history. learn more about st. paul and other stops at www.c-span.org/localcontent. you are watching american history tv all weekend on c-span3. next, u.s. naval academy professor lori bogle talked about the american soldiers taken prisoner during the korean war. including the effects of captivity. and attempts at political indoctrination. professor bogle explained how the warring nations used prisoners to intimidate their enemies and described the effects of captivity and attempts by the enemy at political indoctrination. the u.s. naval academy is in annapolis, maryland. this class is about 50 minutes. >> good afternoon, class. attention on deck. >> at ease. all right, last time we were talking about the korean war. you had a reading. at the end the author said --

the greatest error of the korean war was? >> timidity. >> timidity. that's interesting. we're not going to go over all of the errors that the authors went over, but do you agree with the author that the greatest error of the war was timidity? now, you know, it's a trick question. you're going to get in trouble. right. >> i kind of agree with them in the fact that the timidity problem, if we weren't so timid in the war, it would have solved us making the errors of the landing and the other errors that he quoted, a lot of them wouldn't have happened. >> okay, so why are we so, quote, timid? right? >> i think the author's reasoning is we were afraid that it would kind of set off the spark within the soviet union. >> oh, okay. >> he didn't want to invoke anything. >> that seems important, doesn't it? yes? >> a basic fear of escalation. >> limited war is something we

don't like, generally. military options have a problem with limited war because your goal is to win something, and then you're told, well, don't win it too much. it's a difficult thing. the author is malcolm cagle, and as you can see, he's a high ranking decorated military officer. he was in world war ii, korea, and vietnam. so does it make sense that he would write a very good article in many ways, right? that would say the greatest error was timidity? i mean, doesn't that make sense? doesn't mean that he's wrong, but maybe he has a bias, as we all do, right? so if someone was saying that his article wasn't complete, what would there -- and we have had some examples, what is the greatest error to those that would disagree with him, that would take the other side? that would be more thinking about geopolitical ramifications of the korean war. we're talked about wake island.

truman needs to be convinced, he wants to be convinced it would be a good idea to do what -- yes? >> to take korea. >> to take all of korea. we had reestablished the 38th parallel, which is what the u.n. had authorized us to do, us meaning u.s. forces, but i'm going to say it like it's the u.s. because we dominate the u.s./u.n. forces, right? so wouldn't the greatest error of the war be that we expanded the war goals? if we had won, if we had taken all of korea, we would say it was an error, but since we don't, isn't it an error if you lose it? so this is one way to think about it. the title for this needed to be tweaked a little bit. it should have been the greatest error of the korean war by those military commanders who wanted to win it as quickly as possible, maybe worded better than that. all right. but for a paper article that

would be the greatest errors of the war according to geopolitical needs, wouldn't it be expanding the war? because now we're still technically at war with korea. this is not good. all kinds of problems, right? and maybe if we had reestablished the 38th only, some of these things could have been avoided. what if history is very dangerous, other factors could have come in. still a good article, but you have to look to the bias. the reason i'm bringing this up is the next article also has biases we need to look at as really important. i would, leading into it, say though cagle didn't need to include this, another error of the korean war is how we handled the prisoner of war issue. doesn't quite fit with what he was writing about, but it works for what i want to talk about. okay, so prisoners of war. now, whenever you hear a prisoner of war from the naval academy speak, you say, oh, no, not another one of them? or what's the reaction?

