- One day in the late 1960s,
when I was a boy
in my hometown of Jinan in Eastern China,
I saw a smiling Westerner
dressed like a Chinese worker
riding a green bicycle.
I was astonished.
It was the Cold War
and China was cut off
from the West.
This Westerner was the first I'd ever seen
and was as alien to me as a creature from outer space.
His name was James Veneris.
He was captured during the Korean War
and had chosen to stay in China.
Veneris had served
in the U.S. army in World War II
in the Pacific Campaign
against the Japanese.
Like many veterans,
he was unable to find work in peacetime America,
and had re-enlisted at the start of the Korean War
in 1950.
President Truman
had sent American troops
to Korea to stop
the spread of Communism.
The USA, with its allies,
under General MacArthur
and the flag of the United Nations,
crushed the North Koreans and threatened my country,
the People's Republic of China.
Chairman Mao
mobilized a Chinese Volunteer Army,
which pushed the UN troops
back to the 38th parallel.
After three years of war,
a million-and-a-half dead
and two-and-a-half-million injured,
the United Nations Command
and the Communist forces signed an armistice
on July 27, 1953.
Korea remains split into two countries:
North and South.
There were thousands of prisoners on both sides.
All those who refused repatriation
to their homeland were transferred to a neutral zone
and given 90 days
to reconsider their decision.
Twenty-three of them,
including James Veneris, were Americans.
There was also one British.
[singing]
[man]: Does anybody want to go home?
[all]: No!
- Before the 90 days expired, two Americans,
Edward Dickinson and Claude Batchelor,
decided to return home.
- Corporal Batchelor, how did you become a progressive?
- By reading several of the books that the Communists had,
and newspapers,
gradually, little by little,
I began to believe a lot of their charges
against the UN side.
- Well, really, I never decided to go to Communist China.
I wanted to get my revenge for my buddies that have been killed
and starved to death and what they have done to me.
- Corporal Edward S. Dickenson,
back with us once again here in the free world.
- Nevertheless, both were court-martialled
and sentenced to 10 and 20 years in prison.
- If I return, take a look at what happened to Dickenson
and Batchelor. I'd be in the same place they are.
More likely up for a death sentence or a prison term.
I don't feel it's right.
I'd like to see every one of you Americans stand up now
and oppose McCarthy and his acts.
My name is Harold Webb, from West Palm Beach, Florida.
- My name is Aaron Wilson, Urania, Louisiana.
- This is a very happy moment for me, for now I am free.
Free from McCarthyism.
Friends, the only way to stop fascism in America
is to do what I have done.
Stand up and fight for our rights.
- William C. White, Plumerville, Arkansas.
For the first time in my life,
I've witnessed complete equality.
South Korean, Mexican, Filipino, white men,
all mixed together.
- My name is Lewis Grigg and my home is in Jacksonville, Texas.
I stayed behind to escape the Red-baiting McCarthy
and to assure that I'll never again have to fight
in another unjust war, as I did in Korea.
Even if I had wanted repatriation,
the fates of Dickenson and Batchelor
would've stopped me. - My name is Richard Tenneson.
I live in Alden, Minnesota. People who hate war
and stand up for their beliefs are faced with McCarthy
and fascist thought control,
House Unamerican Activities Committee.
I will return someday,
when I can speak for peace, lawfully,
that's when I will return.
- Supposedly he's rejected this country.
But I don't believe that was brought about
through his own decision.
My estimation of this situation
is that he's a victim of brainwashing
that was brought about through mental,
as well as physical, torture.
- The USA was alarmed
by the "Red menace" and believed
that the Chinese had brainwashed
the American POWs.
Senator Joseph McCarthy,
head of the Committee on Unamerican Activities,
led a series of investigations
feeding on public hysteria.
McCarthy branded the 21 soldiers as traitors
and turncoats.
I have never forgotten
the Westerner on the green bicycle
and have always wondered what happened
to James Veneris and the other POWs
who chose to live in China.
But 50 years have passed since their fateful decision.
