GIBNEY, Frank 1924-2006
(Frank Bray Gibney)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born September 21, 1924, in Scranton, PA; died of heart failure, April 9, 2006, in Santa Barbara, CA. Journalist, publisher, business executive, and author. Considered an authority on the postwar Japanese business world, Gibney was a former Asia correspondent for Time and later became an executive at Encyclopaedia Britannica. While attending Yale University, he was called up to active duty in the U.S. Naval Reserve and sent to Colorado, where he learned Japanese at the Japanese Language School. Becoming a military intelligence officer, he was stationed in Japan after the end of World War II while also earning his B.A. from Yale in absentia. Leaving the military, he was hired as a foreign correspondent by Time, covering European and Asian events, including the Korean War. During the mid-1950s, he was senior features editor for Newsweek, and from 1957 to 1961 was an editorial writer for Life. Becoming his own publisher, he ran the arts magazine Show during the early 1960s, then joinedEncyclopaedia Britannica as president of the Japan office in 1966. Gibney remained there in various executive posts, such as vice president of the Asia-Pacific region and president of TBS Britannica. One of his major accomplishments was spearheading the publication of the Korean, Japanese, and Chinese editions of the company's encyclopedia. The Chinese edition was especially challenging to get by the communist country's government censors. Gibney eventually was named vice chair of Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1983 and, beginning in 1980, was president of the Pacific Basin Institute in Santa Barbara, California. Over the years, Gibney wrote or edited a number of nonfiction titles, many of which concerned Asian issues. Among these are Japan: The Fragile Superpower (1976), Korea's Quiet Revolution: From Garrison State to Democracy (1992), and the edited The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame (1999).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New York Times, April 14, 2006, p. A19.