Recently declassified records on the Korean War have brought to light widespread and systemic war crimes committed by North Koreans and Chinese against troops serving under the United Nations command, according to this study. After examining over 1,600 cases, Philip Chinnery recounts his searing findings in this tragic three-part narrative. Part one covers the first year of the war, when most of the battlefield war crimes, death marches, and atrocities took place. The second part deals with the horrors prisoners faced at the hands of their captors, including starvation, slave labor, and medical experimentation. Part three delves into the prisoners' repatriation at war's end and the disturbing evidence that some of the 7,956 American and 100 British serviceman considered missing in action may have been left behind at the close of the war. In one of many examples, he sites a formerly confidential U.S. Government document that discusses a B-29 crew's release by the Chinese two years after the war ended and how the crew was ordered to keep quiet about the prisoners still under communist control. Had there been a clear victor in Korea instead of a truce, the author believes that war crime trials would have followed.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Philip Chinnery is the author of several books on aviation and military history. He lives in Berkshire, England.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A sampling of these war crimes as they occurred,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Korean Atrocity!: Forgotten War Crimes, 1950-1953 (Hardcover)
Korean Atrocity!: Forgotten War Crimes 1950-1953 came about when Philip Chinnery, acting in his capacity of Historian for the National Ex-prisoners of War Association was conducting some research at the Public Records Office and came across newly de-classified files on the Korean War. He discovered these files contained investigations into 1,615 atrocities and war crimes perpetrated against troops serving with the United Nations command in Korea. 10,233 of these victims of war crimes by the North Koreans and the Communist Chinese were American. Much of the material is horrific and leave no doubt that had American pursued the conflict to a clear win instead of a truce there would have been an Asian style Nuremberg trial for many North Korean and Chinese soldiers and their superiors. Korean Atrocity! surveys a sampling of these war crimes as they occurred in the first part of the war when the opposing sides fought themselves to a standstill; the treatment of prisoners of war in North Korea and China; and the eventual repatriation of prisoners that left 100 British servicemen and 7,956 American military personnel unaccounted for. The role of the American government regarding these missing men is, itself, a part of the scandal kept from the American public to this very day. Korean Atrocity! is very highly recommended reading for military buffs in general, and students of American military involvement in the Korean War in particular.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
America abandons its warriors,
By
This review is from: Korean Atrocity!: Forgotten War Crimes, 1950-1953 (Hardcover)
When Colin Powell, as secretary of state, was playing kissy-face with the Chinese Communists a few years ago, he did not demand an accounting of the several hundred American prisoners of war who disappeared without a trace in China during the Korean War. For a former chief of staff of the Army to abandon his fellow soldiers in this manner was dishonorable, but Powell is in other respects no different from any other high American official in the last half century.
That China -- and North Korea and the U.S.S.R., too -- violated solemn agreements and failed to return war prisoners has been known since the shooting stopped in 1953. For some reason, British ex-prisoners have been more active than America's former POWs in Asia about demanding an accounting, apology and compensation for mistreatment by various enemy states, including Japan, China and North Korea. Not successful, but active. Philip Chinnery, author of many histories, is part of this movement in the United Kingdom. The subtitle of his "Korean Atrocity! Forgotten War Crimes 1950-1953" is a little misleading. The atrocities did not stop in 1953. In every war there are outrages and crimes. But only occasionally does a government organize atrocities as policy. Such crimes are qualitatively and -- according to the Nuremburg Principles -- legally more culpable than freelance war crimes. North Korea, China and the Soviet Union were all guilty of these more heinous crimes in the 1950-53 invasion of Korea. Almost all the victims were South Koreans. The North Koreans systematically slaughtered anyone who worked for the Republic of Korea government and usually their families as well. There also was an organized procedure to torture and murder helpless prisoners of war from the moment they surrendered. This kept up in the prison camps, until, as Chinnery writes, the Chinese realized that the war would end someday and there would be a prisoner exchange and they would have to have to prisoners to return. Pitifully few were still alive by then. Chinnery's relation of how they died is not for the faint of heart. The GIs in South Korea in 1950 had the bad luck to be commanded by the vainglorious and incompetent Douglas MacArthur, who managed to get his men into more death marches than all other American generals put together. Chinnery quotes from judicial proceedings made during and after the war, and from personal experiences of survivors. Nothing in the history of human depravity exceeds what some of the United Nations soldiers were put through. Other evidence, though indirect, is in a way even more chilling. For example, at the end of the Korean War and again at the end of the Vietnam War, the enemies of the United States "returned" prisoners, as demanded by the Geneva Convention and specific agreements. Except in neither case did a single amputee ever return. In 1992, at Congressional hearings, some of the murders and tortures were briefly publicized, but public and governmental indifference were insufficient to do anything more. "The men fought as best they could," writes Chinnery, "and when they became prisoners of war their governments turned their backs and abandoned them. That is the greatest atrocity of them all."
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good account of communist atrocities,
By Bobby Dillard (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Korean Atrocity!: Forgotten War Crimes, 1950-1953 (Hardcover)
Most modern people's knowledge with the Korean War is probably limited to what they see in the television show, "M*A*S*H". Given this, they probably believe that the NKPA and Chinese weren't so bad with prisoners. Nothing could be further from the truth. This book documents the horrendous atrocities dealt out to US and Allied troops during the Korean War from loading up wounded on trucks and sending them over cliffs to using POW's as bayonet dummies. Furthermore it details POW's released after the ceasefire and has evidence that many more POW's were still held in communist custody.This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Korean War.
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