After a long search,
I found one of them,
David Hawkins,
the youngest of the group.
I met him
on his first trip back to China
after 47 years. - It's kind of like coming home,
believe it or not. It's like...
yeah, it's kind of like coming back to a place
that there's a lot of memories for you.
The turning point of my life, I guess you would say.
I've always had an affinity for the Chinese people.
I've always wanted to come back to see it later,
to see what changes were made.
Oh, wow!
It's huge!
It's a whole new city!
Outside of the signs, it looks like one of the freeways
coming into Los Angeles. [laughing]
- As I travelled with David Hawkins in China,
I realized that it was an act of great courage for him
to appear in this film.
- We are South Koreans, American and British
who love our homes, our people and our countries.
What unites us all is our desire for peace,
for real democracy and social equality.
Anyone who breathes the word peace in America now
becomes at once a Communist and an outlaw.
But here we have learned much
and have caught a glimpse of what a man can achieve
when he works for the common good and not for personal gain.
That goal of happiness can never be reached
unless peace is kept. We believe that our greatest task
is to keep the peace and win democracy for our people.
But if we return, our voices will be silenced.
That is why we are here.
- My guest tonight is the youngest U.S. Army turncoat
of the Korean War. You'll see him behind me.
He's David Hawkins of Oklahoma City.
- Three years ago, the United States was stunned
by an announcement from war-torn Korea.
U.S. Army Private David Hawkins
and 20 other prisoners of the Communists
had become turncoats.
They had renounced their own country
and disappeared behind Red China's bamboo curtain.
Dave, first of all, let me ask you this.
Another explanation of the turncoats
was suggested in The New York Times
on August 14, 1955.
Most of the turncoats really were not converts to Communism
but were themselves guilty of crimes
against their fellow Americans in captivity
and did not wish to return to face the music.
What about that?
- I don't consider that true.
None of the fellows that were with me were...
I read some articles also on this,
and clippings that we received while in China,
that said that a lot of us were guilty of murder,
or had committed acts of treason
while in the camp,
or stolen food from their buddies
or was responsible directly
for another fellow prisoner of war losing his life.
This is not true.
- I joined in September of '49,
which was one month after my 16th birthday.
We went to Korea by boat.
We were then a half a day's travel
of the Chinese border.
We kept running
into companies' battalions strength of Chinese volunteers
as we were making our ways over the mountains.
And then at some point further on,
we got in a kind of a firefight and I got hit.
When I woke up, I was in a Chinese field hospital,
a Chinese patrol had found me.
The first words I heard was from the doctor, who said,
"You know, we are friends, we're not going to hurt you."
Those months between November
and the coldest parts of the months November, December,
January, February,
probably in the compound that I was...
there were, say, 500 GIs in the area.
By the time they went on the march back to the main camps,
I seriously doubt if there were more than 50 alive.
- My search for survivors also led me to Lin,
the widow of Clarence Adams.
She was the first woman in China
to marry a black American.
She now lives in Memphis, Tennessee,
with their daughter Della.
- I am Clarence Cecil Adams of Memphis, Tennessee.
My family, and millions of other Negros plus myself
have suffered under the brutal attacks of white supremacy,
and these cruel slave laws of the Southern States.
These are the reasons
why I can't be living happily with my family.
I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, where I was raised.
I come from a working-class family,
my mother working at White Rose Laundry
and my father, at that time,
worked at Memphis Furniture Factory.
- He lived out back in what is called a carriage house
and actually over the carriage house.
- During my last years in high school,
I was basically getting into a lot of trouble.
- He and his friends, his buddies, whatever,
they were like a gang,
were roving around the railroad tracks,
and this white man started following him.
- He wanted to know if we could get him a black woman.
We walked away from him. He followed us!
And he kept hollering, "Hey, boy,
where can I get me a black woman?"
We were afraid, because we know what can happen -
if we do something to him, he'll lynch us!
We'll never get out of jail. We're walking.
- One of the guys turned around and popped him in the mouth.
- He went down.
When he went down, we stumped,
all five of us, and we left.
