Editor's Note: We published this article in our Quarterly Newsletter of September 2018. As with other articles which have appeared in previous quarterlies, we are republishing older articles from time to time for those who may have missed the original.
UNICEF’s history has seen many remarkable and colorful characters slip by without much mention. Yet those little-remembered men and women often contributed as much or more than our well-known figures in making UNICEF what it is today.
In the summer of 2018 I was preparing to travel to Bangkok for ashort UNFPA assignment. In clearing my email inbox I found an advertisement from Amazon for its recommended ebook downloads to my Kindle (never doubt that Amazon, like Google, knows not only who you are, but where you are, have been, and are about to go.)
At the top of the list was a title I had read many years ago on an earlier Bangkok assignment - a book I had enjoyed but discarded after reading. The book was A Woman of Bangkok by Jack Reynolds, first published in 1956 and republished five times since then, most recently in 2017 (Available on Amazon https://goo.gl/b5My6o ).
The story tells a tale of a young English son of a preacher who arrives for a job in Thailand and learns of love and loss in the bars of of Bangkok. Sounds sleazy, right? Well yes and no. In fact, it is a mild and gentle 'coming of age' novel - nothing wild, sensational or graphic. Moreover, the book is often listed along with Graham Greene's Quiet American and Richard Mason's The World of Suzie Wong as a classic period-piece of post WWII Asia. In fact, the Wall Street Journal counts the book as one of the top 10 novels of Asia.
But who was the author, Jack Reynolds, who seemingly appeared from nowhere, wrote a superb novel, and then disappeared from the literary scene just as quickly? With a little digging I learned that “Reynolds” was the pen name of a “Jack Jones”, who had worked for UNICEF in Bangkok, and had written ‘A Woman of Bangkok’ during the period he worked for UNICEF.
Whoa ! a classic book by a colleague? I knew that I had to learn more.
So who was Jack Jones? The name rang a bell, so I started by contacting a few colleagues.
From John Donohue:
“Your query about Jack Reynolds is a pleasant reminder of discussions I had with Newton Bowles when he was deputy director of the Programme Div in HQ in the late 1970's when I first joined Unicef. He recounted many stories of his time in the Quaker Volunteer Ambulance Service (in China during WWII). ….he (Jones) was the kind of person you could parachute into the middle of the jungle with only a pocket knife and he could carve a four wheel drive jeep and drive back to civilization in it.”
From Steve Umemoto:
“Jack Jones is really a name out of the deep past in the recesses of my UNICEF memory. I believe clear back in June 1967 I may have actually met him when I first visited EAPRO in Bangkok…. When I was posted to Indonesia in early 1969, I recall there were still stories of Jack Jones having been the only UNICEF staff member in memory having traveled to some far reaches of Sumatra, Sulawesi, etc. in search of some UNICEF vehicles that may have slipped off the radar…. I believe it is fair to say that Jack Jones was “Mr. Transport” for UNICEF in the EAP region.”
From Jack Ling:
“Jack Jones was the Transport Officer in Thailand. He was very effective in servicing the fleet of vehicles, mostly Jeeps or Landrovers. Given the conditions of roads in Thailand his services were much appreciated. A tall Briton with a long beard he stood out in the Thai countryside. If I am not mistaken he often drove barefooted ! He wrote about his personal experiences in a very candid and graphic way.”
From Akram Piracha:
“Jack reported to me as I was OIC when setting up the Indonesia office after withdrawal by Soekarno from the UN and UNICEF. His job was to track down and re-identify hundreds of UNICEF project vehicles scattered over many islands. The government officials then had obliterated UNICEF decals and thus hidden their identity…. There were few of us expats there so we both spent a lot of time together. Jack was an amazing story teller and very fond of drinking beer with a pot belly to match….He once told me that he had never touched water and at my asking revealed that he brushes his teeth with beer each morning….Jack was the proud author of his famous novel " A Woman of Bangkok." - famous because it already had been translated into a number of languages - an insightful expose of Thailand by a westerner, perhaps surpassing the King and I version of Anna and the King of Siam true story.”
