American Prisoners of War in China! Part 3/5
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Transcript
00:00There wasn't too much friction between prisoners and captors, who were the Chinese.
00:07They said, we don't understand the American way of life, so we need some volunteers
00:11to explain what the Americans like and what we wanted.
00:15And I said, well look, I'll volunteer.
00:20I asked for recreation equipment.
00:23I asked if we could use an old building to set up a recreation hall where we could sit.
00:27I said, some of the guys are religious, they want to know if they can worship.
00:30I asked what food they brought us, if we could let our cooks cook it the way we like it.
00:36So they agreed with everything I said.
00:39In about two and a half to three months, they brought in baseball, baseball bats, football.
00:48We exercised every day.
00:50The guys began to get strong.
00:53We demolished what was left of a Japanese factory, and that became our playing field.
01:04Later on, we actually built a clubhouse.
01:06We had our own clubhouse.
01:11We even had what they called the Intercamp Olympics.
01:20When I came across this film archive, I could not believe my eyes.
01:29This must be the only prison of war camp in human history to have ever organized an Olympic Games.
01:39I was very quickly labeled as a progressive because I read veraciously, I read everything I could get my hands on.
01:55And I volunteered when I was asked to do, I was like the mail clerk.
01:59They gave me the mail for my platoon, and I passed the mail out.
02:03And I was in charge of the bulletin board, and I could type.
02:06So during the Intercamp Olympics, I did all the typing for the newspaper that covered the Olympics.
02:11And I remained in the prison of war camp until the end of war.
02:17And Chinese sent me away to study.
02:23Then they sent me back to camp to give lectures.
02:26And I gave lectures on capitalism, imperialism, history of social development.
02:32I learned the difference between all of those right there in the prison of war camp.
02:36And I taught it to the other prisoners.
02:40Somebody came to talk to me and said, you know, this is going to be over.
02:43He said part of the agreement of the ceasefire was those prisoners of war who did not want to go back home
02:55could choose a country, wherever they wanted to go, if that country would accept them.
03:01As it turned out, I think there were 21 Americans who chose, in fact, to go to China.
03:08I've often been asked as to why.
03:10You became a turncoat. You renounced your country. Why?
03:14What did you have against the United States?
03:18Well, Mike, it wasn't actually that I had something against the United States.
03:24We did spend over three years in captivity.
03:28I was captured only 17 years old.
03:32And I underwent the mass indoctrination program that the Chinese instigated in the camp.
03:40And there was a lot of things that they told me that sounded to me like common sense.
03:45I chose China for many reasons.
03:47With that close contact we had, I began to wonder about communism, what it was like.
03:54And there's a known fact that every man wants to better his life.
03:58He wants to do more in life.
04:00I was assured by the camp authorities that, well, you know, we don't discriminate.
04:07It's not our principle to discriminate.
04:10We believe that all people are equal.
04:12So that was a great encouragement for me to help me make my decision.
04:17And, of course, I did ask the question of marriage.
04:19Could I marry in China?
04:20They said, we've got plenty of women.
04:21It depends on whether you like it or not.
04:24So we left Korea.
04:25We got on a train.
04:27We left Korea and went to China.
04:34And, of course, the first day in China they gave this humongous banquet.
04:39I mean, I had never, in fact, in my whole life I had never seen so much food.
04:46Beautiful table.
04:47Man, the table was long.
04:48And just covered with everything you could imagine.
04:51I mean, some good cooking.
04:56With such great expectations, the 22 former POWs entered China.
05:03Treated as dignitaries, they were invited to the 1954 May Day Parade in Tiananmen Square.
05:19I used to ride my bike here all the time.
05:22You know, you have to drive, you have to ride your bike kind of like the cars so that you don't get ran over.
05:30My God, now this is like coming home.
05:33This is my homecoming.
05:37This was my school for two and a half years.
05:42David Hawkins and six of the former POWs studied at the People's University in Beijing.
05:49They were known as peace fighters.
05:53Adams was here.
05:56Clarence Adams.
05:58My first schooling was at the People's University of China.
06:02It's where we took a two-year preparatory course.
06:07First of all, we couldn't speak the language.
06:09So we basically dealt in the language and Chinese history.
06:14And the history of the Chinese Communist Party and the history of the Russian Communist Party, Soviet Communist Party.
06:26This paper mill in my hometown, Jinan, is where James Veneries worked for 20 years.
06:40In fact, you have a few choices.
06:43All the POWs who chose to stay can be farmers, can be workers, can go to college, and can freely choose other occupations.
06:53Why did you choose to be a worker later?
06:57When I was a kid, my grandfather, my father, we were all workers.
07:02So I didn't know anything else.
07:06When we were introduced, he made a good first impression.
07:13I already had four children.
07:16He liked them a lot.
07:18He gave us each a badge of Chairman Mao as gifts.
07:35What I remember most about my father is that when people advised him to return to the United States, he always preferred to stay in China.
07:56In the end, my father wished me well in the United States.
08:00I knew I could make more money here.
08:05But he insisted I never join the U.S. Army.
08:08He was adamant.
08:09For him, soldiers are nothing but cannon fodder.