Personal Narrative: My First Korean War

1952 was a year that would come up and hit me in the face like a bucket of cold water. On May 29th my sister and I were at my aunt and uncle’s apartment. We were sitting at the kitchen table, well, my sister was sitting I was standing on the chair at the other end of the table. It was afternoon when my father, aunt and uncle walked in the door from visiting my mother in the hospital. I’m not sure, but I think it was my uncle who went over to my sister and whispered in her ear. I saw the expression on her face change and what I think it is the first of two times that I ever heard my sister swear in her life, she said “You’re a God damn liar.” He smacked her face and she started crying. I did to because I knew my mother was gone. She had

Nikita Khrushchev would be selected general secretary of the Soviet communist party. In July they’ll Castro and his brother lead a disastrous assault on the Moncada barracks which becomes the preliminary to the Cuban Revolution. On July 27 the Korean War ends. The United States, the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and South Korea sign an armistice agreement. Out of that war twenty-one American soldiers that were prisoners of war, will fail to repatriate to America, and they will move to china. Was this along with the betrayal of this country by the Rosenberg’s an indication of the direction that this country was heading? I think it was. However, this would not become apparent to me until it was too late. I do remember asking my father why the soldiers didn’t return to America. I remember him saying it was probably because they were brainwashed during captivity as prisoners’ of war, but he didn’t understand either. I have recently heard that twenty of the twenty-one soldiers have returned to the United States for one reason or another, mostly for health reasons. It is also my belief that it shouldn’t have been