died in 1950 whilst covering the Korean war, being killed along with two other journalists, when their jeep hit a mine.
JWR Archivist Dec 2019
Cambridge District Scout Archive 