21 GI's from Korean War Did Not Want to be Repatriated - Were They Brainwashed?

I'm on a mind control, brainwashing kick tonight after seeing the Discovery Channel's hour long show on the same.

I'm posting two long articles on the Korean War soldiers who refused to be repatriated to the US, and if anyone has any info on these men, please post it here.

Was this the beginning of the "Manchurian Candidate" type projects or was it something totally different as per the next article I'll post??






[link to www.koreacoldwar.org]

OPEN FOOTNOTES


On 27 June 1953, the United Nations Command (UNC) and Communist forces signed an armistice ending three years of fighting in Korea. Although the American-led UNC failed to win the entire peninsula, it successfully repelled Communist attacks south of the 38th parallel. Moreover, though contrary to the 1947 Geneva Convention, which mandated the wholesale exchange of all POWs, President Truman's policy of voluntary repatriation proved highly successful: 47,000 Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war struck a propaganda blow against their Marxist governments by choosing not to return to their homelands. In September, however, 23 American POWs also refused repatriation, sparking a nationwide debate among journalists, politicians, military officials, psychiatrists, and the soldiers themselves. During a 90-day cooling off period, the GIs were held in the neutral zone at Panmunjom, but only two changed their minds in response to entreaties by U.S. officials and letters from the GIs' families. Although the 21 GIs who ultimately journeyed to China have largely been ignored by historians, embedded in the controversy over their actions are important assumptions about race relations, gender roles, and the nature of Communism. Thus, this nearly forgotten event offers a unique window into American social and political culture during the mid-1950s.

The most common explanation for the nonrepatriations was that the men were "brainwashed," a term coined by Edward Hunter in articles written for the Miami Daily News and New Leader magazine in 1951. Although Hunter was not a psychiatrist, and may in fact have been a propaganda operator for the CIA, his claims that the Chinese were practicing powerful new techniques of mind control were readily believed. Brainwashing, a literal translation of the Chinese colloquialism hsi nao, provided a pseudo-scientific explanation for what Americans who had lived through a decade of both Democratic and Republican red-baiting already assumed: Communism was inherently evil and unnatural, and Marxist enemies would try anything to turn Americans against their fellow citizens.(1)

Confirmation seemingly came in April 1953, when 149 Americans released in the pre-armistice prisoner exchange known as "Little Switch" reported that their captors had waged a systematic effort to break down their beliefs and entice them to collaborate. In June, the New Republic asked, "Communist Brainwashing--Are We Prepared?" Although the magazine bitterly opposed the McCarthyite harassment of innocent Americans, it nonetheless feared "the scrubbing of the mind clean of previously held conviction" by communists.(2) When it was announced that some two dozen GIs had chosen to live in China, the specter of brainwashing loomed even larger in the American consciousness. A reporter from the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal felt a "sinking in the pit of the stomach" when GIs arrived at the neutral zone singing the Communist Internationale. He noted that while World War II seemed at the time to have destroyed all standards of human decency, the world now had to contend with "psychological surgery, the perversion of loyalties."(3)

much more at link
[link to www.koreacoldwar.org]

Last Edited by SPUD on 12/31/2011 10:09 PM