Newton Bowles' recollections of Jack Jones in China led me to look into the pre-UNICEF period when Jack worked with the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in western China. In turn, this led me to discover a fascinating book by Andrew Hicks, Jack Jones, A True Friend To China, the Lost Writings of a Heroic Nobody (Available from Quaker Books www.quakerbooks.orgz). In addition to telling the story of Jack Jones, also tells of the work of the FAU’s China Convoy in keeping health services running in western China during and after WWII. This work continued until March 1951 when the Communist authorities expelled the last of the foreign workers. The FAU was one of UNICEF’s most important nurseries of future staff when our agency was 'born' in the late 1940's and early 1950's.
I am very grateful to Andrew Hicks for his permission to draw on his book, blog , and correspondence for much of the information and photos in this article. I highly recommend the book which includes many of Jack’s letters, articles and tons of remarkable photos of the FAU and China during that period. If you are interested in China or in the origins of UNICEF, this is an important book worth buying.
Most of the work of the China Convoy consisted of managing health centers and in hauling medical supplies 1,154 kms from central Burma and later from eastern India into China and then distributing those supplies to hospitals and health centers throughout the vast area of western China. Reading Jack’s newsletter contributions at the time makes clear that the concerns of the FAU parallel those throughout UNICEF’s own history - safe delivery, nutrition, child labor, and infectious disease (malaria, TB, typhoid).
Instead, Jack worked odd jobs including periods as a gardener and a seaman on a fishing trawler. He became a pacifist and conscientious objector (and thus was disdained as a ‘conshie’ by the pro-war society of the time). Like most of the other members of the FAU, Jack was not himself a Quaker. The men and women who worked for the FAU were no missionaries, and in fact included many atheists and agnostics. Jack himself seems, on the other hand, to have retained a deep Christian faith which showed up frequently in his writings and his artwork.
Jack arrived in China in 1945 at age 32. He had no particular experience or training for the mechanical work ahead, much less for writing poetry or authoring a major novel. While initially assigned as a driver and convoy leader, Jack soon became the transport supervisor for the entire FAU operation. When doctors and other trained medical staff were absent, he found himself managing health centers and acting as a “doctor” and part-time “obstetrician”.
In between all this work he found time to author several books of poetry, produce graphic art, and edit the FAU newsletter. One of his contributions to the newsletter was later re-published by the New Yorker in 1947.
Jack was among the last of the FAU members to leave China in June 1951 (following several months of detention by Chinese authorities). Quite soon after his arrival in Hong Kong, Jack joined UNICEF in Bangkok, probably largely thanks to his connections with other FAU graduates who had recently joined UNICEF - Newton Bowles, Tony Meager, Alan McBain, and Brian Jones (Glan Davies was another FAU graduate who joined UNICEF, but Glan had served with FAU in Bengal during the war years).
Non-FAU graduates joining Bangkok in those years included Akram Piracha, Arthur Robinson, According to Steve Umemoto, other notable people joining UNICEF Bangkok in the period were Anil Roy, Wah Wong, P.K. Ghosh, Mallica Vajrathorn, Danishman, M. Rajan, Baquer Namazi, and Steve himself.
The person who initially brought the remarkable UNICEF Bangkok team together was “Sam” Spurgeon Keeny, UNICEF’s second regional director. Sam arrived in Bangkok in March 1950 and deserves a whole article for himself (see 'A Boy from Shrewsbury" which we published in March 2021). Sam was not himself an FAU member but like the others had worked as a volunteer in two world wars (WWI in Basra for YMCA, and after the war caring for POWs in Siberia and various spots in Eastern Europe; in and after WWII heading up UNRRA in Italy and then establishing UNICEF’s Supply Division in 4 Paris.) After retiring from UNICEF in 1963 Sam went on to head the Population Council in Asia which he headed until a final retirement at age 85.
But back to Jack Jones.
