Summary Of Voices From The Korean War Personal Stories Of American

Richard Peters is the co-author of Voices from the Korean War: Personal Stories of American, Korean, and Chinese Soldiers. Along with co-author Xiao-Bing Li, they compile a collection of personal experiences during the Korean War. These personal accounts are told by American, North Korean, South Korean, and Chinese survivors of the war. Both Peters and Li are professors of history at the University of Central Oklahoma; Peters emeritus. While Professor Peters served in the Korean War with the Fifth Regimental Combat Team of the U.S. Army, Professor Li served in China's People Liberation Army. Voices from the Korean War describes the background of the war and how events unfolded that brought America into a war that was never expected to last

Nothing can be more gripping as reading the accounts of a POW survivor. It cannot be overstated that Communist treatment of captured soldiers and civilians violated the rules of the Geneva Convention of 1949. First Lieutenant Wadie J. Rountree recounts his capture by North Korean soldiers after only a week in action. On July 11, 1950, Lt. Rountree and his platoon were captured and began what was called the "death march" along with 300 other captives. With their boots confiscated, captives too exhausted to continue the march were shot and left behind. Captives were given limited food and unsanitary water. This type of march lasted about eight months gathering hundreds more captives along the way from camp to camp until they reached the Yalu River. By November, random executions poor sanitation and diseases had taken out hundreds of soldiers. Because American soldiers were still wearing what was left of the uniforms they were captured in, the sub-zero temperatures killed more soldiers from frostbite. Lt. Rountree stated the following, "By the early summer of 1951, we had lost more than 400 of our original group of 778 men. When liberated at the end of the war only 280 of us remained alive, a little over one-third" (Peters and Li 225). Peace talks began in July of that year but dragged on for two more years. Eventually, POW conditions improved slightly as the Chinese took

Based on the accounts in Peters and Li's Voices, a Chinese POW did not face death marches. Both American/UN and Communist POW camps experienced poor sanitary conditions simply because of over-crowding, however safe food and water was provided at the Communist camps. Contrastingly, while American prisoners faced dying from starvation and executions, Communist POW's faced death primarily from fellow prisoners. Colonel Zhao Zuorui describes his experiences at the POW camp on the island of Koje-do. Colonel Zhao Zuorui talks about the hostilities between the Communist and non-Communist prisoners. He describes how Communist prisoners organized riots and created their own court system to punish and execute any non-Communist prisoner or defector. This strategy was executed by the leaders within the Communist POW ranks to hinder UN attempts to grant voluntary repatriation during peace talks. Colonel Zhao explained how heparticipated in the plot that led to the temporary kidnapping of the camp commander Brigadier General Francis T. Dodd. During this abduction, the former political commissar may have had the lone rational voice that saved the life of General Dodd when he argued, "An alive and a freed Dodd out there could do much more for our cause than a dead or a detained Dodd in here" (Peters and Li 255). Once Dodd was freed, American forces suppressed any further organized pro-Communist aggression in the camps as