China Admits Taking, Burying U.S. POW
After decades of denials, the Chinese have acknowledged burying an American prisoner of war in China, telling the U.S. that a teenage soldier captured in the Korean War died a week after he "became mentally ill," according to documents provided to The Associated Press.
China had long insisted that all POW questions were answered at the conclusion of the war in 1953 and that no Americans were moved to Chinese territory from North Korea. The little-known case of Army Sgt. Richard G. Desautels opens another chapter in this story and raises the possibility that new details concerning the fate of other POWs may eventually surface.
Chinese authorities gave Pentagon officials intriguing new details about Desautels in a March 2003 meeting in Beijing, saying they had found "a complete record of 9-10 pages" in classified archives.
Until now, this new information had been kept quiet; a Pentagon spokesman said it was intended only for Desautels family members. The details were provided to Desautels' brother, Rolland, who passed them to a POW-MIA advocacy group, the National Alliance of Families, which gave them to AP.
In a telephone interview Thursday, the brother said he did not follow up on the information he got in 2003 because he did not believe it. He was not aware that it marked the first time China had acknowledged taking a U.S. POW from North Korea into Chinese territory or burying an American there.
Two months after the March 2003 meeting, the Pentagon office responsible for POW-MIA issues sent Rolland Desautels a brief written summary of what a Chinese army official had related about the case.
"According to the Chinese, Sgt. Desautels became mentally ill on April 22, 1953, and died on April 29, 1953," the summary said. It added that he had been buried in a Chinese cemetery but the grave was moved during a construction project "and there is no record of where Desautels' remains were reinterred."
The reported circumstance of Desautels' death - sudden mental illness - may sound improbable. But the key revelation - that he was taken from North Korea to a city in northeastern China and then buried - matches long-held U.S. suspicions about China's handling, or mishandling, of American POWs during and after the war.
It raises the possibility that wartime Chinese records could shed light on the fate of other U.S. captives who were known to be held in Chinese-run POW camps but did not return when the fighting ended in 1953.
And it appears to undercut the Pentagon's public stance that China returned all POWs it held inside China. The Pentagon has focused more on the related issue of China's management of POW camps inside North Korea during the war, which Chinese troops entered in the fall of 1950 on North Korea's side.
Desautels' reported burial site - the city of Shenyang, formerly known as Mukden - is interesting because it is far from the North Korean border and was often cited in declassified U.S. intelligence reports as the site of one or more prisons holding hundreds of American POWs from Korea. Some U.S. reports referred to Mukden as a possible transshipment point for POWs headed to Russia.
Desautels was an 18-year-old corporal, a member of A Company, 2nd Engineer Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division, when his unit encountered a swarming Chinese assault near Kunu-ri, North Korea, on Dec. 1, 1950. According to a Pentagon account, Desautels and his fellow captives were marched north to a POW compound known as Camp 5, near Pyoktong, on the North Korean side of the border with China.
Subsequent events are a bit fuzzy, but Desautels was moved among prison camps and apparently was used by the Chinese army as a truck driver. A number of U.S. POWs told American interrogators after their release from captivity that they had seen Desautels alive and well in Camp 5.
One who said he spent four months with Desautels said that in March 1952 Desautels said that if he should disappear, others should make inquiries with the proper military authorities. Numerous returned POWs said Desautels had spent several months inside China before being returned to Camp 5 in 1952.
The U.S. Army promoted Desautels from corporal to sergeant while he was held prisoner.
Rolland Desautels, 81, recalls his older brother as "a strong character who came off the farm," enlisted in the Army at age 17 and was stationed at Fort Lewis, Wash., before being shipped to Korea in August 1950, two months after the war began with North Korea's invasion of the South.
The Pentagon has taken an interest in the Desautels case for many years. A June 1998 Pentagon cable to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said that the case was one of several on which China should be pushed to provide answers, that "we believe the Chinese should be able to account for these individuals."
Now it turns out that China did provide an accounting, although it is incomplete was kept under wraps for five years.
Larry Greer, a spokesman for the POW-MIA office at the Pentagon, said Thursday that although U.S. officials asked to see the 9-10 page file on Desautels, China has yet to provide it or additional information.
Mark Sauter, an author and researcher on the subject of POWs from the Korean War, said in an interview that Beijing authorities are to be commended for finally providing useful information.
