Captured by Chinese soldiers in North Korea in December 1950, 18-year-old Army Sgt. Richard G. Desautels, of Shoreham, Vt., was taken to China and shuffled around several POW camps, never accounted for by the Chinese at the end of the Korean War. Other returned POWs reported to Army interrogators that they had seen Desautels alive as late as March 1952.
Fifty years later, in March 2003, Chinese authorities divulged details of Desautels’ death at a meeting with US officials in Beijing, claiming he had died “a week after becoming mentally ill.” The information was shared with Desautels’ family members. His brother contacted a POW-MIA advocacy group, the National Alliance of Families, who alerted AP to the story, which you can read in its entirety here.
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That’s cool.
Most POWs who spent their time in Chinese hands fared ok in the Korean War - the problem was when they were passed back to the North Koreans. I just interviewed an Australian POW who was shot down in Korea. He wasn’t treated too badly when he was sent to China for re-education, but when he refused to pass over intelligence he was put back into North Korea and thats when things got real bad for him and the others he met there. A lot of pows died in the DPRK, or were so brutalizes that when they went to China they never recovered.
Thanks Seoulchild. Fascinating.