it's honor? okay, if you heard a medal of honor winner was coming, would it be somewhat similar to a p.o.w. coming? >> you want to know their experience. what they felt during that time, whether it be something terrible like being a prisoner of war or whether it's something very honorable, like getting the medal of honor. >> their sense of wondering if you measured up? if you could measure up to what they did? well, p.o.w.s are an interesting category of people. military heroes, medal of honor winners, those that win, that do something very spectacular and are honored for it, are american heroes which the american public loves, right? and even those heroes have a hard time dealing with all the praise they get, because every time someone says you are the best, there's a part that says,

if they only knew who i really was, they would know i'm not perfect. sometimes that's a burden that's hard to bear. pow's have an even harder time. if you're a prisoner of war, if you're a prisoner of war, first of all, you didn't win, you lost, right? it may not be your fault, but you're still a so-called loser, and there's quotes around that, but you're honored because of your sacrifice and suffering. that's a totally opposite way to look at these two groups of heroes. now, i'm going to say that's the way the public, and i'm looking at you as the public in that sense, views p.o.w.s. governments do it differently. don't think it's like people in the government are saying how can we really mess with the p.o.w.s? it doesn't quite work that way. p.o.w.s are more utilitarian. governments see how they can use them for good, hopefully. or maybe for negative reasons. and i like to think of it when i

taught a class on p.o.w.s, a semester course, i portrayed them as commodities, which sounds really cold-hearted, but if our author on the reading on brain washing had thought of them as commodities, maybe he would have been a little more charitable. so it's not always a negative thing, but anyway, let's see how governments view p.o.w.s, and again, people in the government honor them, i'm not saying they don't, but they could be useful. >> i had a question on the reading. it said between november 1950 and january 1951, american prisoner p.o.w.s in north korea, 14 of the 21 remained communist. >> they're captured really early in the war i think is the point the author was making, that already 14 of this number we're going to talk about had been already captured. they were in p.o.w. camps longer than the rest of the number that come later. but we'll get there, okay? so just really quickly, though,

if i can get this going, is that most often, p.o.w.s, as i said, are honored. stockdale's funeral was a big, big deal. a man who sacrificed much horrible suffering in the hanoi hilton. mccain, and there's an early picture of him, is also honored a lot. lots of p.o.w.s have written books that are received well, become best-sellers, but i wanted to point out in the case of mccain and stockdale, their story is damaged a little bit along the way because both of them become political. and i want you to keep this in mind. it doesn't mean you can't be political if you're a p.o.w. certainly, you have that right. but if they're pseudoreligious figures that are honored for their sacrifice, almost christ like, for them to get in politics doesn't fit the narrative. i don't know if you know, but stockdale ran for vice president

at one point. and when he participated in the vice presidential debate, he was humiliated on live television. he wasn't quite prepared for the kind of questions that were going to be asked. he stumbled over the answers. and i watched it and felt so angry that they put this man in this position where he would be laughed at. now, his situation recovered because he's out of the race immediately. that was enough. and then enough time went by that that political connection was lost. mccain is also a very, you know, well thought of p.o.w. prior to him being political, and even after he was political, somewhat, but when he runs for president, all the enemies come out of the woodwork, saying wait a minute, i knew him in the p.o.w. camp. you lose that -- you become selfish rather than than selfless as far as the public is concerned, meaning you're

looking for political gain. he tried very hard to distance his p.o.w. record from his political campaign, but nonetheless, it's almost as if you're not allowed to live your normal life if you want to remain that idolized perfect specimen of what an american sacrifice should be. you get what i am saying? it's the narrative that surrounds that. other things that governments do with p.o.w.s. that's the public image, but what does the government do? for one thing, remember when we were talking about the civil war, and i said abraham lincoln had some privateers, confederate privateers, he didn't want to call them prisoners of war because then you owe them special treatment, so he slated them for execution, and then jefferson davis came back. do you remember what he said? every one you kill of ours, we're going to kill one of yours, and lincoln backs down. this is one of the first rules of p.o.w. law in my opinion. it's not official. it's unofficial. whatever you do to ours, we're going to do to yours. if you don't have any prisoners,

