Roy Rowan (1 February 1920-) was an American foreign correspondent, editor, and author. He reported on the 1949 revolution that led to the founding of the People's Republic of China, as well as the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Rowan worked for Time-Life and its successor media company, Time-Warner, for more than 30 years. From late 1959 to 1970 he was Life magazine's assistant managing editor in charge of news. In 1972, Rowan returned to Time-Life and served as Time magazine's bureau chief for Asia and Australia until 1978. Roy Rowan spent the latter part of his career from 1978 to 2015 as a feature story writer for Time magazine and on the Board of Editors of Fortune magazine while writing 10 published books on a wide variety of topics. Early life and war service Born in New York City on 1 February 1920, Roy Rowan graduated in 1941 from Dartmouth College and a year later earned his MBA from Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School. Drafted as a private into the U.S. Army in May 1942, Rowan served in Tunisia, New Guinea and the Philippines, winning a Bronze Star and finishing the war as a major. China and South East Asia In 1946, he took a job running a fleet of trucks in central China for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). With the civil war between the Communists and Nationalists erupting around him, he delivered food, clothing, and farm equipment to villages recovering from the Japanese Occupation, and contributed freelance articles and photographs to U.S. publications. Hired by Henry Luce as a war correspondent in 1947 covering China for Life magazine and paired with photographer Jack Birns, Rowan, already something of a China Hand, covered all the major battles of the Chinese Communist Revolution by hitching rides with General Claire Chennault’s former Flying Tigers, hired to airlift military supplies for Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist troops. Rowan and Birns were the only foreign journalists in Manchuria when the Communists conquered the province in 1948. Struck down by a bout of typhoid and jaundice, Rowan recovered to see Chairman Mao's troops enter Shanghai in May 1949 before being sent to cover the Malayan insurgency and the Korean War. Roy Rowan returned to Asia in the 1970's after spending almost two decades in the US with Life magazine followed by a two year period launching two new regional magazines, called On the Sound