- The next morning, the cops came,
and they knocked on the door, bang-bang-bang,
you know, "Open the door!" And you know it's the cops so...
My dad was sitting in the kitchen, though,
and his mother said: "Skippy's not here!" really loud
to let him know the cops are looking for him.
He went straight out the back door,
he runs down the railroad track,
all the way downtown to the recruiting station,
and joins up.
- I went in the Army in 1947.
However, the Korean War changed my whole fate.
I was captured,
which was November the 30th, 1950.
- It wasn't difficult for me
to find the home of James Veneris,
that first Westerner I had seen as a child.
Bai Xirong,
his widow after 40 years of marriage,
still lives in the same apartment in Jinan.
[speaking Chinese]
- I am James G. Veneris, of Hawthorne, California.
Under the present conditions in the States, I cannot return,
and with time when peace is established in the world,
then I'll come back.
You can blame all this on the reaction in the United States,
and on McCarthy and his clique.
[speaking Chinese]
- My father applied for Chinese citizenship.
But for unknown reasons, it wasn't approved.
Then, right before he died, we were told
that his request was going to be granted.
But it was too late.
- He always said
that he'd like to join the Chinese Communist Party,
because the Chinese saved his life.
He had deep feelings for them.
He almost died in Korea and the Chinese took good care of him.
He never forgot that.
- In 1950, only a year after the birth
of the People's Republic of China,
the Chinese army was surprised
at how many Western soldiers they captured.
China mobilized hundreds of young graduates
to work as translators and instructors.
- When the Chinese first came across
and actually captured as many people as they did,
there was no place to keep us,
or food to give us.
- We were experiencing many deaths from malnutrition,
the wounded, which were not cared for,
and it was a basic situation
where every man had to fend for himself.
- During the first few months,
two or three POWs died in each unit every day.
That's about a dozen per day
in every camp. Mortality was very high.
Doctors and nurses
on the medical team worked very hard to save lives
and lower the mortality rate.
- Once you started thinking about going home,
and your hamburgers and the steaks and this sort of thing,
and you started drinking the cold water,
that was a death... that was a death knell.
- They didn't know our policy,
didn't know what we were going to do with them,
if we were going to kill them,
or force them to do hard labour,
or keep them in China forever
and not let them return home.
So they worried a lot.
- My supervisor asked me
to read the regulations to the POWs.
It began with "Dear students."
I was very surprised and asked why.
Because to me, they were prisoners
and we were their captors.
But my supervisor said,
"Yes, they are students and you are instructors."
- Students, remember?
When they didn't call us prisoners of war,
we were this kind of like... students.
We were there under their care. But I never saw any...
instance of mistreatment in the prisoner-of-war camp. Ever.
- We were trying to tell the POWs
that capitalism was due to collapse...
and socialism was bound to win.
- We had to go to lectures every day
for the first year. They came and got us,
no matter where we were hiding,
and we had to go on the top of the hill
and listen to lectures.
- But after a couple of months,
we found that such a theory
was untenable,
was unacceptable
to almost all the POWs.
- Prime Minister Zhou told us,
"Not too much lecturing,
"not too much political education.
"Concentrate on the principle of opposing the war,
for peace."
- We changed...
by telling them
that such a war
was unnecessary,
was dirty.
Some POWs began to think
that the American government
should not have been involved in such a war.
- Everyone signed peace petitions.
I mean, that was, "Why are you here,
5,000 thousands miles from your home,
fighting in a war that..."
We didn't even know where the hell the place was
whenever we went over there.
- We had no business over there.
And I actually felt that way. - Do you still feel that way,
that we were wrong to go to Korea?
- Yes. - When I say we,
that the United Nations was wrong
to try to contain Communism there?
That President Truman was wrong?
- I think it was a mistake still.
- Why so?
- I don't think that we have the right
to interfere in a civil war of another country,
to try to stop it
when it's not even close to our own shores.
- You believe, you believed then,
you believe now that that was a civil war?
- Yes, I think it was a civil war.
