Remembering Maasaki Iwasa

By Neal Ulevich

Neal Ulevich won a Pulitzer Prize for photos, headed up photo operations for Asia, then later turned his talents to technical matters and became chief of communications for Asia. He shared these thoughts with Cleartime:

Mas Iwasa, whom I worked with as Asia Photo Editor and later succeeded at COC, brought untiring care, talent and innovation to the task of keeping AP's postwar technology running years after such equipment was obsolescent.

His quiet good humor and friendship made him AP's welcome technical emissary at bureaus throughout East and Southeast Asia.

As the new technology made its way, slowly, fitfully, to Asian bureaus, Iwasa presided over operations which juggled digital computers and ancient Model 15 teletypes, satellite circuits and shortwave radiophoto transmissions.

In a time of churning growth in technology, Iwasa was the bridge connecting New York, London, and outposts as remote and technologically backward as Saigon and Rangoon.

A day off rarely meant rest for Iwasa. Cycling was a passion, easily sixty miles in a day (on one occasion a hundred miles...I was hard pressed to keep up with him, though he was many years my senior).

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