"The case of Sgt. Desautels has been a focal point of a six-decade cover-up by the Chinese government," Sauter said. "This is the first crack in the dike. From what we can tell, the Pentagon has not aggressively followed up, either on the Desautels case or those of hundreds of other Americans for whom the Chinese should be able to account."
American officials believed from the earliest days of the armistice that concluded the Korean War without a formal peace treaty in July 1953 that the Chinese and North Koreans withheld a number of U.S. POWs, possibly in retaliation for U.S. refusal to repatriate those Chinese and North Korean POWs who chose not to be returned to their home country out of fear of retribution.
Gen. Mark W. Clark, the American commander of U.S.-led forces during the final stages of the Korean War, wrote in a 1954 account that "we had solid evidence" that hundreds of captive Americans were held back by the Chinese and North Koreans, possibly as leverage to gain a China seat on the U.N. Security Council.
Over time, however, U.S. officials muted their concerns, while periodically pressing the Chinese in private. Publicly, the Pentagon's stance today is that China returned all the U.S. POWs it held.
"Some U.S. POWs spent time across the (Yalu) river in Manchuria, but to the best of our knowledge, all have returned," the Pentagon's POW/MIA office says in a summary of wartime POW camps.
© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. China had long insisted that all POW questions were answered at the conclusion of the war in 1953 and that no Americans were moved to Chinese territory from North Korea. The little-known case of Army Sgt. Richard G. Desautels opens another chapter in this story and raises the possibility that new details concerning the fate of other POWs may eventually surface.
Chinese authorities gave Pentagon officials intriguing new details about Desautels in a March 2003 meeting in Beijing, saying they had found "a complete record of 9-10 pages" in classified archives.
Until now, this new information had been kept quiet; a Pentagon spokesman said it was intended only for Desautels family members. The details were provided to Desautels' brother, Rolland, who passed them to a POW-MIA advocacy group, the National Alliance of Families, which gave them to AP.
In a telephone interview Thursday, the brother said he did not follow up on the information he got in 2003 because he did not believe it. He was not aware that it marked the first time China had acknowledged taking a U.S. POW from North Korea into Chinese territory or burying an American there.
Two months after the March 2003 meeting, the Pentagon office responsible for POW-MIA issues sent Rolland Desautels a brief written summary of what a Chinese army official had related about the case.
"According to the Chinese, Sgt. Desautels became mentally ill on April 22, 1953, and died on April 29, 1953," the summary said. It added that he had been buried in a Chinese cemetery but the grave was moved during a construction project "and there is no record of where Desautels' remains were reinterred."
The reported circumstance of Desautels' death - sudden mental illness - may sound improbable. But the key revelation - that he was taken from North Korea to a city in northeastern China and then buried - matches long-held U.S. suspicions about China's handling, or mishandling, of American POWs during and after the war.
It raises the possibility that wartime Chinese records could shed light on the fate of other U.S. captives who were known to be held in Chinese-run POW camps but did not return when the fighting ended in 1953.
And it appears to undercut the Pentagon's public stance that China returned all POWs it held inside China. The Pentagon has focused more on the related issue of China's management of POW camps inside North Korea during the war, which Chinese troops entered in the fall of 1950 on North Korea's side.
Desautels' reported burial site - the city of Shenyang, formerly known as Mukden - is interesting because it is far from the North Korean border and was often cited in declassified U.S. intelligence reports as the site of one or more prisons holding hundreds of American POWs from Korea. Some U.S. reports referred to Mukden as a possible transshipment point for POWs headed to Russia.
Desautels was an 18-year-old corporal, a member of A Company, 2nd Engineer Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division, when his unit encountered a swarming Chinese assault near Kunu-ri, North Korea, on Dec. 1, 1950. According to a Pentagon account, Desautels and his fellow captives were marched north to a POW compound known as Camp 5, near Pyoktong, on the North Korean side of the border with China.
Subsequent events are a bit fuzzy, but Desautels was moved among prison camps and apparently was used by the Chinese army as a truck driver. A number of U.S. POWs told American interrogators after their release from captivity that they had seen Desautels alive and well in Camp 5.
One who said he spent four months with Desautels said that in March 1952 Desautels said that if he should disappear, others should make inquiries with the proper military authorities. Numerous returned POWs said Desautels had spent several months inside China before being returned to Camp 5 in 1952.