- There wasn't too much friction
between prisoners and captors,
who were the Chinese.
They said, "We don't understand the American way of life.
We need some volunteers to explain
what the Americans like" and what we wanted.
And I said, "Well, look, I'll go,
I'll volunteer."
I asked for recreation equipment,
I asked if I could use an old building
to set up a recreation hall where we could sit.
I said, "Some of the guys are religious,
they want to know if they can worship."
If what food they brought us, if they could let our cooks cook it
the way we like it.
So they agreed with everything I said.
And about two and a half to three months,
they brought in baseballs baseball bats, football;
we exercised every day,
The guys began to get strong.
- We demolished
what was left of a Japanese factory,
and that became our playing field.
Later on, we actually built a clubhouse;
we had our own clubhouse.
We even had what they called an "inner-camp Olympic."
- When I came across this film archive,
I could not believe my eyes.
This must be the only prisoner-of-war camp
in human history to have ever organized
Olympic games.
- I was very quickly labelled as a progressive,
because I read voraciously,
I read everything I could get my hands on.
And I volunteered, when I was asked to do...
I was like the mail clerk.
They gave me the mail from my platoon
and I passed the mail out.
And I was in charge of the bulletin board
and I could type, so in the inner-camp Olympics,
I did all the typing for the newspaper
that covered the Olympics.
- And I remained in the prisoner-of-war camp
until the end of war.
And the Chinese sent me away to study.
Then they sent me back to camp to give lectures.
And I gave lectures.
On capitalism, imperialism, history of social development.
I'd learned the difference between all of those
right then at the prisoner-of-war camp!
And I taught it to the other prisoners!
[laughing]
- Somebody came to talk to me
and said, "You know, this is gonna be over."
They said, "Part of the...
agreement of the cease-fire
was those prisoners of war who did not want to go back home
could chose a country."
For instance, they could go
wherever they wanted to go,
if that country would accept them.
As it turned out, I think there were 21 Americans
who chose, in fact, to go to China.
I've often been asked as to why.
- You became a turncoat. You renounced your country.
Why? What did you have against the United States?
- Well, Mike, it wasn't actually
that I had something against the United States.
We did spend over three years in captivity.
I was captured at only 17 years old,
and I underwent the mass-indoctrination program
that the Chinese instigated in the camp.
And there was a lot of things that they told me
that sounded to me like common sense.
- I chose China for many reasons.
With that close contact we had,
I began to wonder about communism,
what it was like,
and it's a known fact
that every man wants to better his life,
he wants to do more in life.
I was assured by the camp authorities
that "We don't discriminate.
It's not in our principle to discriminate.
We believe that all people are equal."
So that was a great encouragement for me,
to help me make my decision.
Of course I did ask the question of marriage.
Could I marry? The Chinese said, "We got plenty of women.
It depends on whether they like you or not."
So we left Korea,
we got on the train,
we left Korea and went to China.
Of course, the first day in China,
they gave this humongous banquet
for us.
I mean, I'd never seen...
in my whole life, I had never seen so much food.
Beautiful table. Man, the table was long
and just covered with everything you could imagine.
I mean, some good cooking.
- With such great expectations,
the 22 former POWs entered China.
Treated as dignitaries,
they were invited to the 1954
May Day Parade
in Tiananmen Square.
This was four years after the founding
of the People's Republic.
We Chinese were passionately united,
and working
to build the new
democratic socialist society.
- I used to ride my bike here
all the time. You have to drive...
you have to ride your bike kind of like the cars
so that you don't get run over.
Other than that, it's about the same:
more people, more cars.
I used to visit this place on a pretty regular basis
with Russian friends from the China Club.
Oh, my God, this is like coming home,
this is... this is... this is my homecoming.
This was my school,
for two-and-a-half years!
- David Hawkins and six of the former POWs
studied at the People's University,
in Beijing.
They were known as "peace fighters."
- Adams was here,
Clarence Adams.
Howard was here...
Who else?
Ah, Sullivan was here.
- My first schooling
was at the People's University of China.
It's where we took a two-year preparatory course.
