Overview

Prisoners suffer in every conflict, but American servicemen captured during the Korean War faced a unique ordeal. Like prisoners in other wars, these men endured harsh conditions and brutal mistreatment at the hands of their captors. In Korea, however, they faced something new: a deliberate enemy program of indoctrination and coercion designed to manipulate them for propaganda purposes. Most Americans rejected their captors’ promise of a Marxist paradise, yet after the cease fire in 1953, American prisoners came home to face a second wave of attacks. Exploiting popular American fears of communist infiltration, critics portrayed the returning prisoners as weak-willed pawns who had been “brainwashed” into betraying their country. The truth was far more complicated. Following the North Korean assault on the Republic of Korea in June of 1950, the invaders captured more than a thousand American soldiers and brutally executed hundreds more. American prisoners who survived their initial moments of captivity faced months of neglect, starvation, and brutal treatment as their captors marched them north toward prison camps in the Yalu River Valley. Counterattacks by United Nations forces soon drove the North Koreans back across the 38th Parallel, but the unexpected intervention of Communist Chinese forces in November of 1950 led to the capture of several thousand more American prisoners. Neither the North Koreans nor their Chinese allies were prepared to house or feed the thousands of prisoners in their custody, and half of the Americans captured that winter perished for lack of food, shelter, and medicine. Subsequent communist efforts to indoctrinate and coerce propaganda statements from their prisoners sowed suspicion and doubt among those who survived. Relying on memoirs, trial transcripts, debriefings, declassified government reports, published analysis, and media coverage, plus conversations, interviews, and correspondence with several dozen former prisoners, William Clark Latham Jr. seeks to correct misperceptions that still linger, six decades after the prisoners came home. Through careful research and solid historical narrative, Cold Days in Hell provides a detailed account of their captivity and offers valuable insights into an ongoing issue: the conduct of prisoners in the hands of enemy captors and the rules that should govern their treatment.

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9781603440738

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Reviews

The writing is outstanding in form and content. When he describes battles, captures, long marches, prison camps, it feels as if I was actually there...reads more like a work of literature than a work of history...exciting from beginning to end...superbly researched...pristine...the author did a wonderful job...excellent primary and secondary sources...stunning in its breadth and clarity...worthy of the highest praise...it's really a wonderful contribution to American military history in general and to Korean War POW studies in particular --Robert C. Doyle, leading expert on the treatment of enemy combatants and prisoners of war, past and present; professor of history at Franciscan University of Steubenville<br><br>

One of the book's great strengths is its highly readable sections that recount the war's central battles. These sections out to attract those teachers on the lookout for a user-friendly military history of the war, since Lantham's account, unlike most works on this topic, is neither long nor dense... Performs an important function. Both authors tell this distressing story with verve, passion, and empathy. Intelligently conceived and exhaustively researched, they are important and interesting additions to the field. --;br> --Steven Casey The Journal of Military History

Author Information

William C. Latham Jr. is an assistant professor at the Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, USA.

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