695A.0024/5–1252: Telegram

The Ambassador in Korea (Muccio) to the Department of State

top secret

1100. No distribution. Eyes only for Park Armstrong from Chase.1 Arrived eleventh. Delay Tokyo regretted but, resulted useful meeting Lt. Aoa Meisling, one of senior “linguists” handling screening Chinese POW’s. Selected as China expert, he came fresh to task with no previous POW connection. I have known and respected him since my 1943 Pentagon assignment.

Based his own observations and harrowing experiences as active participant before Scatter operation including premature orientation phase, outstanding feature was extent pro-Nationalist POW’s controlling administration camps 72 and 86 (Main hq. camps totaling 14,350 men) dominated proceedings through violent systematic terrorism and physical punishment of those choosing “against going Taiwan” (as the issue was militantly advertised by pro-Nationalists) throughout both orientation and screening phases. Severe beatings, torture, some killings. Meisling estimates this factor reduced Chinese POW’s choosing repatriation by upwards 2000. He believed other linguists’ impressions similar his own. Showed me supporting top secret memorandum2 he prepared “for record” only (in view his non-connection regular POW work). Carefully detailed, impressive.

G–1 and G–2 officers regularly handling POW affairs (but not participating in actual screening) with whom I talked Tokyo, while admitting KMT violence during operation, showed disinclination treat or discuss it as possibly decisive factor (though agreeing some KMT cumulative camp influence probably not without some effect). G–1 officer who had specially recommended my seeing Meisling became distinctly unhappy when I expressed interest getting copy his memorandum, terming “only one man’s observations,” and I dropped request.

Accordingly, believe must feel my way cautiously this aspect, realizing of course, that Meisling’s picture possibly overdrawn or untypical and in any case not entire answer to puzzle. Proposed discreetly seek [Page 193] opportunity interview one or two other supervising “linguists” (now understood scattered Korea, Tokyo, Hong Kong). Meanwhile, feel duty report my tentative feeling importance Meisling testimony as probably revealing one important factor that is better discoverable from linguists than POW’s and that already materially lessens extent to which we likely find phenomenon attributable causes general long term significance.3

Svensson M. Kogstad and other officers Tokyo all cooperative, helpful.

Muccio
  1. The large number of Chinese prisoners who indicated in Operation Scatter that they would violently resist repatriation prompted officials at the Department of State to question whether these sentiments reflected a significant lack of support for the Chinese regime or the People’s Liberation Army. After agreement by the UNC, A. Sabin Chase, Chief of the Division of Research for the Far East, assisted by Philip Manhard of the U.S. Embassy in Korea, was sent to conduct interrogations of selected Chinese POWs; telegram 755 to Pusan, Apr. 22, 1952 (795.00/4–2252), and telegram C 67563, CINCUNC to the Department of the Army, Apr. 26, 1952 (FE files, lot 55 D 128, tab 63).
  2. Not found in Department of State files.
  3. On May 23, Chase reported that his interrogation of sample Chinese POWs clearly showed that the screening results reflected local factors—not least among which was KMT camp influence—and were without importance from the standpoint of appraising the strength of the People’s Republic of China (telegram 1147 from Pusan, May 23, 1952; 695A.0024/5–2352).