First of all, we couldn't speak the language,
so we basically dealt in the language and Chinese history.
And the history of the Chinese Communist Party,
and the history of the Russian Communist Party,
Soviet Communist Party.
[laughing]
- Oh, come on, get in there!
[laughing]
[speaking Chinese]
The place has grown so much bigger
since I was here.
[speaking Chinese]
- This paper mill in my hometown of Jinan
is where James Veneris
worked for 20 years.
[speaking Chinese]
- Veneris was a very good worker,
very skillful,
one of the best in our lathe workshop.
He got along with everyone.
He was a good joker,
always teasing his co-workers.
He was one of us.
- When we were introduced,
he made a good first impression.
I already had four children.
He liked them a lot.
He gave us each a badge of Chairman Mao as gifts.
[speaking Chinese]
- What I remember most about my father
is that when people advised him
to return to the United States,
he always preferred to stay in China.
[speaking Chinese]
- In the end,
my father wished me well in the United States.
I knew I could make more money here.
But he insisted I never join the U.S. Army.
He was adamant.
For him, soldiers are nothing but cannon fodder.
- So far the Chinese had managed to fulfill all of my requests.
I'd been given the opportunity to study
and I was studying at Wuhan University.
- And that's the first time
I see a Black, a real black man,
in China.
Before, I only see black people in the movies.
The time we knew each other is 1957.
Okay? And then...
we see each other
almost seven, eight months.
- After about a year of courtship, we got married.
The whole conversation on the mountain,
where the university was located,
was on what the baby would look like.
Some said the baby would be checkered,
some said it would be black on one side, white on the other,
some said it would look like a zebra.
It was done in pretty hard years they had in China.
There was little food to eat,
because they were paying back a huge Korean War debt
to the Soviet Union.
I had been offered extra rations,
but I said since I live in China,
I'll just live like the rest of the people,
and I turned them down.
But a lot of times
when the fisherman caught,
they would steal a few fish and bring it to me
so I can make some soup for my daughter.
Like this old farmer, for instance,
he had a huge family of his own
and he had a hen that laid an egg
and he wanted to get to the house
so we could have that one egg for breakfast.
And that's how the ordinary people treated.
- Red Cross just said,
"Tell him he will go to Beijing,
do the translate work
in the Beijing foreign language press."
- We moved to Beijing in 1961,
so I was only two years old.
We had a really nice apartment
in a complex full of people that were like us.
All kinds of people: black, white, Africans, British,
they would come to our house
and we had parties late into the night.
My father, I don't know exactly how much he made,
but something like three or four times
the amount of money that an average Chinese would make.
- He managed to get in contact
with the Beijing office
of Voice of Hanoi.
He made broadcast speeches
to the black soldiers
fighting in Vietnam,
urging them to go back home
and fight for racial equality
and their own freedom.
So I think
he did his share
toward world peace
and international understanding.
- Confronted with the challenges
of living in such an alien culture,
several of the young peace fighters
quickly became discouraged.
- William C. Cowart, 22.
Lewis W. Griggs and Otho G. Bell, 24.
Young Americans who converted to Communism
during their captivity in Red China,
only now to recant,
the three turncoats face Army authority,
under a 1950 law,
which permits trial for serious offences
committed while in service.
Allegedly helping prepare enemy-sponsored propaganda,
soliciting a general officer of the army to desert,
informing on fellow prisoners and other charges.
They're whisked off to stockade,
their fate to be decided with the justice
they know exists in the land they had renounced.
- The three Americans had chosen to work
on a state farm
in rural China.
Wu Da Shou, their Chinese Red Cross representative,
still remembers them.
- It was a different country;
it was a completely different environment for them.
Nothing was familiar.
At night, there were no bars to go to,
no discos, no concerts.
And I think the fact
that they couldn't find girlfriends
was another big factor.
At the time, we were concerned that if they left,
it would create a negative image of China.
But our leaders told us even if they said
bad things about us after returning home,
it wouldn't really matter.
