The Limits of Persuasion: Rhetoric and Resistance in the Last Battle of the Korean War

Abstract

This essay explores the case of twenty-three American POWs who refused to return to the United States at the end of the Korean War. It first highlights the role of resistance in liberal rhetorical theory and then uses resistance as a lens to analyze public discourse about the incident. Looking closely at the three most common explanations for the soldiers' turning (youth, impairment, and brainwashing), the essay shows how the debate over the nonrepatriates was fundamentally a controversy over the limits of persuasion.

Keywords:

• Persuasion
• Resistance
• Korean War
• Prisoners of War
• Cold War

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Rob Asen, Barbara Biesecker, Eunjung Kim, Christa Olson, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, and Liz Barr for her research assistance. She would especially like to thank David Hawkins (the youngest American nonrepatriate) who graciously shared memories of his experiences, even though he did not wish to be interviewed for this essay.

Notes

[1] Martin Medhurst, “Introduction” in Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor, and Ideology, eds. Martin J. Medhurst, Robert L. Ivie, Philip Wander, and Robert L. Scott (New York, NY: Greenwood, 1990), 4.

[2] A number of rhetorical studies of the Truman and Eisenhower presidencies and the Cold War have referenced Korea, but very few rhetorical scholars have taken the Korean War itself as a central topic. Notable rhetorical studies of Korean War discourse include Raymie McKerrow, “Truman and Korea: Rhetoric in the Pursuit of Victory,” Central States Speech Journal 28, no. 1 (1977): 1–12; Robert L. Ivie, “Declaring a National Emergency: Truman's Rhetorical Crisis and the Great Debate of 1951,” in The Modern Presidency and Crisis Rhetoric, ed. Amos Kiewe (Praeger, 1994): 1–18; Kenneth S. Zagacki, “Eisenhower and the Rhetoric of Postwar Korea,” Southern Communication Journal 60, no. 3 (1995): 233–45; and Suhi Choi, “Silencing Survivors' Narratives: Why Are We Again Forgetting the No Gun Ri Story?” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 11, no. 3 (2008): 367–88.

[3] “Korea: The Prisoners Go Free,” Time, November 1, 1953, 16.

[4] James Veneris (who was later known by his Chinese name, Lao Wen) and Harold Webb remained in China for the rest of their lives. For a longer discussion of Edward Dickenson and Claude Batchelor, the two nonrepatriates who did not leave for China, see note 75.

[5] “GIs Outshine Eggheads in Resisting Reds,” Saturday Evening Post, October 12, 1953, 11.

[6] Because the language of “choice” and “decision” was the topic of debate, I use the neutral term “turn” to describe what took place in the Korean camps. I take the idea from Michael Naas, Turning: From Persuasion to Philosophy: A Reading of Homer's Iliad (Newark, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995).

[7] Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, ed. Michael Keefer (Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, [1604] 2008), 90.

[8] Sharon Crowley, Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 36.

[9] Kenneth Burke, Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969), 50.

[10] Burke, Rhetoric of Motives, 43. For a rethinking of Burke's dyad, see Debra Hawhee, “Language as Sensuous Action: Sir Richard Paget, Kenneth Burke, and Gesture-Speech Theory,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 92, no. 4 (2006): 331–54.

[11] While I haven't the space to detail the vast Cold War rhetorical bibliography here, see, for example, J. Michael Hogan, “Eisenhower and Open Skies: A Case Study in ‘Psychological Warfare,’” in Eisenhower's War of Words: Rhetoric and Leadership, ed. Martin J. Medhurst (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1994), 137–55; Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987); and, especially, Shawn J. Parry-Giles, The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002).

[12] Martin J. Medhurst, “Text and Context in the 1952 Presidential Campaign: Eisenhower's ‘I Shall Go to Korea’ Speech,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 30, no.3 (2000): 464–84.

[13] For a summary of public and academic concerns regarding Cold War liberal subjectivity, see Anna Krylova, “The Tenacious Liberal Subject in Soviet Studies,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 1, no. 1 (2008): 119–46.

[14] Korea: A Summary of Developments in the Armistice Negotiations and the Prisoner of War Camps, June 1951-May 1952 (London, UK: HMSO, 1952), 20. For an account of the forced repatriation of Soviet prisoners, see Nikolai Tolstoy, The Secret Betrayal (New York, NY: Scribner, 1978).