you can't do that. you hold prisoners somewhat as insurance that the enemies will treat the people they hold somewhat better than they might have. that's there. another thing that could have happened is the british in the american revolution will put american p.o.w.s in prison ships and put them in new york harbor where everyone can see where they're at, and they starved them. you see the ship. you don't necessarily see in it, but yet you know they're starving, so the british are using american p.o.w.s to try to intimidate the americans, right? and finally, i had this, the hanoi hilton where the vietnamese p.o.w.s will be moved to over time, it's right in the city. you put your enemy's p.o.w.s you hold in a place you don't want bombed. and that often works, not always. i think the hanoi hilton people will say they heard the bombings around them and were worried they were going to get killed any moment, but nevertheless,

the idea is you're using them for that reason. you also can use them for a positive reason. in world war ii -- in world war i, they do it as well, but world war ii is more organized, we bring a lot of german p.o.w.s to america and hold them in different camps across the nation, and we educate them about american democracy and history. and so there must be a reason we do that. we're trying to create allies, perhaps, for the post-war world. is this political indoctrination? is it brain washing? it's brain washing. yes, it's brain washing? are you sure? well, it depends on who you are, right? if you're german, you might think so. also, maybe it depends on the techniques you use, and how harsh you are. it does seem similar. >> there are parallels there. they don't -- they don't treat them bad.

>> again, i'm going to tell you, this is one of the worst articles i have ever read -- i haven't said that, have i. it was one of the worst i have read. i was so outraged that i knew i had to assign it to you because that's the kind of teacher i am. we'll explain why. yes? >> the techniques played a big role in whether it's brain washing or not. it can educate them on your lifestyle, you're saying, you're kind of saying, hey, look at our life. look how great we are, and our country, but you know, you're not kind of forcing it, but if you start beating them if they're not accepting it, that's when it becomes torture. >> i would say it's relatively benign. no one got in big trouble if they didn't want to go to these lectures. they probably encouraged them strongly, but they weren't put in isolation and that kind of thing. however, if you want to measure

it by results, 21 americans don't come home from the korean war, and that's a big scandal. while nobody gets a choice of whether or not they can go home -- they don't have a choice of whether to stay in the country they're held in or go home. you're just sent home. thousands of german p.o.w.s chose to come back to the u.s. so is that successful brainwashing? or is it just that they believe what they believe but there's -- they believe what they believe, but there is economic opportunities, or do they meet a nice country girl while they were a p.o.w.? it's hard to know. but anyway, we do political indoctrination, maybe lighter, and i say that, i'm an american so maybe i'm biased. your article, your article is on brainwashing myths during the korean war. it's an interesting one. i already told you i think it's really flawed, but is it the primary or secondary source? >> secondary. >> secondary meaning written by a scholar, i'm going to put quotes around that. we're not going to mention the

person's name. but written by a scholar in 2002, talking about events of the past. however, it's a little misleading because it says it's in the military history. and immediately what i would think of when i read that is the journal military history. and the journal military history is a peer reviewed journal meaning other historians have to read the article first and then they write up an evaluation about how accurate it write up an article about how accurate it -- than they write up in the valuation of how accurate it is? is it offering anything unique to historical knowledge? you don't get paid for that, but you can get promoted for writing an article. which is more important than $100 for riding the article. however, "military history" the magazine is not peer-reviewed. there's no footnotes to this. is there? then you think, where do they get this information? which is questionable here. if it is a primary document,

what kind of paper would this be used for? written at the time, so that means 2002? and it's about korean war pow's. is it a memory of it? i am leaving you too much. i am leading you too much. it would be a primary document if you're looking at how people view the korean pow's. i want to use it that way, and somebody -- i think -- read the abstract. the article is not always written by the author, it could be the magazine itself has put that together. >> the author discusses the conduct and struggles of united nations prisoners of war. prisoners were indoctrinated by communists and many chose to remain in north korea. >> i knew this might work for my purposes, it has some truth, and misinformation as well.

