Olympics Bring Pain for POW/MIA Families

POW/MIA Family Groups/Business Wire ^ | 8/18/2008 | O'Shea

[Colportage]

Olympics Bring Pain and Frustration to Families of Korean War POW/MIAs Beijing Kept American Prisoners, Alive or Dead, But Refuses to Account for Them Families Demand Action from China and Bush Administration

Korea-Cold War Families of the Missing & National Alliance of POW/MIA Families:

(Aug. 17, 2008) For families across America, the Chinese Olympics are a reminder of the unresolved fates of loved ones imprisoned by China and ignored by President Bush.

Following decades of U.S. demands for answers, China on Feb. 29, 2008, agreed to turn over POW documents from its military archives. Yet Beijing has yet to deliver. Meantime, during the Olympics, President Bush has pushed China on human rights and religious freedom but failed to make any public demand for information on America’s 8,000 POW/MIAs.

“The Bush Administration, along with Congress and the media have forgotten our lost heroes and their families,” said Irene Mandra, whose brother USMC Sgt. Philip Mandra disappeared during combat with the Chinese. “They call this China’s ‘Coming Out Party,’ but we say it’s time for Beijing finally to come clean on our missing heroes.”

China, fighting for communist North Korea with Soviet help, was America’s primary foe during the 1950-3 war. Many GIs identified by name in prisons run by the Chinese in North Korea never returned. Thousands simply went missing. U.S. intelligence reported some went to secret camps in China itself from which no-one would be repatriated, including selected captives sent on to the Soviet Union.

Army Capt. Harry Moreland, seen by fellow prisoners in a Chinese-run camp, had both legs amputated. He never returned -- the Chinese later claimed he “escaped.” Gerald Glasser, reported by sixty-six returned Americans, “was taken away in a jeep by Chinese officers” shortly before war’s end. Air Force officers Kassel Keene, Robert Martin and George W. Patton disappeared after sentences for prison time “not to be affected by repatriation,” intelligence indicated. Sgt. Richard Desautels, a handsome Vermont teenager, angered guards by interpreting Chinese for buddies and showing a “bad attitude.” Desautels pleaded with a fellow POW that “if he should disappear to make inquiries concerning his whereabouts with the proper military authorities.” He never came home -- China claimed he too “escaped.”

For decades Beijing denied it knew anything more about these men, many others identified in its hands, and those reported in the secret Chinese camps. Then, in a move kept quiet until this June by both Beijing and the Pentagon, the Chinese broke 50 years of stonewalling in 2003, admitting Desautels did not escape but instead was secretly taken to China. They now claim he died after a brief “mental illness” and was buried in Shenyang. His remains have since been lost, China maintains, and the full report on him is classified.

“This ‘accounting’ raises even more questions,” said Bill Sowles, whose father, Sgt. Lewis Sowles, went MIA around the same time and place as Desautels. “It’s quite a coincidence that Beijing ‘lost’ Sgt. Desautels’ remains in Shenyang – reportedly home to a secret camp from which Americans would never return and, according to at least one source, a shipment point for certain U.S. POWs to Siberia. Embarrassing issues for a place now celebrated on TV as an Olympic soccer venue,” Sowles added.

Every major Olympic venue city -- with the exception of Hong Kong, under British control during the war – was suspected of holding unreturned U.S. prisoners, according to intelligence reports:

Shanghai: Now an Olympic soccer venue. Then location of a camp to indoctrinate U.S. POWs, some reported by name, at “No.35, Lane 1136, Yuyuen Road…They have no freedom of movement and are not free to talk. They must attend meetings daily to study communist doctrine.”

Qingdao: Now the Olympic sailing center, then a reported camp for American and Allied prisoners. Wu Shu-Jen, a Chinese Communist Party defector, testified under oath to Congress that he saw Caucasians said to be U.S. prisoners considered “stubborn elements that refuse to repent” during a 1960 visit to a Qingdao tool factory.

Tianjin: Now a soccer venue, then a suspected secret POW camp.

Beijing: Now the main Olympics location. Then: home to a secret camp holding mostly African-Americans; prison site where a repatriated U.S. airman reported his crewmember, 1Lt. Paul Van Voorhis, had been held back; and possible prison for Lt. JG James Deane, Jr., an aviator shot down and captured after the war, according to U.S. intelligence files. Now AND then: home to the Communist Party and Chinese military organizations in charge of the U.S. POW issue since 1950.

While they are ignored by the U.S. government and media at the Games, Evelyn Johnson, wife of Sgt. Sowles, cannot watch events at these venues without thinking of her husband and his fellow POW/MIAs. "I wonder what these poor men must be thinking now,” she said.

# Contact: Irene Mandra --- Korea-Cold War Families of the Missing—(516)694-0989 – email -- imandra@optonline.net Lynn O’Shea ---- National Alliance of POW/MIA Families – (718) 846-4350 – email – lynn@nationalalliance.org

[onedoug]

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