[15] For more on the interpretation of Geneva Convention with respect to the Korean POW issue, see Jan P. Charmatz and Harold M. Wit, “Repatriation of Prisoners of War and the 1949 Geneva Convention,” The Yale Law Journal 62, no. 3 (1953): 391–415, and Joyce A.C. Gutteridge, “The Repatriation of Prisoners of War,” The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 2, no. 2 (1953): 207–16.

[16] Robert Alden, “Last Korea Battle By ‘Unrepatriates,’” New York Times, September 27, 1953, 1.

[17] “Agreement on Prisoners of War,” The American Journal of International Law 47, no. 4 (1953): 180–86.

[18] “Korea: The Second Humiliation,” Time, November 9, 1953, 26.

[19] “Comrade, Red Coxes; Dog! POW Spits Back!” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 1, 1953, 1.

[20] “Reds Resume POW Talks Mid Shouts, Oaths,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 16, 1953, 4.

[21] One Life account of a Chinese explanation tent, for example, describes a nonrepatriates’ choice as that between the door to “freedom” and the door to “death.” John Osborne, “A Prisoner's Door to Freedom,” Life, October 26, 1953, 44–45. For representative studies of Cold War rhetorical binaries, see Medhurst, “Text and Context,” and Martin J. Medhurst, “Eisenhower and the Crusade for Freedom: The Rhetorical Origins of a Cold War Campaign,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1997): 646–61.

[22] Kai Yin Allison Haga, “Rising to the Occasion: The Role of American Missionaries and Korean Pastors in Resisting Communism Throughout the Korean War,” in Religion and the Cold War: A Global Perspective, ed. Philip E. Muehlenbeck (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012): 88–112, 100.

[23] “P.O.W.'s Reported Converted,” New York Times, October 12, 1953, 2.

[24] “Ike Gets Blood Signed Vows from Anti-Reds,” Las Vegas [NM] Daily Optic, November 3, 1953, 1.

[25] “22,000 to 22,” Time, January 4, 1954, 17.

[26] “Korea: Freedom for Anti-Red Prisoners,” Time, February 1, 1954, 18.

[27] “Allies Beginning to Transfer Captives to Neutral Custody,” New York Times, September 8, 1953, 1, my emphasis.

[28] In the POW camps, UNC prisoners who showed any sympathy toward communism were labeled “progressives,” and sometimes drew the derision of their fellow prisoners. However, “progressives” were preferred over “rats,” who were seen as mere opportunists acting only out of self-interest rather than true belief. See William Brinkley, “Almost All Prisoners Come Home Happily,” Life, September 7, 1953, 26–27.

[29] “POWs Shake Their Fists at US Team,” AP, Albert Lea [MN] Sunday Tribune, September 27, 1953, 1.

[30] Sharon L. Crenson and Martha Mendoza, “Surviving Korean War POWs-Turned-Defectors Offer Their Insights on Lindh,” Seattle Times, April 2, 2002, http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20020402&slug=defectors02.

[31] “Families Shocked by GIs Turned Red: Many Refuse to Believe It While Others Think Decision Was Forced,” Los Angeles Times, September 25, 1953, 1.

[32] Dwight D. Eisenhower: “The President's News Conference,” January 27, 1954. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu.

[33] Virginia Pasley, 21 Stayed (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1955), 15.

[34] Raymond B. Lech, Broken Soldiers (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 267.

[35] “End of the Road,” New York Times, December 23, 1953, 24.

[36] “Journey of Faith for a Son Who Denies It,” Life, December 28, 1953, 11.

[37] Jim McCluskey, “Alden Mother Fights to Win Back POW Son,” Albert Lea Evening Tribune, October 16, 1953, 2.

[38] “Holds Her Hopes: Alden Mother Makes Recording Plea to Son,” Albert Lea Sunday Tribune, September 27, 1953, 1.

[39] McCluskey, “Alden Mother Fights,” 2.

[40] Pasley, 21 Stayed, 173.

[41] “Army Bars Korea Trip for 23 G.I.'s Mothers,” New York Times, October 1, 1953, 3.

[42] “Journey of Faith,” 11.

[43] “Text of Note ‘Rich’ Wrote His Mother,” Albert Lea Evening Tribune, December 14, 1953, 1.

[44] William V. Jorden, “Case of P.O.W. Tenneson: His Mother's Explanation,” New York Times, December 20, 1953, E5, my emphasis.

[45] “Dulles Likens Reluctant 22 To ‘Lost Sheep’ in Gospels,” New York Times, December 23, 1953, 4.

[46] “On Dealing with the Turncoats,” Los Angeles Times, July 31, 1955, B4.

