American Prisoners of War in China! Part 1/5
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Transcript
00:00I joined in September of 49, which was one month after my 16th birthday.
00:12We went to Korea by boat, and we were within a half a day's travel of the Chinese border,
00:22and we kept running into companies, battalion strength of Chinese volunteers as we were
00:28making our way over the mountains.
00:31And then at some point further on, we got in kind of a firefight, and I got hit.
00:35And when I woke up, I was in a Chinese field hospital.
00:37The Chinese patrol had found me.
00:39The first words I heard was from the doctor, who said, you know, we are friends.
00:43We're not going to hurt you.
00:45Those months between November and probably the coldest parts of the month, November,
00:51January, February, probably in the compound that I was, if there were, say, 500 GIs in
01:00the area, by the time they went on the march back to the main camps, I seriously doubt
01:05if there were more than 50 alive.
01:13My search for survivors also led me to Ling, the widow of Clarence Adams.
01:20She was the first woman in China to marry a black American.
01:27She now lives in Memphis, Tennessee, with her daughter, Della.
01:39I am Clarence Cecil Adams of Memphis, Tennessee.
01:42My family and millions of other Negroes, plus myself, have suffered from the brutal attacks
01:48of white supremacy and the cruel slave laws of the southern states.
01:54These are the reasons why I can't be living happily with my family.
01:58I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, where I was raised.
02:02I come from a working class family.
02:06My mother working at White Rose Laundry.
02:08My father at that time worked at Memphis Furniture Factory.
02:11He lived out back in what is called a carriage house, and actually over the carriage house.
02:17During my last years in high school, I was basically getting into a lot of trouble.
02:25He and his friends, his buddies, whatever, they were like a gang, were roving around
02:29the railroad tracks, and this white man started following him.
02:33He wanted to know if we could get him a black woman.
02:37We walked away from him.
02:39He followed.
02:41And he kept calling, hey boy, where can I get me a black woman?
02:44We're afraid because we know what can happen.
02:46If we do something to him, they lynch us.
02:49We never get out of jail.
02:51We're walking.
02:52One of the guys just turned around and popped him in the mouth.
02:55He went down.
02:56When he went down, we stomped him, all five of us, and we left.
03:02The next morning the cops came, and they knocked on the door, bam, bam, bam, you know, opened
03:06the door, and you know it's the cops.
03:08So my dad was sitting in the kitchen, though, and his mother said, Skippy's not here, really
03:13loud, to let him know, you know, the cops are looking for him, and he went straight
03:17out the back door.
03:18He runs down the railroad track all the way downtown to the recruiting station and joins up.
03:24I went in the Army in 1947.
03:27However, the Korean War changed my whole fate.
03:32I was captured, which was November the 30th, 1950.
03:39It wasn't difficult for me to find the home of James Benderis, that first Westerner I'd
03:48seen as a child.
03:50Bai Xirong, his widow after 40 years of marriage, still lives in the same apartment in G9.
04:09I am James G. Benderis of Hawthorne, California.
04:12Under the present conditions in the States, I cannot return.
04:16And when a time when peace is established in the world, then I'll come back.
04:20You can blame all of this on the reaction in the United States and on McCarthy and his clique.
04:38But later on, they all went to war.
04:40After they went to war, the Korean War, another Korean War.
04:43Which one?
04:45They all gave everyone a cigarette.
04:47The Korean War gave those United Nations soldiers cigarettes.
04:50Yes.
04:51Those war uniforms.
04:52That's right.
04:53They gave them cigarettes.
04:54I was a smoker.
04:55I was in the East.
04:56I didn't smoke for 24 hours.
04:58I was also an alcoholic.
05:00I took my clothes off.
05:02I came down.
05:04My Korean War cough was so high.
05:06I thought I was Chinese, but they were all foreigners.
05:09He looked at me.
05:11He said,
05:12Do you surrender?
05:14He spoke English.
05:15Did you surrender?
05:16I said, I surrendered.
05:18I surrendered.
05:19He said, sit down.
05:21Let me sit down.
05:23Let me sit down.
05:24Have a cigarette.
05:26He gave me a cigarette.
05:27For that cigarette.
05:28Oh, that's disgusting.
05:29That's disgusting.
05:30Then I know.
05:31You surrendered as a volunteer, as a war uniform, for that cigarette.
05:35Yes.
05:36Yes.
05:37Yes.
05:40My father applied for Chinese citizenship.
05:43But for unknown reasons, it wasn't approved.
05:48Then, right before he died,
05:50we were told that his request was going to be granted.
05:53But it was too late.
05:56He always said that he'd like to join the Chinese Communist Party.
06:01Because the Chinese saved his life.
06:05He had deep feelings for them.
06:08He almost died in Korea.
06:10And the Chinese took good care of him.
06:13He never forgot that.
06:26In 1950, only a year after the birth of the People's Republic of China,
06:32the Chinese army was surprised at how many Western soldiers they captured.
06:38China mobilized hundreds of young graduates to work as translators and instructors.
06:48When the Chinese first came across and actually captured as many people as they did,
06:53there was no place to keep us, or food to give us.
06:59They didn't know our policy, didn't know what we were going to do with them,
07:03if we were going to kill them, or force them to do hard labor,
07:06or keep them in China forever and not let them return home.
07:11So they worried a lot.
07:16My supervisor asked me to read the regulations to POWs.
07:20It began with, dear students,
07:23I was very surprised and asked why, because to me,
07:26they were prisoners and we were their captors.
07:30My supervisor said, yes, they are students and you are instructors.
07:36Students, remember?
07:37When they would call us prisoners of war,
07:39we were kind of like students, we were there under their care.
07:43But I never saw any instance of mistreatment in the prisoner of war camp, ever.
07:49We were trying to tell the POWs that capitalism was doomed to collapse,
07:59and socialism was bound to win.
08:04We had to go to lectures every day for the first year.
08:06I mean, they'd come and got us no matter where we were hiding,
08:08and we had to go up on the top of the hill and listen to lectures.
08:13We changed by telling them that such a war was unnecessary, was dirty.
08:25Some POWs began to think that the American government should not have been involved.
08:35We had no business over there, and I actually felt that way.
08:39And do you still feel that way?
08:40That we were wrong to go to Korea?
08:43When I say we, that the United Nations was wrong to try to contain communism there,
08:47that President Truman was wrong?
08:49I think it was a mistake, still.
08:52Why so?
08:54I don't think that we have the right to interfere in a civil war of another country,
08:59to try to stop it when it's not even close to our own shores.
09:02You believe then, you believe now, that that was a civil war?
09:06Yes, I think it was a civil war.