As a journalist in Tokyo, he wrote Five Gentlemen of Japan, a popular book about the Japanese that was welcomed for its humanism and for transcending the bitterness of war.
[1][2] In the United States Navy, he studied at its elite Japanese Language School located in the University of Colorado.
[3][4][5] "I was a small human bridge between Gen. Douglas MacArthur's conquering army and a puzzled but receptive Japanese public.
[17] In 1979, Gibney founded the Pacific Basin Institute in Santa Barbara, California, which he led as president for over 20 years.
Frank Gibney was interviewed in his son's controversial film about American forces in Afghanistan, Taxi to the Dark Side, which was released in 2007.
[22] At the age of 81, on April 9, 2006, Frank Gibney died of congestive heart failure in Santa Barbara, California.
His debut book, Five Gentlemen of Japan (1953), was among the first to depict humanely the wartime enemy through portraits of a journalist, a naval officer, a steelworker, a farmer and Emperor Hirohito.
[27] The Los Angeles Times wrote that it "gave many Americans their first real understanding of a country that was widely viewed as dangerous and mysterious."
"In profiling a farmer, a former vice admiral in the Imperial Navy, a newspaperman, the foreman of a steel mill and Emperor Hirohito, Gibney offered an intimate glimpse into postwar Japanese society.
"[33] His 1982 book Miracle by Design celebrates the Japanese work ethic and overall team spirit in economic endeavors.
One critic, however, notes here the commonplace comparisons between Japanese and American businesses, observing that Gibney knows the field and has "earned the right to be unoriginal.
Adapted into a ten-part series of the same name on the Public Broadcasting Service, it received an Emmy Award and featured the author.
"[40] His book offered brief survey of Korean history, the Korean War (1950-1953); the short-lived, democratic April Revolution of 1960 in South Korea (ROK); the extraordinary economic growth under the authoritarian rule of Park Chung Hee (1961-1979); the struggle for democracy, up to ROK President Roh Tae Woo (1988-1993).
[44][45] He discusses the late 1950s in Poland: the Communist Party and Wladyslaw Gomulka, intellectual life, the Catholic Church, and troubles in the planned economy.
"Gibney credits Khrushchev with pulling off a prodigious public relations trick in achieving throughout most of the world a new Madison Avenue-style 'public image' for a country whose very name was anathema before he came to power."
The book was based around English translations of classified Russian texts, which had previously been provided to American intelligence by Penkovskiy.
I don't know anyone with the same combination of energy, upbeat attitude and humor [that] Frank had," commented Professor Ezra Vogel of Harvard University, his long time friend.