深度分析：為何朝鮮戰爭中戰俘被視為叛徒

http://www.fornits.com/anonanon/articles/200103/20010330-258.htm

Unlike previous wars, Korea ended not with an atomic bang or conquest of a foreign capital, but when the last prisoner stepped off the boat. Under this kind of scrutiny and with no victory celebration for distraction, collaboration in prison camps could not remain the great unmentionable. Hints during the war of widespread collaboration became a flood as the POWs docked. It took a month to repatriate all the Americans, providing daily anecdotal evidence of treason. Each boat-load of returnees provided reporters with headlines like 'P.W.s Say Some G.I.s "Swallowed" Red Line, Bitter G.I.s Out to "Get" Informers Among P.W.s', or, simply, 'The Rats' [21]. By the most agitated estimate, one-third of all POWs were guilty of some sort of collaboration with the enemy. By another account it was one in seven [22]. Most disturbing were the defectors. Initially, 23 American prisoners chose communism over returning home [23]. Reporters exposed the 'personal flaws' that led to treason. He was 'raised in a city slum', began one news story, and he had a sister confined to an orphanage and blinded by syphilis [24]. Defectors were regularly seen as either craven or as little boys requiring heart-rending appeals. The governor of Maryland joined one mother in a taped plea asking her son to return home. 'We all make mistakes', suggested the governor. 'Regardless of what you may have been told', he added, 'the United States has no imperialist ambitions'. 'Jack, please hurry', added the mother, her voice breaking [25]. Collaboration was understood as a defect primarily in the individual, secondarily in the environment, but rarely as a predictable occurrence in wartime incarceration.

The thesis that Korean War POWs were particularly prone to collaborate has proven tenacious, despite being meticulously debunked as early as 1963 by Pentagon consultant Albert Biderman [26]. It was the captivity that was different, not the captives. In most conflicts, the frequency of collusion goes unspoken, but the Cold War put a premium on world opinion, a contest in which all Korea POWs starred. American prisoners were forced to broadcast confessions in Marxist jargon, rather than just quietly inform on fellows as in previous conflicts. The Korean War also included periods of incarceration as harsh as any in American experience - one-third perished - producing a highly coercive atmosphere. If there was more collaboration in Korea, it is best explained by the demands of the captors and the conditions of captivity, rather than a decline in the character of youth in the years since 1945.

Public innocence as to the reality of captivity was an important factor in the harsh judgment of the POWs. During World War II, it was axiomatic that prisoners were to give only their name, rank and serial number [27]. Every soldier, family and reader of comics knew that this was the measure of honor. Military planners, however, recognized this as a fiction, more for elan before capture than a commandment for after. Even without physical torture, the compulsion to say something, even a subterfuge, is great. Not even General William F. Dean, the highest-ranking officer captured in Korea, stuck to name, rank and serial number. When seized, Dean possessed the most electrifying intelligence imaginable: the surprise invasion planned for Inchon. Dean reported that he was never harmed physically, but was repeatedly interrogated for 72 hours at a stretch. He talked and talked some more about the most inconsequential things he could muster, but he never gave up the prize. 'I was trying to divert them from really starting those oriental tortures', Dean privately told a Pentagon committee. During the third multiday interrogation, Dean sensed he was going to break and was then narrowly prevented from committing suicide. He was not bothered after that [28].

The Pentagon's Burgess Committee, which investigated Korean imprisonment, knew that few humans could resist as well as General Dean, let alone remain silent. A rear admiral told the committee that all of his own interrogation experts claimed to be able to 'extract information from anybody, and they say they can do it even without using actual torture, [29]. A study of Air Force POWs in Korea reported that only 6% （12 men） recommended a policy of remaining silent, but none of them claimed to have succeeded [30]. A Joint Chiefs of Staff study of World War II concluded that 'skilled interrogators have virtually no difficulty in obtaining information from prisoners'. The report suggested trying to satisfy interrogators with vague, ignorant-sounding answers [31]. This doctrine of the 'indefinite answer' was not implemented, however and when prisoners returned from Korea, their country still expected them to have stuck to name, rank and serial number. When events conspired to expose the failure of this in every newspaper, the dismay was inevitable.

The high visibility and seeming pusillanimity of returned prisoners made them a target of frustration over America's lost victory. The perceived weakness of American youth in captivity became a staple of civic events and the chicken dinner circuit, where patriotic speakers lamented the deterioration of morals. Particularly active was Charles Mayer, a military psychiatrist by day, who gave talks and interviews into the 1960s. In a U.S. News and World Report interview entitled 'Why Did Many GI Captives Cave In?', Mayer used Korea for sweeping indictments of society: 'one third of prisoners lacked faith in America'; 'the American educational system is failing miserably'; 'we should develop more toughness'; and responsibility lies with 'people who raise and teach children' [32]. Journalist Eugene Kinkead was also influential. Drawing on confidential material provided by the Army, he published a 40,000 word piece in The New Yorker and a mass-market version in McCall's. His book, In Every War but One, expanded the argument that America's youth was always dutiful until Korea [33].

Lack of masculinity and national spiritual decline were the more reputable explanations for their susceptibility, while another was 'brainwashing', a term made common by the Korean War. The belief that the Reds had 'gotten' to many prisoners was particularly disturbing. Brainwashing explained the inexplicable. It was colloquially understood as preternatural control of thought; it spread as urban myth as much as in news reports. Brainwashing is generally understood to mean the forced removal of old ways of thinking and their replacement by new ideas. The victims of brainwashing are not simply obedient; they become true believers. Its most extreme visualization was in the film thriller The Manchurian Candidate, where a POW automaton kills on cue and remembers nothing. The breadth of belief in brainwashing was due in part to the anxiety of the times, but the term's flexibility made it resistant to debunking. The New York Times, for example, used brainwashing as a synonym for the unusually systematic use of traditional methods of coercion: torture, starvation, filth and isolation [34]. An internal Army report used an even narrower definition based on the elaborate pressure put on a handful of prominent East European political prisoners. Too extravagant a process for mass use, the Army concluded there was not 'any' such brainwashing in Korea [35]. In public discourse, however, the term was commonly used with little qualification. Readers were free to understand it as new and diabolical or as old as bondage. Brainwashing by any definition was considered irresistible, which eventually complicated the jeremiad against alleged prisoner cowardice.

The idea of brainwashing was more significant in forming public attitudes than in permanently transforming souls. If the experience in Korea is taken as the working definition of brainwashing, the effect was transitory. Psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton made careful studies of repatriates and concluded that 'virtually all prisoners' gravitated back towards their old belief systems after returning home [36]. Even the defectors, who remained in the 'brainwashed' environment, became disillusioned. The 23 defectors almost immediately became 21 and over the years the rest trickled back home as well [37].