There was so much anti-Chinese sentiment all over the world,
that a little more would do no harm.
[news report]: Turncoat Richard Tenneson,
flanked by Red Cross officials and local police.
He is one of 21 former American POWs
who refused repatriation in Korea
and chose to live in Communist China.
The 22-year-old turncoat
takes his first steps of freedom
en route home to Alden, Minnesota.
- Most of the former POWs left China before 1966,
but found they were not welcome back in the USA.
It was hard to find work
and two were committed to mental hospitals.
- The embassy, of course,
was supplying me with whisky and so forth,
I did lots of cooking on my own, American food, soul food
and even the ambassadors,
when they heard that I was cooking, they came around
and they supplied the booze and I, the food.
And we had a nice time.
I heard the Chinese was noticing this sort of relationship
and they didn't particularly like it.
So they asked me to cut down on it.
So I knew then that I was getting in bad with them.
- Red Cross say,
"You go to work in the factory like Veneris."
But Adams say,
"That's very strange,
why should I change job?
What about my Chinese, just forget it?"
- The Chinese have a way of letting you know
what they think about you.
When we first went to China,
they called us comrades.
And after some years in China,
they switched from comrades
to calling us peace fighters,
which means a step down.
With "comrades," we're one of them;
when you become a peace fighter,
you can be anybody fighting for peace.
Then later on... the worse thing to be called in China
is to be called a mister.
Then they started addressing us as Mister Adams,
then you know you're completely out.
When they start using that, you become a mister,
that's the worst thing to be.
- Shortly before the 1966
Cultural Revolution,
Clarence Adams decided it would be wise for him
to return with his family
to Memphis, Tennessee.
- My wife, at that point,
didn't want to come,
because the picture of America has been painted to her
as a very terrible place to live and there's discrimination
and crime, which is basically true,
so it took me a while to convince her
that everything would be all right.
- We got to San Francisco.
Every day,
early in the morning, some men came
and got my dad and took him off.
And later, of course, I found out it was the CIA
and, you know, I don't know...
the maybe FBI, something like that.
[speaking Chinese]
- During the Cultural Revolution
in the 1960s,
young Red Guards
tried to arrest Veneris,
accusing him of spying for America.
His comrades at work
protected him,
and Premier Zhou En-Lai
declared Veneris an International Peace Fighter
and that he was not to be harmed.
[speaking Chinese]
- How are you? - How are you?
- See you later. - See you later.
- I love you. - I love you.
- I love you too.
[speaking Chinese]
- After his two years of studies in Beijing,
Hawkins wanted to be a truck driver.
And the Chinese Red Cross got him a job
at a car-parts factory in the city of Wuhan,
in southern China.
- Yeah, this is my work town,
this is where I lived and worked
for over a year.
The name of the factory,
Wuhan Auto Parts Factory,
was written on both sides.
I used to stop my truck here
and let all the rest of the workers off.
Part of the foundry still has some of the machinery;
the lathes are here.
I think this is one of the areas where Sullivan worked,
one of the machine shops.
[speaking Chinese]
Long time! Long time!
- This is a warehouse. - Yes.
- This is a garage.
- Right. Garage. Yeah.
- Garage. But then the garage is destroyed--
- Gone, yeah.
- --then we rebuilt that building.
You can keep this photo.
Keep this photo.
- David Hawkins explained to me
why he decided to return to the USA in 1957,
after a seven-year absence.
- I've been gone long enough.
The climate here is not the same,
it's changing rapidly as well.
And I think it's time that I went back
and I'll face whatever's there,
then I'll just face it as I come to it.
- Let's try to find out tonight,
among other things, why he became a turncoat,
and why he returned home, just four months ago.
- Personally, I went to China
to compare what I'd heard
with what they actually practiced in China.
I went because I was very curious by nature.
- What had you heard?
- Well, only what our Chinese captors had told us,
how great they were working toward socialism,
and the great strides that they were taking
in bettering the life of the Chinese people,
who for so many thousands of years
had lived a life of oppression under various governments
and was backward.
- But why did you feel the sense of identification
of wanting to know about them?
