Obituary MR A. SZIGETVARY

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31936, 13 March 1969, Page 7

Obituary MR A. SZIGETVARY

"The Press” Special Service AUCKLAND, March 11.

Mr Arpad Szigetvary, a journalist and one of the first foreign affairs commentators in New Zealand broadcasting, has died in Auckland, aged 72.

Mr Szigetvary was born in New Chang, Manchuria, where his father was a British Customs officer. He was educated at the Methodist College, in Belfast, and in 1914 joined the Far East trading company, Butterfield and Swire, in Shanghai. He served in the First World War as adjutant to a Chinese labour force and later as a captain in the Royal Fusiliers. He was mentioned in dispatches and in 1919 was a member of the Russian Relief Force.

Mr Szigetvary rejoined Butterfield and Swire in China but left the company to work as a journalist in the United States, South America and in London, where he was on the staff of “The Times." He arrived in New Zealand in 1927 and worked for the “Paerea Gazette" and the “Waikato Times.” His radio commentaries on foreign affairs were broadcast regularly from the old IZM station at Manurewa and from IZB. Asian military strategy was ene of his specialities and he was one of the few journalists of his day to predict a Japanese invasion of Singapore down the Malay Peninsula. The guns of the Singapore base, he contended, were sited incorrectly and could be used only to repel an invasion from the sea.