[47] “On Dealing with the Turncoats,” B4.

[48] “Inside Story of Why Prisoners Balk At Coming Home,” US News and World Report, December 25, 1955, 24; “Freed Lensman Scores Silence at Red Probes,” Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1954, 12; “Korean Puzzle: Americans Who Stay,” US News and World Report, October 9, 1953, 38.

[49] Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 36.

[50] “Korean Puzzle,” 38.

[51] Clarence Adams, An American Dream: The Life of an African American Soldier and POW Who Spent Twelve Years in China, eds. Della Adams and Lewis H. Carson (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 118.

[52] In the early 1960s, Adams recorded a series of messages broadcast to African- American soldiers in Vietnam in which he repeated his criticism. “You are supposedly fighting for the freedom of the Vietnamese,” he told them, “but what kind of freedom do you have at home, sitting in the back of the bus, being barred from restaurants, stores and certain neighborhoods, and being denied the right to vote… . Go home and fight for equality in America.” After the cultural revolution, Adams, his Chinese wife, and his family returned to his native Memphis where they ran a Chinese restaurant for many years. Adams, An American Dream, 240.

[53] Two of the Americans, Edward Dickenson and Claude Batchelor chose to return to the United States rather than relocate to China. However, although Pasley discusses their cases in the book, they remain uncounted in her title. For more on Dickenson and Batchelor, see note 75.

[54] Pasley, 21 Stayed, 24.

[55] Pasley, 21 Stayed, 132.

[56] Pasley, 21 Stayed, 227, my emphasis.

[57] “Korean Puzzle,” 38.

[58] “Reluctant Prisoners,” New York Times, September 18, 1953, 22. By presenting the American community as “healthy,” the editorial draws on a long American tradition of framing national strength and civic function using metaphors of health and illness.

[59] Parke G. Burgess, “Crisis Rhetoric: Coercion vs. Force,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 59, no. 1 (1973): 61–73.

[60] Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1985).

[61] For a sustained discussion on the distinctions and relations between rhetoric and violence, see the special forum edited by Jeremy Engels in Quarterly Journal of Speech 99, no. 2 (2003): 180–232.

[62] John McCain, “How the POWs Fought Back,” US News & World Report, May 14, 1973, 5.

[63] Gallup Poll, January, 1954. Retrieved February 16, 2012 from the iPOLL Databank, The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/data_access/ipoll/ipoll.html

[64] Charles S. Young, “Missing Action: POW Films, Brainwashing and the Korean War, 1954–1968,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 18, no. 1 (1998): 49–74, 60.

[65] “Clark Denounces Germ War Charges: Accuses Chinese Communists of Fabricating,” New York Times, February 24, 1953, 2.

[66] The image of brainwashing was charged by US fears about the unknown capacities of communist science as well as orientalist images of the “mysterious” East. For more, see Albert Biderman, “The Image of ‘Brainwashing,’” The Public Opinion Quarterly 26, no. 4 (1962): 547–63, esp. 552.

[67] Robert Jay Lifton, Thought Control and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 4.

[68] D.V. Gallery, “We Can Baffle the Brainwashers!” Saturday Evening Post, January 22, 1955, 20.

[69] For more on discourses of personality change during the Cold War, see Jenell Johnson, American Lobotomy: A Rhetorical History (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2014): 72–105. Some of the information on brainwashing in this section can also be found in that analysis, which briefly discusses Korean War nonrepatriation in conjunction with American attitudes toward psychiatry during the Cold War.

[70] Edward Hunter, Brainwashing: The Story of Men Who Defied It (New York, NY: Pyramid Books, 1956), 3, original emphasis.

[71] Edward Hunter, Brain-washing in Red China (New York, NY: The Vanguard Press, 1951), 70.

[72] Hunter, Brainwashing: The Story of Men Who Defied It, 14–15, my emphasis.

[73] Ernst Jentsch, “Zur Psychologie des Unheimlichen,” Psychiatrisch-Neurologische Wochenschrift 8, no. 22 (1906): 195–98; Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny” in The Pelican Freud Library, vol. 14, trans. James Strachey, ed. Albert Dickson (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1985), 335–76.

[74] See Joost Meerloo, “The Crime of Menticide.” American Journal of Psychiatry 107, no. 8 (1951): 594–98, and especially his sensationally titled book Rape of the Mind (New York, NY: World Publishing Company, 1956). Meerloo testified on behalf of Col. Frank Schwable, another supposed brainwashing victim, who had been charged with making false accusations of germ warfare.

