Dark & Unrewarding Future

A team of U.S. explainers waited patiently in Munsan last week, armed with tape recordings, photographs and dossiers of 22 young Americans who refuse to come home. Day after day the U.N. explainers sent word that they would meet six Americans, the lone Briton and 30 South Koreans. But the prisoners refused to come out of their Communist compounds.

As the Christmas week deadline for explanations drew near, U.S. officers gave up hope of seeing the Americans, and conceded that they had little chance of getting any back anyway. Wide-meshed barbed wire, and the ease with which the 22 can approach the Indian guards, would make escape easy if any of them really wanted to go home. At week's end the explainers handed Indian Lieut. General K. S. Thimayya a twelve-page letter to the pro-Red Americans. It might be the only "explaining" they would get.

"The privilege you here enjoy to voluntarily seek repatriation or to voluntarily reject it is the fruit of ... persistent effort on the part of the United States ... If you should decide not to return . . . you will have made a most fateful decision . . .

"Ofttimes an individual is not aware of the artful, clever devices which have been employed to rob a man of his independence of judgment. This may take the obvious form of physical force or the threat of force [or] the subtle form of coercion . . . false innuendo, and even of outright lies." The letter asked the prisoners if they were sure they were making up their own minds, if they had considered their families, if they realized that promises might be false. "There is nothing more humiliating than to discover that one has been a fool, used for someone's questionable purposes and then tossed aside like an old shoe . . . We would wish to be certain that you are fully aware of the consequences . . . Your mistakes will be at your own door, your future, if it becomes dark and unrewarding, will have been of your own making." The letter made no threats, gave no promises.

Thirty days after explanations cease, the U.S. Army will list as deserters any who do not return.

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