CIC Assists in Repatriation of Korean War Prisoners (27 JUL 1953)

On July 27, 1953, the United Nations (UN) and North Korea signed an armistice to end to the Korean War. The repatriation of prisoners, a central issue of the talks, was accomplished through Operation LITTLE SWITCH and BIG SWITCH. All recovered American prisoners were first debriefed by Joint Intelligence Processing Boards. Additional debriefings of U.S. Army personnel were then conducted by the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC).

The first repatriation of prisoners occurred in April, before the armistice, via Operation LITTLE SWITCH. North Korea and China turned over 684 sick and wounded Allied (149 American) prisoners. A much larger effort, Operation BIG SWITCH, followed the armistice and ran through December 1953. It resulted in the return of 12,773 Allied prisoners (3,597 Americans of which 93 percent were U.S. Army personnel). More than 2,700 Americans had died in Korean prison camps, in addition to the more than 31,000 combat-related deaths. Today, almost 7,500 U.S. personnel remain “unaccounted for” from the Korean War.

The various CIC units in the Far East Command assumed responsibility for several aspects of the repatriation process. For example, the 704th CIC Detachment handled security arrangements at the processing centers and points of embarkation. The 181st CIC Detachment assigned to the 1st Marine Division conducted protective screening to prevent press access to Marine returnees.

The main CIC mission, undertaken primarily by personnel in the 441st CIC Detachment, was to debrief returnees. Their goal was three-fold: (1) to determine the status of individuals still missing; (2) to document accounts of atrocities against UN prisoners, captivity conditions, and instances of misconduct by American prisoners; and (3) to evaluate the level of success of Communist indoctrination among UN prisoners, individually and as a whole. Because prisoners in the Korean and Chinese camps were the first to be exposed forcefully to communist ideology, identifying the enemy’s techniques would contribute to the development of effective countermeasures for future use. The process would also identify any prisoners who had been effectively indoctrinated and would pose a security risk once returned to the United States. Ultimately, approximately 190 service members were found to have engaged in misconduct to varying degrees; the most serious being homicide, informing on fellow prisoners, and treasonable collaboration with the enemy. Some had even been assigned postwar sabotage and espionage missions.

The idea that American prisoners had collaborated with the enemy to any extent alarmed the Department of Defense. In response, a Defense Advisory Panel recommended the creation of a Code of Conduct and the formation of training programs on how to survive as a prisoner of war. On Aug. 17, 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued via Executive Order the Code of Conduct that remains in effect today and governs the conduct of all American military members captured and held by the enemy.

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Article by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian. New issues of This Week in MI History are published each week. To report story errors, ask questions, request previous articles, or be added to our distribution list, please contact: TR-ICoE-Command-Historian@army.mil.

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