Jack left UNICEF Bangkok in to 1960 to work for UNRWA in Palestine. He later did short UN jobs in Africa, but his heart was clearly in Bangkok, where he and Wanpenh (Pen) Muthikul had married in 1965. Jack and Pen then resumed family life and raised seven children. Jack worked during this period as an editor at the Bangkok Post and became well-known for his columns on the life of foreigners trying to navigate Thailand.
Possibly due to his growing family responsibilities Jack’s writings stalled. He eventually did go on to write another published novel, Daughters of an Ancient Race, in 1974, but never regained much literary notice. Somehow along the way, though, Jack found time to undertake a US-funded major study of water and sanitation in northeast Thailand, The Headman of Na Ang, considered at the time a classic anthropological study of village attitudes to government efforts at health education.
For the work, Jack seems to have introduced himself in the village as an entomologist, interested only in studying insects. This disguise, along with a fair amount of drinking with the village headman, allowed him to wander freely through people’s backyards, check their latrines and washing places and talk to people about their attitudes.
Jack's pen name of Jack Reynolds, however, turns up again as the author of field guides for evaluation of population and family planning projects published by the Population Council in 1974. This would have been during Sam Keeny’s period as Asia Director for the Council.
If anyone knows whether these too may have been the works of Jack Jones, or if anyone recalls his work in Nigeria or the Philippines, I would be grateful for letting me know.
Jack died in 1984. His wife and family still live in Bangkok. Several of the children have established notable careers, including Stephen Muthikul Jones, a well-known Thai sculptor.
Jack Reynolds Jones was clearly a remarkable person of enormous talent who like many other of the remarkable yet unsung men and women of UNICEF deserves a place in our history.
UNICEF’s history has seen many remarkable and colorful characters slip by without much mention. Yet those little-remembered men and women often contributed as much or more than our well-known figures in making UNICEF what it is today.
In the summer of 2018 I was preparing to travel to Bangkok for ashort UNFPA assignment. In clearing my email inbox I found an advertisement from Amazon for its recommended ebook downloads to my Kindle (never doubt that Amazon, like Google, knows not only who you are, but where you are, have been, and are about to go.)
At the top of the list was a title I had read many years ago on an earlier Bangkok assignment - a book I had enjoyed but discarded after reading. The book was A Woman of Bangkok by Jack Reynolds, first published in 1956 and republished five times since then, most recently in 2017 (Available on Amazon https://goo.gl/b5My6o ).
The story tells a tale of a young English son of a preacher who arrives for a job in Thailand and learns of love and loss in the bars of of Bangkok. Sounds sleazy, right? Well yes and no. In fact, it is a mild and gentle 'coming of age' novel - nothing wild, sensational or graphic. Moreover, the book is often listed along with Graham Greene's Quiet American and Richard Mason's The World of Suzie Wong as a classic period-piece of post WWII Asia. In fact, the Wall Street Journal counts the book as one of the top 10 novels of Asia.
But who was the author, Jack Reynolds, who seemingly appeared from nowhere, wrote a superb novel, and then disappeared from the literary scene just as quickly? With a little digging I learned that “Reynolds” was the pen name of a “Jack Jones”, who had worked for UNICEF in Bangkok, and had written ‘A Woman of Bangkok’ during the period he worked for UNICEF.
Whoa ! a classic book by a colleague? I knew that I had to learn more.
So who was Jack Jones? The name rang a bell, so I started by contacting a few colleagues.
From John Donohue:
“Your query about Jack Reynolds is a pleasant reminder of discussions I had with Newton Bowles when he was deputy director of the Programme Div in HQ in the late 1970's when I first joined Unicef. He recounted many stories of his time in the Quaker Volunteer Ambulance Service (in China during WWII). ….he (Jones) was the kind of person you could parachute into the middle of the jungle with only a pocket knife and he could carve a four wheel drive jeep and drive back to civilization in it.”
