Peter T. White, 92; National Geographic writer, editor

Peter T. White was a National Geographic writer and editor who slogged through tropical rain forests, hiked the Tyrolean Alps, examined the addictive and therapeutic uses of the opium poppy and wrote about cannibalistic tribes in the Brazilian jungle who ate their dead as a gesture of respect.

White died May 22 at his home in Washington. He was 92. The cause was respiratory failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, said a son, Norbert White.

White's 38 years with National Geographic included lengthy visits to Southeast Asia, which he described as a place "of hope and terror," known for bloodshed and the beauty of its temples.

From Laos in 1961, White wrote, "The first rattle of machine guns, at 7:10 in the evening, roused around me the varied voices and faces of fear." Vientiane, the administrative capital, became known as the "city of bullet holes," he wrote.

He was among the early corps of American journalists to report on the region's protracted conflicts that morphed into a Vietnamese war that would engulf the military might of the United States and rend the fabric of the American soul.

For three decades, White was in and out of the region. In 1989, 14 years after Vietnam had been reunited under Communist rule, he returned for the National Geographic story, "Vietnam: Hard Road to Peace," finding that the Hanoi-based government was making overtures to a capitalist world and groping for ways to invigorate a sluggish economy. Saigon, the former capital of South Vietnam, had officially become Ho Chi Minh City. But to the man in the street, it was still Saigon.

In 1986, White wrote about the painstaking search for clues and information from the debris at the Laotian site of a U.S. Air Force plane crash in 1972, with the loss of a 14man crew. For nine days, investigators combed the newly discovered wreckage, finding "some 5,000 bone fragments, many of them no larger than a rice kernel," White wrote.

Not all of his stories were exotic. In April 1983, he wrote "The Fascinating World of Trash," storing his notes in boxes piled from floor to ceiling in his office. He carefully labeled each box "trash."

Peter Theodor Futterweit was born May 11, 1925, in Vienna. His father was a Jewish World War I veteran of the Austro-Hungarian army who had been decorated for bravery. In civilian life, he ran a jewelry shop. The family lived in an upscale neighborhood of Vienna and took regular vacations in Italy and the Austrian Alps.

In June 1933, when Peter was 8, his father was killed by a bomb tossed into his shop during an anti-Semitic outburst of violence that followed Adolf Hitler's ascent to power in neighboring Germany.