Review of "American POWs In Korea: Sixteen Personal Accounts," edited by Harry Spiller

 Review of

American POWs In Korea: Sixteen Personal Accounts, edited by Harry Spiller, ISBN 0786405619

Five out of five stars

The brutal treatment of American prisoners

 The first real hot war within the misnamed decades long Cold War, the Korean War was another civil war that became a proxy fight between the Communist and American blocks. While many nations contributed combat forces under the United Nations banner in support of the South Koreans, the two main fighting blocks on the other side were the North Koreans and the Chinese forces from the People’s Republic of China. While both of these groups took American prisoners and treated them brutally, the treatment at the hands of the Chinese was a bit milder.

 This book contains descriptions of the experiences of 16 American soldiers that were taken captive by the forces of the north. They are all similar, in that they were largely forced to survive in captivity with few resources of food, clothing and shelter. They were forced to observe many of their colleagues suffer and die when they could do nothing about it.

 All wars are brutal and bring out the worst in human nature, so what the North Korean forces did to American captives was not really very far out of the historical norm. Even if you are armed with the knowledge of this historical reality, these stories are hard to read. These people truly suffered and in most cases only barely managed to survive. It is a valuable history of some events of what is often called “America’s Forgotten War.”

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