american prisoners were indoctrinated by the chinese communists, correct. we all accept they were indoctrinated. many of them? what's many? 250, 2,000? 21 doesn't sound like many, does it? it sounds like many if you don't want anybody to do this, many is really a bad -- a few would sound like a better phrase to use for this. all right, so some denounce the u.s. and chose to remain in north korea. only 21 did, and there was a scandal. but they decided to remain where again? i said it already. those 21 decided to remain in -- >> korea. >> korea which is inaccurate, it's china, isn't it? that doesn't give me much faith right away of what's going to happen in this article. here are the army prisoners of war, when i say this, no navy

service person was part of the 21. you're supposed to say yeah. it doesn't mean you are better. i hope you get that. it means the army is in a position to be captured much more than the navy. what is the thesis of the article? often the title will reflect that. not always, but. it mentions a myth, doesn't it? >> brainwashing myth. >> brainwashing myth, and what was the rest of it? the title? the brainwashing myth, go ahead. >> i actually had a question in terms of the brainwashing prisoners of war, she uses the word many and that didn't seem like choice words. under the picture, then it says they refused repatriation during

the korean war, i was curious what the u.s.'s stance is in a prisoner of war becomes a -- >> remains behind? >> well, they made a mistake there, which we may or may not get to. they will consider them dishonorable discharges. which is the wrong way to go, because they all, except for a couple, returned quickly. they want to court-martial them. but the supreme court said you can no longer court-martial someone who is no longer in the service, and they go, rats. because they really wanted to not only did they not have to court-martial them, some people that have been court-martial because they defected from their country. they had to lessen their punishment to make it equal. so the military is very frustrated by not knowing what to do about this, but there's reasons they don't know. i came up with a thesis -- the record of all american pow's "assumed a dark and even

sinister image because of collaborations and other misbehaviors," including murder i think was mentioned and was further sullied, that means among the mass population of p.o.w.s. but further sullied by those who chose to remain with an enemy. i love this part. whose invading forces had killed more than 33,000 u.s. service personnel personnel. these guys are criminals. it's debatable. especially some of them, but you would never want a thesis that wordy, would you? that's just way too much. so i boiled it down to americans held by the enemy during the korean war betrayed their country because. you know you never want it to say something obvious that everyone knows, you have to fill in the because, what's the

reason according to this article? >> brainwashing? >> brainwashing is there. it's in the title but also? >> it says the army attracted people that were uneducated. >> wimpy, weak, the wrong kind of people, how about weak characters and not prepared, according to the article? now, in a thesis you also don't want to have two reasons, you want to pick the one you think is the most important, let's look at his information about american pow's being weak and then we'll look at brainwashing. all right, what was weak according to this article? it would be americans overall, right? let's go here first. >> their lack of training or inadequate training and lack of uniform ideology. >> right, it doesn't really

specify too much about it, but there is this fear in america, and we talked about the long telegram specifying there's the ideological component that needs to be contained, the nse-68 saying, we are losing the cold war because of a lack of unified ideology. for anyone listening that doesn't mean that the people that drafted that document were that serious, but yet it's in it, and people took it seriously that read it, those that were -- had the security clearance to read it. but you said something about lack of training and this is interesting, there's brainwashing first, and there's all kinds of stuff about brainwashing. i love that cartoon, it looked a little painful. it also says in there, that this lack of character -- i think the sentence went something like, in

world war ii there was no need to educate the gi about why he was fighting. why would they do it for korea? well, it's so wrong. the whole war was about convincing americans that we needed to go to war in world war ii, fdr is looking for a reason to bring americans into world war ii? and even after pearl harbor, the why we fight series, we will enlist hollywood producers. make them generals right off without any training, because they're just going to work on making movies. they put out movie after movie after moving to convince the american public that all these political reasons, all this -- ideological reasons why we should be fighting. that's just not true. and a better explanation may be why we were not expecting a war in korea, maybe those individuals that first fought within the first few weeks were thrown over there without much