From Steve Umemoto:
“Jack Jones is really a name out of the deep past in the recesses of my UNICEF memory. I believe clear back in June 1967 I may have actually met him when I first visited EAPRO in Bangkok…. When I was posted to Indonesia in early 1969, I recall there were still stories of Jack Jones having been the only UNICEF staff member in memory having traveled to some far reaches of Sumatra, Sulawesi, etc. in search of some UNICEF vehicles that may have slipped off the radar…. I believe it is fair to say that Jack Jones was “Mr. Transport” for UNICEF in the EAP region.”
From Jack Ling:
“Jack Jones was the Transport Officer in Thailand. He was very effective in servicing the fleet of vehicles, mostly Jeeps or Landrovers. Given the conditions of roads in Thailand his services were much appreciated. A tall Briton with a long beard he stood out in the Thai countryside. If I am not mistaken he often drove barefooted ! He wrote about his personal experiences in a very candid and graphic way.”
From Akram Piracha:
“Jack reported to me as I was OIC when setting up the Indonesia office after withdrawal by Soekarno from the UN and UNICEF. His job was to track down and re-identify hundreds of UNICEF project vehicles scattered over many islands. The government officials then had obliterated UNICEF decals and thus hidden their identity…. There were few of us expats there so we both spent a lot of time together. Jack was an amazing story teller and very fond of drinking beer with a pot belly to match….He once told me that he had never touched water and at my asking revealed that he brushes his teeth with beer each morning….Jack was the proud author of his famous novel " A Woman of Bangkok." - famous because it already had been translated into a number of languages - an insightful expose of Thailand by a westerner, perhaps surpassing the King and I version of Anna and the King of Siam true story.”
 |
| Hunting missing UNICEF vehicles in the field |
Newton Bowles' recollections of Jack Jones in China led me to look into the pre-UNICEF period when Jack worked with the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) in western China. In turn, this led me to discover a fascinating book by Andrew Hicks, Jack Jones, A True Friend To China, the Lost Writings of a Heroic Nobody (Available from Quaker Books www.quakerbooks.orgz). In addition to telling the story of Jack Jones, also tells of the work of the FAU’s China Convoy in keeping health services running in western China during and after WWII. This work continued until March 1951 when the Communist authorities expelled the last of the foreign workers. The FAU was one of UNICEF’s most important nurseries of future staff when our agency was 'born' in the late 1940's and early 1950's.
 |
| FAU drivers at a truck stop in western China |
I am very grateful to Andrew Hicks for his permission to draw on his book, blog , and correspondence for much of the information and photos in this article. I highly recommend the book which includes many of Jack’s letters, articles and tons of remarkable photos of the FAU and China during that period. If you are interested in China or in the origins of UNICEF, this is an important book worth buying.
 |
| Jack Jones (middle right with beard and mascot) with men and women of China Convoy |
Most of the work of the China Convoy consisted of managing health centers and in hauling medical supplies 1,154 kms from central Burma and later from eastern India into China and then distributing those supplies to hospitals and health centers throughout the vast area of western China. Reading Jack’s newsletter contributions at the time makes clear that the concerns of the FAU parallel those throughout UNICEF’s own history - safe delivery, nutrition, child labor, and infectious disease (malaria, TB, typhoid).
 |
| Truck convoys winding their way up 'the Burma Road' into western China |
Many of us will recall that Jim Grant was born and raised in China and that during the latter years of WWII, Jim worked for the OSS along the Burma Road into China as part of a US effort to keep Nationalist China in the war. Jim often joked that he was at one point the 'owner' of Asia's biggest chain of Chinese restaurants. According to his story, the Chinese drivers could not stomach Burmese food, so Jim was tasked with setting up and managing a chain of 'truck stops' to feed drivers along the long route.
'Jack´ was born “Emrys Reynolds Jones” in June 1913. As with the key character of A Woman of Bangkok, Jack was himself the son of a stern minister, whom Jack later described as ‘a ferocious man with a ferocious religion.” Jack failed his matriculation and disappointed his father by showing no interest in a university education.