The U.S. Army promoted Desautels from corporal to sergeant while he was held prisoner.
Rolland Desautels, 81, recalls his older brother as "a strong character who came off the farm," enlisted in the Army at age 17 and was stationed at Fort Lewis, Wash., before being shipped to Korea in August 1950, two months after the war began with North Korea's invasion of the South.
The Pentagon has taken an interest in the Desautels case for many years. A June 1998 Pentagon cable to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said that the case was one of several on which China should be pushed to provide answers, that "we believe the Chinese should be able to account for these individuals."
Now it turns out that China did provide an accounting, although it is incomplete was kept under wraps for five years.
Larry Greer, a spokesman for the POW-MIA office at the Pentagon, said Thursday that although U.S. officials asked to see the 9-10 page file on Desautels, China has yet to provide it or additional information.
Mark Sauter, an author and researcher on the subject of POWs from the Korean War, said in an interview that Beijing authorities are to be commended for finally providing useful information.
"The case of Sgt. Desautels has been a focal point of a six-decade cover-up by the Chinese government," Sauter said. "This is the first crack in the dike. From what we can tell, the Pentagon has not aggressively followed up, either on the Desautels case or those of hundreds of other Americans for whom the Chinese should be able to account."
American officials believed from the earliest days of the armistice that concluded the Korean War without a formal peace treaty in July 1953 that the Chinese and North Koreans withheld a number of U.S. POWs, possibly in retaliation for U.S. refusal to repatriate those Chinese and North Korean POWs who chose not to be returned to their home country out of fear of retribution.
Gen. Mark W. Clark, the American commander of U.S.-led forces during the final stages of the Korean War, wrote in a 1954 account that "we had solid evidence" that hundreds of captive Americans were held back by the Chinese and North Koreans, possibly as leverage to gain a China seat on the U.N. Security Council.
Over time, however, U.S. officials muted their concerns, while periodically pressing the Chinese in private. Publicly, the Pentagon's stance today is that China returned all the U.S. POWs it held.
"Some U.S. POWs spent time across the (Yalu) river in Manchuria, but to the best of our knowledge, all have returned," the Pentagon's POW/MIA office says in a summary of wartime POW camps.
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"OIL"
Read history and find out what caused world war two between us and Japan.
Did you serve in Vietnam ? I can''t bel;ieve if you did you are still prejudice agaist communists. They do not bother us, have shown no intentions of trying to conquer us anymore. We need to learn to get alog with other countries and stoop invading them just because we can.
I am still waiting to know when and where you hve served. Have you ever been outside the U.S. ?
Your opinion indicates you have never been to China or probably have never met a chinese. They like us strive to provide a home for their families. Unlike us they face many hardships daily without question because they have no choice.
No i am not trying to justify any horrors of war. I think they are all despicable and we should admit we do as much wrong as anyone else. If you check your history we were interfering in internal affairs of Japan. They warned us to back off it wasn''t our business. We did not back away. In their eyes they had no choice but to declare war. The differeence between a hero and a traitor is dependen upon who gets to write the history books. We won so we try to justify what we did by saying they were wrong. The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was not intended o be a sneak attack. It turned out the translator who was supposed to deliver the declaration of war was slow and we were notified 45 minutes after the attack instead of 30 minutes before as the Japanese had intended.
You are right, most Americans have no idea how corrupt our own govt is. We are not better than any of the other countries in this respect. Americans like to bury their heads in the sand and pretend it doesn''t exist for them. That is why i am a retired soldier and don''t believe in war. It doesn''t work for the most part. It is time we learned to sit down and and talk with people we don''t agree with. It is not possible with the radical terrorists of today but in most cases i think it will work.
Bush just stated the obvious America is at war plain & simple, OBL & his like will be exterminated because they are good for no one; Sadam Hussine didn''t even want to have them living. The Saudis just pay them to go somewhere else, The Taliban tried to sell them out to the US, Pakistan & Somolia found them too hot to handle. OBL & his like do not dare to raise their heads in Egypt or Jordan for fear of another ''Black September'' Lybia will not tolerate them & Yemin is willing to kill them to keep them from taking anymore of their families livlyhoods down with them
As for China keeping POW''s they consider ''leverage'' in the games of nations that''s nothing different than what every ''nation'' has done since time began.