preparation. but we had left korea out of the -- remember we announced the -- >> it was an exclusion zone. >> right, defense perimeter is what we called it, the north koreans thought they had given the green light, we're surprised. but the people that followed us, they were better trained. they were given why we're fighting in korea kind of stuff, that was there, so it's not true. all right, what else did it say? i think someone said it earlier. >> it was a lack of education, military training compounded by a tremendous sense of despair. >> it's true. pow's in korea were apathetic on their return home, but may i say, so were pows in every war, they come back kind of spaced out a little bit. and there's a variety of reasons. one is starvation does something to you. yes? >> and they also -- and the author also says after world war

ii we were occupying japan. all these lowlifes were living in the slums or didn't have very good education, but the chance of a lifetime to go and have a soft garrison -- >> you know why i laugh? because my dad was one of those occupying. he's rising out of his grave ready to fight anyone that says he was lowlife. there is a little truth to -- well, i'm going to say it's not true. this is ridiculous if you look at the enlistment demographics of world war ii, enlistees in 1940. meaning the war actually hasn't started, but we are taking people building up for the war, you're going to get a high caliber recruit on average. but after '41, '42, '423 aren't -- '43, aren't we taking

virtually anyone? and my proof would be that we have to come up with these developmental units where people who can't read or write need to be put in different groups so they could get special training. i love how he says a slum or a tenement. it's almost -- i don't know if i can say it's racial, but yet -- how about instead of saying innercity people? he often says farm people too. but nonetheless, nobody asked -- that did not disqualify you for serving in world war ii. that did not disqualify you. that doesn't seem right as well. soft garrison duty? they did have soft garrison duty in japan. did people volunteer because they thought they would have soft garrison? i don't know. i suppose they could have. i idolized my dad a little bit. he was service minded. my dad would love this. he was in the navy, in the army,

and then the national guard. it feels like he felt he should serve. anyway but there is a feeling at the time that if you go back to the 1950's, this article could be moved to that date. and the authors of that time would say, yes. as i look at this article more and more, i realize what had happened -- it appears the author took this one book that was very famous in 1955 called "in every war but one." which was -- in every war but one, americans have been loyal. in every war but one, americans were tortured but they main loyal. in every war but one, people tried to escape from pow camps. in every war but one, they had a will to live, unlike in korea where they had a disease of giveupitis, which is a made-up

phrase. so it's a little bit flawed. that author was eugene kinkaid. that author said, despite the fact that the chinese treated them well, americans collaborated en masse with the enemy. it wasn't just the 21. but up to a third of americans held as pow's, had betrayed their country in some way. >> isn't that just how the actual -- up to that point they used -- they were still your enemy, you have these people that are trying to indoctrinate you that come across as a friend. >> that is true, but what we'll find out is there are torture devices. somebody's lying. i'm going to say it's the military. the military knows that these guys have been tortured, they know they tried to escape. they know there's different means of torture, beyond the

usual ones of isolation, making someone so hungry -- not starving exactly, but that they're just -- they become apathetic, those kinds of things. the military must have a reason, right? and that's what we're going to try to find out what this is. all these books kind of gave a reason for why this war was different. generally they agreed with one book that claimed the 21 had come from broken homes. one author had interviewed all the parents. i'm sure the parents loved it when they read this book. from broken homes and ill defined concept of what it meant to be american. and the nations schools, churches and homes had failed to teach traditional values. this sounds a little familiar, like other time periods in our american history when this same thing is said. whenever there is stress, seems it comes out more. it doesn't use the word momism, it is implied, isn't it?

what is a momism? somebody else that has -- yeah, go ahead. >> so momism is like the mother of the household after world war ii starts to take more jobs than just being a housewife. >> during world war ii that happened and it was a little more forgivable, because in an emergency you understand. but women didn't always return home after that, they stayed working and that is a historical fact. >> they thought the son to be more liberal in thinking -- >> not so much liberal, but. >> like strayed away from -- >> mommy's boy or -- >> yeah, the test about being male? >> right, we had a male/female test that started in the 1920s, but it was used at this time. there's a real concern about the quality of masculinity among americans.

