Cold days in hell
Subtitle: American POWs in Korea
By: William C. Latham Jr
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Williams-Ford Texas A&M University military history series -- no. 141; Williams-Ford Texas A&M University military history series -- no. 141.
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: College Station, Tex
Language: eng
Number of pages: 301
ISBN-13: 9781603440738; 9781603447515
Subjects: Prisoners of war; North Korean Prisoners and prisons; Korean War, 1950-1953
Description: Prisoners suffer in every conflict, but American servicemen captured during the Korean War faced a unique ordeal. Like prisoners in other wars, these men endured harsh conditions and brutal mistreatment at the hands of their captors. In Korea, however, they faced something new: a deliberate enemy program of indoctrination and coercion designed to manipulate them for propaganda purposes. Most Americans rejected their captors' promise of a Marxist paradise, yet after the cease fire in 1953, American prisoners came home to face a second wave of attacks. Exploiting popular American fears of communist infiltration, critics portrayed the returning prisoners as weak-willed pawns who had been "brainwashed" into betraying their country. The truth was far more complicated. Relying on memoirs, trial transcripts, debriefings, declassified government reports, published analysis, and media coverage, plus conversations, interviews, and correspondence with several dozen former prisoners, the author seeks to correct misperceptions that still linger, six decades after the prisoners came home.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The summer soldiers; title: The tide turns; title: The death march; title: The warning; title: Home by Christmas; title: The reservoir; title: The deadly winter; title: Spring 1951; title: The pilots' war; title: Mutual suspicion; title: The pawns; title: Freedom and recrimination.