[75] Dwight D. Eisenhower news conference March 10, 1954. The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=10177#axzz1kVNFOJr7.

[76] “Clark Denounces Germ War Charges: Accuses Chinese Communists of Fabricating,” New York Times, February 24, 1953, 2, my emphasis.

[77] While brainwashing may have captured the American imagination and evoked its sympathies, when put into service in an actual courtroom, it failed as a legal defense. As I mentioned in the introduction, two of the original twenty-three nonrepatriates, Edward Dickenson and Claude Batchelor, changed their minds and decided to repatriate rather than relocate to China (Dickenson left Panmunjom in October and Batchelor left in January). After the deadline, each was court-martialed (even though the nonrepatriates had been told that they could repatriate without fear of reprisal) and charged with aiding the enemy. Both attempted to use brainwashing as a defense, and the men were sentenced to four and six years in prison, respectively. See “Brainwash Plea Lost by Ex-P.O.W.,” New York Times, September 16, 1954, 9. In a remarkable point of irony, although Dickenson and Batchelor were punished for returning, the twenty-one nonrepatriates who left for China were never charged with anything when they returned to the United States. In 1955, the Supreme Court had ruled that the military's jurisdiction extended only to active duty soldiers, which meant that any returning American nonrepatriates could not be court-martialed, since all had been dishonorably discharged before they left for China. Toth v. Quarles, 350 US 11 (1955).

[78] Dwight Martin, “The Iron Umpire of Panmunjom,” Life November 30, 1953, 137–46.

[79] “22 POWs Shout ‘No’ as US Makes Final Plea.” Austin [MN] Daily Herald, December 23, 1953, 1.

[80] “Statement by Pro-Red Korea Captives,” New York Times, January 27, 1954, 2.

[81] “End of the Road,” New York Times, December 23, 1953, 24.

[82] Don Paul Abbott, Rhetoric in the New World: Rhetorical Theory and Practice in Colonial Spanish America (Charleston, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 16.

[83] Cold War anxiety about the limits of persuasion extended beyond the issue of nonrepatriation, whose “human symbols” I believe serve as the most illustrative example. For many years, US scholarly attempts to understand communism were frequently cast in the language of individual pathology. Influential studies such as Daniel Bell's Marxian Socialism in the United States (1952), Gabriel Almond's The Appeals of Communism (1954), and Irving Howe and Lewis Coser's The American Communist Party: A Critical History (1957) suggested that communist political beliefs were the result of a pathological personality rather than the effect of a persuasive message. Rather than entertain the idea that communism might be a rational choice by people free to choose otherwise, studies like these, like public discourse about the nonrepatriates, centered on the irrationality and compromised autonomy of the audience. From Almond's assessment that communists exhibited “neurotic susceptibility,” to Howe and Coser's argument that party members suffered from weak egos, to the “lavender scare” of gay men's supposed susceptibility to blackmail, communists both real and imagined were characterized by their perceived lack of resistance.

[84] “US Taliban Fighter Was ‘Brainwashed,’” SkyNews, December 4, 2001, http://news.sky.com/story/69781/us-taliban-fighter-was-brainwashed.

[85] Jack Hitt, “Return of the Brainwashing Defense,” New York Times, December 15, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/magazine/the-year-in-ideas-return-of-the-brainwashing-defense-the.html

[86] Albert Biderman, March to Calumny: The Story of American POWs in the Korean War (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1963), 164.

[87] Eric King Watts, “'Voice’ and ‘Voicelessness’ in Rhetorical Studies,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 87, no. 2 (2001): 180.

[88] See, for example, Krista Ratclife, Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness (Carbondale: SIU Press, 2005) and Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).

[89] Krista Ratcliffe, “Rhetorical Listening: A Trope for Interpretive Invention and a ‘Code of Cross-Cultural Conduct,’’ College Composition and Communication 51, no. 2 (1999): 208.

[90] On the relationship between liberal subjectivity and rhetorical ability, see Catherine Prendergast, ‘‘On the Rhetorics of Mental Disability,’’ in Embodied Rhetorics: Disability In Language and Culture ed. by James C. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001): 45–60; Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, ‘‘Rethinking Rhetoric through Mental Disabilities,’’ Rhetoric Review 22, no. 2 (2003): 156–67; Jenell Johnson, “The Skeleton on the Couch: The Eagleton Affair, Rhetorical Disability, and the Stigma of Mental Illness,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 40, 5: 459–78; Margaret Price, Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2011); and Jay Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013).