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Name, Rank, and Serial Number - Exploiting Korean War POWs at Home and Abroad (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R1,312
Discovery Miles 13 120
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Name, Rank, and Serial Number - Exploiting Korean War POWs at Home and Abroad (Hardcover)
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Donate to Against Period Poverty
Total price: R1,332
Discovery Miles: 13 320
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Vietnam POWs came home heroes, but twenty years earlier their
predecessors returned from Korea to shame and suspicion. In the
Korean War (1950-1953) American prisoners were used in propaganda
twice, first during the conflict, then at home. While in Chinese
custody in North Korea, they were pressured to praise their
treatment and criticize the war. When they came back, the
Department of the Army and cooperative pundits said too many were
weaklings who did not resist communist indoctrination or
"brainwashing." Ex-prisoners were featured in a publicity campaign
scolding the nation to raise tougher sons for the Cold War. This
propaganda was based on feverish exaggerations that ignored the
convoluted circumstances POWs were put in, which decisions in
Washington helped create. POWs became pivotal to the Korean War
after peace talks began in summer 1951. Since fighting had
stalemated, both sides raced to win propaganda victories. The
Chinese publicized American airmen who confessed to alleged germ
warfare atrocities. American commanders worked to discredit
communism by encouraging thousands of North Korean and Chinese
prisoners to defect. Clandestine agents and a fraternity of
anticommunist prisoners launched a violent campaign to inflate the
number of POWs refusing repatriation after the war. Armistice
negotiations floundered while China and North Korea demanded their
soldiers back. United States delegates held out for what they
called "voluntary repatriation," but in reality, thousands of
prisoners were terrorized into renouncing their right of return.
American POWs remained captive for eighteen more months of fighting
over the terms of a compromised prisoner exchange. In the United
States, details of the voluntary repatriation policy were
suppressed. Name, Rank, and Serial Number explains how this
provides new insight into why Korea became "the forgotten war."
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