Post by peterd on Sept 20, 2013 9:21:07 GMT -8
When Korean War POWs talk about their captivity, they don’t stress the brutality.
Former prisoners of war tend to be quiet. This is true, at least, among the former POWs I have come to know as a Korean War historian. Perhaps their silence was learned while marching a hundred miles across the frozen mountains of North Korea, wondering whether their captors would execute those who fell behind. Or perhaps they learned it after the war, reluctant to describe those experiences for fear of raising uncomfortable questions about torture, brainwashing, and the fate of comrades who didn’t come home.
When they do speak of the war, their stories tend to have an amusing twist.
Dan Oldewage had flown bombing missions over Japan during World War II, and he was recalled to active duty as a B-29 tail gunner in the summer of 1950. In April of 1951, he and most of his crew bailed out over Sinuiju, were captured, and nearly starved in a Korean death camp known as the Caves. Sixty years later, he prefers to recall the time he and another prisoner stole an officer’s spittoon and used it as a chamber pot.
www.nationalreview.com/article/358991/our-quiet-pows-william-c-latham-jr
Former prisoners of war tend to be quiet. This is true, at least, among the former POWs I have come to know as a Korean War historian. Perhaps their silence was learned while marching a hundred miles across the frozen mountains of North Korea, wondering whether their captors would execute those who fell behind. Or perhaps they learned it after the war, reluctant to describe those experiences for fear of raising uncomfortable questions about torture, brainwashing, and the fate of comrades who didn’t come home.
When they do speak of the war, their stories tend to have an amusing twist.
Dan Oldewage had flown bombing missions over Japan during World War II, and he was recalled to active duty as a B-29 tail gunner in the summer of 1950. In April of 1951, he and most of his crew bailed out over Sinuiju, were captured, and nearly starved in a Korean death camp known as the Caves. Sixty years later, he prefers to recall the time he and another prisoner stole an officer’s spittoon and used it as a chamber pot.
www.nationalreview.com/article/358991/our-quiet-pows-william-c-latham-jr