Longtime CBS News cameraman Derek Williams, who spent four decades covering some of Asia’s most pivotal events, from the Vietnam War to the Tiananmen Square massacre, has died. He was 79.
Williams died Wednesday, according to his family. He had been living with Parkinson’s disease and was recently diagnosed with cancer.
Susan Zirinsky, former CBS News president and president of See It Now Studios, recalled that Williams was “everything — the mate you would want in any war zone.” She described him as “intuitive,” “a great cameraman,” and said “he saw things coming before they came.”
“Most of all Derek was a great human — a group of us were privileged to be on a frequent email of his world today — each email was like a visual portrait that he might have shot if covering a story,” Zirinsky said. “My last email from him was July 2nd. Hard to imagine a world that doesn’t have Derek’s humor and vision and humanity in it. I miss the emails already.”
“I’m deeply saddened to hear of Derek Williams’s passing,” CBS News veteran Dan Rather said in a social media post. “He was one of the bravest and a great CBS News cameraman. The images he captured beautifully told the story of a dangerous world — from the Middle East to South Asia and beyond. He was also a great man.”
Williams began his career with a three-month trial working for CBS in Hong Kong.
“I remember that night going back to the hotel and I couldn’t sleep, I was feeling sort of ill, and I felt, is this right? Is this how I want to spend the rest of my life, almost being a vulture?” Williams told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2017.
“I was doing sound with a very professional German cameraman, who just said, ‘Hey, you’ll used to it. You know, you’ll get a rhino-skin in this job,'” Williams said in 2017.
Williams went on to be a cameraman working in Asia for 40 years, and also covered the first Iraq War and massacres in Beirut.
Allen Pizzey, former CBS News foreign correspondent, recalled Beirut in 1982, saying “Chaos the order of the day.”
“A CBS newbie nobody, who knew next to nothing about TV, was foisted on Derek Williams. With patience and his ever-present humour, Derek tutored me how to go about making air, and more important, stay safe while doing it,” Pizzey, who spent 36 years at CBS News, said. “We worked together — although not often enough — for the next several decades, in similar garden spots. If it ever wasn’t fun, I can’t remember the occasion.”
Pizzey said Williams “was as fine a man, mentor and friend as he was a cameraman. That’s another way of saying the best.”
In June 1989, Williams and CBS News correspondent Richard Roth were detained by Chinese authorities during the Tiananmen Square massacre. They would eventually be released, relatively unharmed.
As Saigon’s fall became imminent, Williams told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he married his Vietnamese girlfriend after intelligence officers warned him the city would soon collapse. He said he used poker winnings to bribe a registry office to open on a Sunday for the wedding, then convinced New Zealand Embassy staff — who were scrambling to evacuate — to issue his new wife a passport the next day.
Williams had been living in California with his wife since leaving Asia, but as his health declined, he returned to New Zealand to be closer to family.
Keith Kay, a former cameraman and producer in Vietnam, said Williams was “a joy and privilege to work or play with.”
“I felt lucky to have him in my life,” Kay said.