if you can imagine the stress of thinking we might lose this cold war, wouldn't that reemphasize that fear about the masculinity of american youth? in this movie, i think you had something about it in your reading. my son john, i haven't seen it, i read it as well. what happens to poor john, by his domineering controlling mother? it makes him a communist. so poor moms, they get blamed for everything, as they do here. but she does look kind of mean there. i don't know what she's yelling about, but helen hayes is a great actress, i'm going to have to watch this. we have all that, there's a weakness, maybe it's momism, maybe it's not enough political education, people don't know about american history. the article says that is the cause. but the article also says there's been brainwashing. this is actually a clip from "the manchurian candidate." not a clip, a picture.

you watched the clip last night and it is showing brainwashing. you don't have context, though, i should have put that. but the gi's that are on the stage are supposedly korean p.o.w.s held by the chinese, they have been "brainwashed" and they're being prepared to go back to america. there's an assassination they want to happen. and then one gentleman they want to do in particular, because he's the son of a senator. that's more information you need to know. what happens when you're brainwashed according to this movie? go ahead. >> it is like you are hypnotized. >> hypnotized. yeah. i always wonder about hypnotism. there's always a certain amount of truth to something that is misleading. you can suggest things to people, you can hypnotize them. according to this, what is this the scene of? >> in the clip, they mentioned

how he responded to authority, instead of the authority figure. >> they picked him in particular, because they noticed that he was susceptible to that? >> right. >> and then -- so they commanded him to strangle -- >> but before that, that's where we're going, but before that, it's a garden scene? it was considered, you know, a really great movie, making this scene. everyone was talking about it, but you first think you're looking at a women's club on whatever it was, some kind of flower, and as they do it in a circular way, and you show the guys sitting -- the gis on the stage, but instead of a woman homemaker, really it's a chinese indoctrinater, i don't know what title to give them. it goes around and shows them in their dresses and all of a sudden they're military guys, chinese, and it moves further

back, now they're speaking about the communist indoctrination, but the guys on the stage seem to be oblivious to this going on. at some point somebody in the audience said, but, you got them up there and they don't know what's going on, are they going to be able to do what we need them to do once they get back to america? and then they say to the one guy who's been selected -- they say get up, what do they tell them to do? >> they want him to kill his buddy -- >> kill the one he likes the most or the least? >> the most. >> does he show emotion? i think it was a hesitation, i can't remember, so i won't say it. he goes to the guy and -- >> suggests a means of how he should do it, and they chose the most personal, to strangle. with the scarf.

>> right. and the other p.o.w.s sitting by. >> i don't think they even knew -- >> this is fine. if a person is brainwashed to be almost robotic to commands implanted in their brain, are they responsible for what they've done? can you really punish this guy who has been brainwashed to kill on command and no one knows what they're doing? are they responsible for that? if you're truly brainwashed you couldn't be held responsible, you don't know what you're doing. so, this is a problem, this brainwashing. what does that word mean? to one person it means "manchurian candidate," absolutely taking orders, they don't know what they're doing. to another person it means maybe not quite that. as let's see what goes on. a according to your author, he claims there was a process that took eight or nine months to brainwash.

his examples -- not an individual though, but a village, right? i wanted to learn more about the individual that gave his testimony, but apparently he was one of the chinese nationalists. who was non-communist. he had been captured by the communists when china goes communist in 1949. he had been "brainwashed," if you want to use that word. he became a communist. the article says that. but then he volunteers for the chinese army to go invade south korea, as part of that. and it claims that when he gets into the front lines it says he's made of sterner stuff than that. and what does he do? >> straight across no man's land. >> right. and he goes up to the u.n. forces and says, i want to tell

