Derek Williams is an award-winning CBS News cameraman, co-founder of AsiaWorks and generous mentor who filmed some of the defining events of modern Asia.
1982 Derek in Beirut after the Israeli invasion
Photo credit: Tom Hartwell
On 2 August 2026, we sent Derek on his way at the place where the Chao Phraya flows into the Gulf of Siam. Later, at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand, generations of friends and family gathered to celebrate his remarkable life.
Photo credit: Andrew Clark
A life behind the camera
Derek Paul Williams spent more than four decades filming history as it unfolded across Asia and beyond. He was a journalist of exceptional courage and instinct, but those who worked beside him remember something more: his humour, humanity, quiet decency and generosity towards the generations who followed him.
Born in New Zealand in 1947, Derek was the son of the Reverend Philip Williams, an Anglican vicar. He began his career with the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, working first in radio in Invercargill and later in television in Wellington. He had imagined that his overseas adventure might take him to London and the BBC. Instead, in 1971, an opportunity with CBS News brought him to Hong Kong, and changed the course of his life.
1962 A young Derek (far right) and his family in Gore New Zealand
The self-described “wide-eyed country boy” was soon covering the refugee exodus from Bangladesh into India. It was the beginning of an extraordinary career that would place him at the centre of many of the defining events of the late 20th century.
Derek filmed the final years of the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia; the massacre at Bangkok’s Thammasat University in 1976; the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; war in Beirut and between Iran and Iraq; the People Power revolution in the Philippines; the Tiananmen Square uprising and crackdown; and Operation Desert Storm.
He witnessed history at extraordinarily close range, and frequently at considerable personal risk. During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was held under house arrest in Kabul. In Beijing in 1989, he and CBS correspondent Richard Roth were arrested at gunpoint, taken to the Great Hall of the People and interrogated at dawn inside the Forbidden City.
One of the great love stories
For all the danger, upheaval and history that marked Derek’s working life, the greatest story he told was the one about meeting his wife, Hà.
Trần Thị Thu Hà was the chief stewardess for Air Vietnam when she and Derek met. In 1975, as the fall of Saigon approached, intelligence officers warned Derek that the city would soon collapse. He and Hà decided to marry.
Derek used his poker winnings to persuade a registry office to open on a Sunday. The next day, as embassy staff scrambled to evacuate the city, he convinced the New Zealand Embassy to issue his new wife a passport.
Amid the chaos of a country on the verge of collapse, Derek and Hà found a way to leave together. Their marriage endured for more than half a century. It was a story only Derek could tell: full of danger, resourcefulness, improbable good fortune and, of course, the love of his life.
Together, Derek and Hà built a life and raised their sons, Vũ and Dzũng, in Hong Kong and Bangkok. In later years, Derek took particular joy in being a grandfather to Niko, of whom he was immensely proud and deeply fond.
The AsiaWorks years
Derek moved from Hong Kong to Bangkok in 1989. When he retired from CBS, he helped found AsiaWorks in 1996. His experience, standards and spirit became part of the company’s foundations and remain part of its character today.
Founded by Derek, Marc Laban, Heather Kelly and David McKaige, AsiaWorks grew into a regional production company with offices across Southeast Asia. Its work expanded beyond broadcast news into documentaries, communications, marketing, branded films and live production. 30 years later, AsiaWorks is the region’s leading agency for creative video production and strategy, but the principles Derek brought to the company remain constant to this day.
He believed in getting both the pictures and the story right, in treating people properly, and in staying calm even when everything around us seemed to be going wrong. He showed us that professionalism did not require self-importance, and that courage and kindness could, and should, exist together. Above all, Derek instilled in AsiaWorks a deep sense of family: the belief that we should look after one another, stand by one another and never lose sight of the people behind the work.
Those values became part of AsiaWorks’ foundations. They continue to shape how we work and tell stories today, and how we look after our people and our clients. Derek’s influence lives on not only in the company he helped create, but in generations of filmmakers and journalists who learned from his example.
Marc Laban, a fellow founding partner of AsiaWorks, wrote:
“Derek covered some of the defining events of the late 20th century, and did so with a courage and quiet decency that set him apart. He was my business partner, my mentor, and my friend. The world of broadcast journalism has lost a legend. I’ve lost something harder to name.” via Facebook.
A final gathering
During the final year of his life, Derek returned to New Zealand, the country of his birth, and settled in Christchurch. Hà and Derek’s brother Tim later brought his ashes back to Bangkok, the city he had loved and once called home. Following Buddhist rites and in accordance with Derek’s wishes, Hà, Tim and a small group from his AsiaWorks family accompanied him on his final journey down the Chao Phraya River.
His ashes were scattered near its meeting point with the Gulf of Siam.
That afternoon, the FCCT was full. Friends, family and former colleagues joined online from across the world. The room itself brought together many generations, from Derek’s contemporaries to those he had mentored and inspired. Their moving tributes spoke of his remarkable life.
Jeanne Hallacy guided the celebration with grace, warmth and empathy, holding the packed room with great sensitivity as stories, laughter and grief travelled between Bangkok and those joining online around the world.
It was a fitting final journey and farewell for a man whose life had crossed borders, oceans and front lines, and whose pictures helped the world see some of the most consequential events of his time.
Derek’s legacy cannot be measured only in awards or even in the historic pictures he brought to television screens around the world. It lives in the many people he mentored and inspired. In the crews and correspondents he kept safe. In the friends he entertained with his stories. In the company he helped to build. And, above all, in his family: his wife Hà, his sons Vũ and Dzũng, his grandson Niko, and his siblings Pip, Chrissie and Tim.
Derek Paul Williams died in Christchurch on 22 July 2026. He was 79.
If you’re interested in exploring more about Derek Williams, his sister Chrissie Williams has put together a beautiful book of his life called “The Final Dispatch”. It is full of Derek’s own writings and photos from his family and his extraordinary career. You can read it, or download using this link here.
Further Reading & Viewing:
• ABC News, Australia, 3rd June 2017: Derek Williams looks back over a 40-year career in Asia
• Big Chilli Magazine, Thailand, 25th April 2021: Five decades of filming Asia’s biggest stories
• The Press, New Zealand, 12th April 2026: The Kiwi cameraman who captured history on the front line
• CBS News remembers Derek Williams, 25th July 2026 (video)
• The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, 27th July 2026: Obituary
• The Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong, 28th July 2026: Obituary
• AsiaTimes, 30th July 2026: Derek Williams dies after decades filming the frontlines of Asia