Name, Rank, and Serial Number Exploiting Korean War POWs at Home and Abroad [Hardcover]

Vietnam POWs came home heroes, but twenty years earlier their predecessors returned from Korea to shame and suspicion. In the Korean War American prisoners were used in propaganda twice, first during the conflict, then at home. While in Chinese custody in North Korea, they were pressured to praise their treatment and criticize the war. When they came back, the Department of the Army and cooperative pundits said too many were weaklings who did not resist communist indoctrination or brainwashing. Ex-prisoners were featured in a publicity campaign scolding the nation to raise tougher sons for the Cold War. This propaganda was based on feverish exaggerations that ignored the convoluted circumstances POWs were put in, which decisions in Washington helped create.





Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I: Over There
1. Limited War Sets the Stage for the POW Odyssey
2. The Middle Passage: Life-Changing Horrors in the First Year of Captivity
3. Andersonville East: Communist Prisoners are Pressured to Defect
4. Welcome, Fellow Peasant: The Chinese Seek Converts
5. POWL: Prisoners of Limited War Languish as Propaganda Becomes a Substitute for Victory
6. The Failure of Chinese Indoctrination
7. The United Nations Command Withholds POWs

Part II: Over Here
8. Home to Cheers and Jeers
9. The Brainwashing Dilemma: Atrocity Reports Undermine Punishment
10. Prosecutions Rile the Nation
11. Target Mom: Disciplining Misplaced Sympathy
12. Missing Action: Hollywood Films Try and Fail to Fix Captivity
13. The Hidden Reason for Forgetting Korea
Conclusion: Two Wars, the Visible and the Cloaked

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Young's book serves up a diplomatic-history-meets-pow saga that transforms the story of both American and communist prisoners of war into a cautionary tale of the deliberate politicization of war and its unintended consequences....[I]mmeasulãR