Had you not been told by our own army?
- No.
- They'd never discussed the Chinese with you?
- No.
- They never told you what to expect
were you to be captured? - Yes. They said we'd be killed.
- Did you hear about the Soviet Russians
and what they did in Hungary?
- That was the main thing that definitely made me
take the step to return to United States.
- And when you made up your mind
to come back to the United States,
did they stand in your way? Did they try to persuade you
to stay? - No.
- Can we be sure that you, yourself,
have not been sent back here, in some manner,
to work on behalf of the Red Chinese?
- You wouldn't know for sure.
- Do they believe in our freedoms?
- No, they...
To them, it's much different.
We have an aggressive government that's always hunting for war...
- Do you believe
that United States
should recognize Red China?
- Personally, I think they should.
- Why?
- It's a very big thing.
They have a very large land area,
they have 650-million Chinese population,
and it's like saying
that there's a big elephant in front of you
and you say he's not there,
until he becomes powerful enough to step on you.
- Do you expect that they will become powerful enough
to step on us? - I have no doubt of that.
Our economies are so close together
that we have to be friends,
because both of our economies now would suffer
if we didn't cooperate with each other.
When I went back to the States,
sometimes they would ask how I was treated.
I didn't want to say...
something that might get me in trouble with them,
but at the same time, I would not lie
and say that I was ever mistreated by the Chinese,
because that wasn't true.
Here they treated me
like family.
- We are very thankful and appreciated
you coming here.
For 50 years of good health,
we are very fortunate.
Thank you.
- Thank you for having me. [speaking Chinese]
- Clarence Adams's return with his family
to his hometown Memphis
ended 12 years of an exceptional life in China.
- I wasn't warmly reaccepted back here, in America.
We had some very hard times
when I finally reached the shores here.
I couldn't find work.
In other words...
the news media had really ruined me,
and everybody...
wanted hands-off.
Even fellows that I had gone to school with,
they were afraid of me because I was painted as a Red.
And of course, then later on,
the government subpoenaed me,
I had to go to Washington,
where they would try me for treason.
- He wanted knowledge, he wanted education,
he wanted opportunity.
And that's what he told those people,
the senators who subpoenaed him.
He says, "Why? Because I'm a black man,
I don't have a right to make a life for myself?
You've done this all over the world,
you've gone anywhere you wanted to go,
you did whatever you wanted to do
to gain what you need to gain,
but I'm a black man and I can't do the same thing?
I can't get a better life for myself?"
He had every right.
- Clarence Adams, still working at 70
in his Memphis chop-suey restaurant,
on Elvis Presley Boulevard,
died in his daughter's arms.
President Nixon's visit to China in 1972
ended the hostility between our two countries.
The USA was no longer an enemy,
and Veneris could at last visit his American family,
after being away for 26 years.
[speaking Chinese]
Living and working in China for half a century,
respected and loved
by co-workers and students alike,
James Veneris was regarded by all
as a symbol of international solidarity.
- "He has never died, he has just disappeared."
Well, Veneris, old buddy,
I always thought I'd get to see you
one more time,
but I'm not too far behind you.
I'm very sorry that I was not able to come
and visit when he was alive.
I would've liked to...
[crying softly]
Have a good sleep, old buddy, we'll see you later.
I wanted to know if she would like to be...
if I could be her grandpa.
Then I'll have grand-kids at home
and I'll have grand-kids in China.
[laughing] Halfway around the world,
that's great.
- Most of the 22 POWs
have passed away.
They carried the label of turncoats and traitors,
and lived under the clouds of dishonourable discharge
and disillusionment.
They struggled to make a living
after returning to their homeland.
But they're heroes to me
for trying to build bridges between enemies.
They should not be forgotten.
- We are not going back to the country we love
because the humble but sincere effort
we have put forward as prisoners of war
of the Korean and Chinese side,
to the cause of peace,
would only bring us unmerciful persecution
at the hands of a few peace-haters
now ruling the States.
We not only want peace,
but we want to fight for it.