Harold John Timperley (1898–1954) was an Australian journalist, known for his reporting in China in the 1930s and for authoring the book What War Means (1938) based on it. Historian Hora Tomio described What War Means as "a book which shocked awake Western intellectuals". Life He started his newspaperman career in China in 1921 and reported for the Manchester Guardian from 1928, based in Peiping (1921–1936), Shanghai (1936 – Apr? 1937, Sep 1937 – Apr 1938) and Nanjing (May? – Sep 1937). He became an advisory editor of ASIA magazine in 1934 (see ASIA of November, 1938). He married Elizabeth Chambers in Nanjing in August 1937. After the Japanese invasion, his accounts for the Guardian were some of the firsthand information most easily available in the West. His cables from Shanghai, although at times censored, formed the basis for some early writing on the Nanjing massacre from 1937 to 1938. Timperley left Shanghai for London early April 1938. There, he published the book What War Means, edited by him, which contains direct testimony as well as official documents. It received great attention, being published in the US under the title The Japanese Terror in China. Its content has been contested by Japanese historians, including Minoru Kitamura. Minoru Kitamura proposed a view that Timperley did not appear as a witness in Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal and International Military Tribunal for the Far East because he might have been a spin doctor. Timperley became involved in an attempt to stir the United Kingdom to act on behalf of China. He was close to the Nationalists and Chiang Kai-shek; it is a matter of some dispute to what extent he was supported by them, or was engaged in propaganda work on their behalf. It is not contested that he took a strongly anti-war line, and on a personal level was friendly with Japanese including the Shanghai Domei News Agency chief Matsumoto Shigeharu. Some of the statistics Timperley used have been mis-employed by subsequent writers taking What War Means as a source. In 1939, he gave up journalism and served for the Chinese Ministry of Information, as an advisor. He continued to write on topics connected with Japan, including the nationalist thinker Yoshida Shoin, until the end of the Pacific War. From 1943, he worked for the Information Office of United Nations (Allied Powers). From 1946, he worked for UNRRA at its Shanghai office.