China admits to taking U.S. POW from Korea

POW thought he might disappear
Subsequent events are a bit fuzzy, but Desautels was moved among prison camps and apparently was used by the Chinese army as a truck driver. A number of U.S. POWs told American interrogators after their release from captivity that they had seen Desautels alive and well in Camp 5.

One who said he spent four months with Desautels said that in March 1952 Desautels said that if he should disappear, others should make inquiries with the proper military authorities. Numerous returned POWs said Desautels had spent several months inside China before being returned to Camp 5 in 1952.

The U.S. Army promoted Desautels from corporal to sergeant while he was held prisoner.

Rolland Desautels, 81, recalls his older brother as "a strong character who came off the farm," enlisted in the Army at age 17 and was stationed at Fort Lewis, Wash., before being shipped to Korea in August 1950, two months after the war began with North Korea's invasion of the South.

The Pentagon has taken an interest in the Desautels case for many years. A June 1998 Pentagon cable to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said that the case was one of several on which China should be pushed to provide answers, that "we believe the Chinese should be able to account for these individuals."

Now it turns out that China did provide an accounting, although it is incomplete and was kept under wraps for five years.

Larry Greer, a spokesman for the POW-MIA office at the Pentagon, said Thursday that although U.S. officials asked to see the nine- to 10-page file on Desautels, China has yet to provide it or additional information.

Mark Sauter, an author and researcher on the subject of POWs from the Korean War, said in an interview that Beijing authorities are to be commended for finally providing useful information.

'This is the first crack in the dike'
"The case of Sgt. Desautels has been a focal point of a six-decade cover-up by the Chinese government," Sauter said. "This is the first crack in the dike. From what we can tell, the Pentagon has not aggressively followed up, either on the Desautels case or those of hundreds of other Americans for whom the Chinese should be able to account."

American officials believed from the earliest days of the armistice that concluded the Korean War without a formal peace treaty in July 1953 that the Chinese and North Koreans withheld a number of U.S. POWs, possibly in retaliation for U.S. refusal to repatriate those Chinese and North Korean POWs who chose not to be returned to their home country out of fear of retribution.

Gen. Mark W. Clark, the American commander of U.S.-led forces during the final stages of the Korean War, wrote in a 1954 account that "we had solid evidence" that hundreds of captive Americans were held back by the Chinese and North Koreans, possibly as leverage to gain a China seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Over time, however, U.S. officials muted their concerns, while periodically pressing the Chinese in private. Publicly, the Pentagon's stance today is that China returned all the U.S. POWs it held.

"Some U.S. POWs spent time across the (Yalu) river in Manchuria, but to the best of our knowledge, all have returned," the Pentagon's POW/MIA office says in a summary of wartime POW camps.

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