you all about brainwashing. not quite like that, but he surrenders and becomes an informant. was he brainwashed? it is a problem. if he is saying, i'm communist. i am volunteering. he's trying to get out of there more than anything else. it's possible to cooperate with an enemy when you're in a desperate situation. if it suits your purposes, it's brainwashing. it doesn't seem like a "manchurian" style or even political indoctrinated type of brainwashing. how does he say the chinese do this? you do not have to get every point. let's go here first. >> it's pretty much broken into four phases, the first starts with coercion -- being really friendly to the village. >> friendly. ok. so, they soften you up. i'm going to let you continue, but i have one of these documents you don't have, and it is on a slide, about how the chinese communists evaluated the

american soldier. this came out with the code of conduct program. from an intensive study this major mayer is a u.s. army psychiatrist. i'm going to tell you now, he was also a cia operative. people didn't know that for years. he's questionable, only "where is this coming from" questionable he says, this is what the chinese have said, and i think the chinese did believe this. the american soldier appears to have weak loyalties to his country, his religion and fellow soldiers. i believe, when they look at their devotion to their family and the patriarchy compared to how americans feel about their family, they would probably be appalled. another point -- and there's a lot here if you want to see it after class, there's little

knowledge and understanding even among university graduates. i thought, wait a minute. of american political history and philosophy, civil rights, freedoms, et cetera, et cetera. and then finally he sees military service as a soft and safe job. both of these types resent hardship and sacrifice as if they were unreasonable and unfair to them personally. i have to admit, remember we saw that bugs bunny cartoon? the american gi has a little stereotype of back talking. what you mean you're going to make me do that kind of thing. it doesn't mean he does that when he's ordered to do something, but there's always an element of truth to something. first of all you soften them up with kindness, then you name -- you pick what kind of people? >> the riffraff. >> the riffraff. i love that. to be progressives, note the

progressives, those are the individuals that agree with the chinese communist ideology. the others are called reactionaries. the reactionaries are the ones resisting indoctrination. all right? then it says in the villages they then pick one group against together. they eventually turn on the progressives, according to this. they will serve different special interest groups, including women's groups, to undermine the traditional family structure. and once you have done that, you have got them. it seems like a lot of this is targeted at women not doing their job according to the cold war. these same things happen at the pow camp. at the pow camp, they did take questionnaires people filled out with detailed information about what church they went to, their

political affiliation, and if you did not want to fill it out, they put you in solitary, did not feed you, so you did. then they would work on you to get you to confess to things you did wrong. i have to say -- i'm not excusing it, but in the chinese prisoner system -- meaning if you are a criminal in china -- they reeducate you. they make you fill out questionnaires. they get you to confess to what you have done wrong. they keep at it until you come around to what they consider the right way of thinking. it does not make it ok to do with p.o.w.'s, but i am just saying, that is not unusual for the chinese to think that is how you handle prisoners of some kind. we do have progressives in the p.o.w. camp that even help indoctrinate american p.o.w.s on communism.

we also have reactionaries that resist. it's a different type of brainwashing, isn't it? political indoctrination. ideology is there. making you question history, etc. in the end, 21 americans refuse to come back. one third of p.o.w.s according to the literature of the day had betrayed their country. so, everything about this article is wrong. not everything, but almost everything and i am shocked it is published in 2002. one of the things i have done with just about every class i teach is talk a little bit about this issue. these p.o.w.'s have been betrayed. not by a plot. nobody saying, how can we really mess things up for these guys? but it was just most convenient to go with the most negative story.

until recently there has been very little literature by korean p.o.w.'s. they don't want to talk to anyone. because they think that you are always looking for reasons to say they betrayed their country. korean p.o.w.'s behaved no worse or no better than any p.o.w. in any war. no worse, no better. what i mean by that, in every war there are have been americans held by the enemy that have not returned home. ok? in every war there are americans who choose for whatever reason not to return home. according to international agreements and such in our modern history, the geneva convention -- when the war is over, you immediately turn over the prisoners you hold as soon as possible.

