Walkinshaw, Walter and Jean Papers

Walter Walkinshaw, a U.S. State Department official from 1947 to 1951, was the husband of Jean Walkinshaw, a documentary filmmaker who later engaged in historical research regarding his involvement in the Point Four Program

The papers of Walter and Jean Walkinshaw include correspondence, photographs, and other items concerning their association with the Point Four Program.

Size: 2.5 linear inches (about 300 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: The donor gave her copyright interest in writings in this collection, and in any other collection in the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration, to the United States of America. Documents created by U.S. Government employees in the course of their official duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents in this collection presumably belongs to the creator of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Susanna DeHaven (2017) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

Walter Walkinshaw was born in 1917 in Seattle, Washington. After graduating from Lakeside School, he went on to receive a B.A. from the University of Washington and a law degree from George Washington University. During World War II, Walkinshaw served in the Pacific as a Navy officer, eventually retiring as a Commander in 1946. From 1947 to 1951, he was a foreign aid analyst in the U.S. State Department. Walkinshaw helped initiate the Point Four technical aid program. Returning to Seattle in 1951, Walter met his future wife, Jean Strong. They had three children. An attorney with Riddell Williams Law, he was also an outdoorsman and a lover of fly-fishing. He died at the age of ninety-three on April 16, 2010.

Jean Walkinshaw was born in 1926. She graduated from Stanford University and then taught for three years. In 1963, she began her career in television. After producing Face to Face at KING-TV, she moved to KCTS in 1970, where she produced documentaries. Walkinshaw became the first woman producer inducted into the Northwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Silver Circle in 1992, for twenty-five years of significant contribution to the television industry and community.

The papers of Walter and Jean Walkinshaw include correspondence, photographs, and other items concerning their association with the Point Four Program. The collection consists of one series, a Subject File.

The collection contains emails between Jean Walkinshaw and personnel at the National Archives and the Truman Library regarding her research interest in her husband’s contribution to Point Four. Also included are letters and memorandums regarding Point Four and minutes of meetings of the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation, which Mrs. Walkinshaw found at the National Archives.  

Motion pictures containing reminiscences by Walter Walkinshaw, obituaries highlighting his life, and photographs of his participation in the Griffin Mission to Southeast Asia make up the rest of the collection.

More information on Point Four can be found at the Truman Library in the papers of Henry G. Bennett, Benjamin H. Hardy, and Stanley Andrews.