Individual Details
(18 Jun 1903 - 17 Jun 1993)
Prolific writer, journalist, photographer, and world traveler. She started the publicity department of FTD Florists in 1926, and worked there for three years. During the early 1930s she wrote for several national magazines, and was editor of Bridle and Golfer Magazine. Beginning in 1936 Gwen traveled the world, mostly the orient, and wrote weekly articles about her experiences for The Detroit News which were read by thousands of persons. Gwen Dew was caught in Hong Kong at the start of World War II and spent several months in a concentration camp. She was released in mid-1942 as part of a prisoner exchange and subsequently wrote a series of thrilling eye-witness accounts of her experience which were carried in newspapers across the country. Her book "Prisoner of the Japs" was published in 1943 by Alfred Knopf publishers of New York, and received excellent reviews by the New York Times. It was dramatized on NBC radio as part of its anthology series "Words at War". Gwen toured the United States during the rest of the war as a War Bond rally speaker for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the CIA), and her speeches were credited with raising more than $2 million in war bonds. She was the first female foreign correspondent permitted into Japan following the War. She married U.S. Army Captain James Buchanan in 1948, and he died 5 years later. Gwen Dew moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where she began her "World Adventure Travel Series" in 1957 which she ran for several years. Her memoirs entitled "My God, A Woman!" and another book, "MacArthur's Japan", were published in 2007.
Events
| Birth | 18 Jun 1903 | Calhoun, Michigan, United States | | | |
| Marriage | 28 Nov 1948 | Albion, Calhoun, Michigan, United States - James Robert T. Buchanan | | | |
| Death | 17 Jun 1993 | Maricopa, Pinal, Arizona, United States | | | |
| Burial | | Riverside Cemetery, Calhoun, Michigan, United States | | | |
Families