'Jack´ was born “Emrys Reynolds Jones” in June 1913. As with the key character of A Woman of Bangkok, Jack was himself the son of a stern minister, whom Jack later described as ‘a ferocious man with a ferocious religion.” Jack failed his matriculation and disappointed his father by showing no interest in a university education.
Instead, Jack worked odd jobs including periods as a gardener and a seaman on a fishing trawler. He became a pacifist and conscientious objector (and thus was disdained as a ‘conshie’ by the pro-war society of the time). Like most of the other members of the FAU, Jack was not himself a Quaker. The men and women who worked for the FAU were no missionaries, and in fact included many atheists and agnostics. Jack himself seems, on the other hand, to have retained a deep Christian faith which showed up frequently in his writings and his artwork.
Jack arrived in China in 1945 at age 32. He had no particular experience or training for the mechanical work ahead, much less for writing poetry or authoring a major novel. While initially assigned as a driver and convoy leader, Jack soon became the transport supervisor for the entire FAU operation. When doctors and other trained medical staff were absent, he found himself managing health centers and acting as a “doctor” and part-time “obstetrician”.
In between all this work he found time to author several books of poetry, produce graphic art, and edit the FAU newsletter. One of his contributions to the newsletter was later re-published by the New Yorker in 1947.
 |
| Sketching |
 |
| Jack's sketch of an FAU dinner |
Non-FAU graduates joining Bangkok in those years included Akram Piracha, Arthur Robinson, According to Steve Umemoto, other notable people joining UNICEF Bangkok in the period were Anil Roy, Wah Wong, P.K. Ghosh, Mallica Vajrathorn, Danishman, M. Rajan, Baquer Namazi, and Steve himself.
 |
| Sam Keeny |
The person who initially brought the remarkable UNICEF Bangkok team together was “Sam” Spurgeon Keeny, UNICEF’s second regional director. Sam arrived in Bangkok in March 1950 and deserves a whole article for himself (see 'A Boy from Shrewsbury" which we published in March 2021). Sam was not himself an FAU member but like the others had worked as a volunteer in two world wars (WWI in Basra for YMCA, and after the war caring for POWs in Siberia and various spots in Eastern Europe; in and after WWII heading up UNRRA in Italy and then establishing UNICEF’s Supply Division in 4 Paris.) After retiring from UNICEF in 1963 Sam went on to head the Population Council in Asia which he headed until a final retirement at age 85.
But back to Jack Jones.
Jack left UNICEF Bangkok in to 1960 to work for UNRWA in Palestine. He later did short UN jobs in Africa, but his heart was clearly in Bangkok, where he and Wanpenh (Pen) Muthikul had married in 1965. Jack and Pen then resumed family life and raised seven children. Jack worked during this period as an editor at the Bangkok Post and became well-known for his columns on the life of foreigners trying to navigate Thailand.
Possibly due to his growing family responsibilities Jack’s writings stalled. He eventually did go on to write another published novel, Daughters of an Ancient Race, in 1974, but never regained much literary notice. Somehow along the way, though, Jack found time to undertake a US-funded major study of water and sanitation in northeast Thailand, The Headman of Na Ang, considered at the time a classic anthropological study of village attitudes to government efforts at health education.
Jack's pen name of Jack Reynolds, however, turns up again as the author of field guides for evaluation of population and family planning projects published by the Population Council in 1974. This would have been during Sam Keeny’s period as Asia Director for the Council.
If anyone knows whether these too may have been the works of Jack Jones, or if anyone recalls his work in Nigeria or the Philippines, I would be grateful for letting me know.
 |
| With his wife, Wanpenh (Pen) Muthikul, and child in Bangkok |
Jack died in 1984. His wife and family still live in Bangkok. Several of the children have established notable careers, including Stephen Muthikul Jones, a well-known Thai sculptor.
 |
| A final portrait by Domic Faulder in his book Living in Thailand in 1983 |
Thanks a million, Tom, for your efforts to bring to light the great work of many unsung heroes serving the great cause of deprived children. Bless your kind heart. Baquer
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