you do not hold them longer than you need to. the treaty may not even be fully signed. you can start that process. no one asks you whether you want to go back to your country. there will be people who don't go back. i'm sure their parents know, i'm sure the government knows. there are dishonorable discharges. but it just happens and it is not talked about and it is not public, unless someone has a reason to make it public. all right. many did die. a large number of korean p.o.w.'s died. but there is reasons for that. depression could be part of it. i am not denying it. p.o.w.s do get depressed. they had little medical care. they were so cold. i have not progressed this, and this is where i will find i am way behind because i get carried away, but we see here and executed u.s. army p.o.w. these cruelties are happening.

they treated them so well. well, there are death marches. the worst treatment was by the north koreans. the chinese, comparatively speaking, are nicer. but put quotes around nicer, because it is still pretty bad. the temperature was horrible. there is a murder of a sick p.o.w. that another p.o.w. throws out in the snow because of the nastiness of the sickness and he was court-martialed. every country has that problem of some individuals. no torture devices? this is a replica, so it is not the best piece of evidence, but i do know that air force base, they use actual korean torture devices used on americans in survival training.

what the heck is going on with that? and they did escape, especially in north korea. it gets a little different when you are in china. when you are in north korea, you have some chance of getting to the american line. in china, it was virtually impossible. they still tried. there were efforts made. if you are near starvation, it is harder to escape. it really, truly is. we are short on time, so i have to do this pretty quick now. my thesis -- and i think this article is all wrong -- but my thesis is the reason there is a p.o.w. scandal, and it is a scandal because 21 americans do not come back. that is embarrassing. it is because of voluntary repatriation. no one saw that coming. it is somewhat unavoidable, i would say. a this is how it goes. we cannot expect this war to happen, so we have not planned for p.o.w. camps.

it leads to the 21. that is -- the p.o.w.'s we capture are thrown into makeshift camps somewhere near the front line until we can build more permanent camps somewhere else. we have a whole bunch of those for a while until we think, man, we just have the personnel to man these p.o.w. camps, so we start building megacamps. at kojedo, where this is -- what they do is enclose a city with barbed wire. these prisoners were north koreans. they were chinese. i have to say that some were south koreans trying to convince us they were never part of the north korean army, but were having a hard time doing so. we do not have the personnel to man that. when you have so many people, you have to turn it over to the

prisoners themselves. so, we put them in charge then, meaning non-communist. right away a whole bunch of prisoners we captured say they do not want to go back to north korea or china. can we make them go back in the climate of the early cold war where we are trying to win in ideological battle against communism? would that look good for truman, forcing people back to a communist regime that do not want to go there? it would not look good. so, we put people in charge. so, what the chinese do, they will send operatives to be captured -- communist operatives -- who will work in the camps to build up communist forces and they start killing each other. the communist's and non-communists. when it gets down to the time -- we have already announced, we will not accept anyone saying

they are not communist. the reason we do that, the chinese say, we are not going to sign a peace treaty until you stop adding to this number because they are embarrassed. in the end, 37,000 of the enemy p.o.w.'s choose to stay in non-communist hands. 21 americans. does this have to be spun in a negative way? absolutely not. the military chooses. we are out of time. that is where we start next time, the code of conduct written in 1955. written to put steel in the back of american males, even though they knew that everyone would give information of tortured. they wrote that you have to give name, rank, and serial number and nothing else. or else you have betrayed your country. every p.o.w. at the hanoi hilton would have been court-martialed according to the code of conduct. as it was interpreted in 1955. every one of them.

we are out of time. go ahead and call the class to attention. you guys are dismissed. thank you. >> join us each saturday evening -- what you american gdb. 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. morew us on twitter for information about our schedule, upcoming programs, and to keep up with the latest history news. each week, american history tv brings you archival films that help distill the tory of the 20th century. ♪