GERM WARFARE: THE BIRTH OF A MYTH
Stockwel, F. Olin
Germ Warfare The Birth of a Myth By F. OLin Stockwell AFTER fourteen months of solitary imprisonment in the Chungking jail, I was transferred to the prison for counter-revolutionaries on the...
...The U.S...
...When they dropped them, it was either on the outskirts of a city or some 15 or 20 miles from a city, a strange performance if they were trying to spread disease, but quite understandable if they were afraid the Communists might have a record on all flights and thus be able to check their statements...
...Then in the summer of 1952, an international committee of scientists, most of them from Communist countries and invited by the executive committee of the left-wing World Peace Congress, came to the Far East, spent several months checking the data, and wrote a lengthy report couched in scientific terminology, in four languages, assuring the world that the charges against the United States were scientifically correct...
...For if the initial charges were faked, then the whole thing is a fake...
...While behind prison bars, Dr...
...at certain places and reported to secret service representatives on their return...
...They were sure they dropped "jduds" because they neither saw nor heard any explosion, which would have been equally true of a "live" bomb...
...They went to their plane in the dark and did not check the "dud" bombs, but simply noted they were the same size and shape as the 500-pound bombs, but with no detonators on them...
...Where the Communist case collapses, though, is in the little-noticed fact that the temperature stood at ten degrees below zero when their raid took place...
...Enoch and Quinn, after they were shot down Jan...
...This" was the photostatic copies of letters written by Kenneth Enoch, Youngstown, O., and John Quinn, of Pasadena, Calif., two American fliers who had been shot down and taken prisoner in Korea...
...Stockwell wrote four books...
...Read this and translate it to the group...
...Germ Warfare The Birth of a Myth By F. OLin Stockwell AFTER fourteen months of solitary imprisonment in the Chungking jail, I was transferred to the prison for counter-revolutionaries on the outskirts of that Chinese city, where I remained for nine and one-half months...
...Certainly the bombing of many North Korean cities has been done with a thoroughness that has been even more devastating and horrible than bacteriological warfare...
...They saw the horrible destruction that air-raids had wrought in North Korea...
...When they discussed the lectures, they had no difficulty being detailed and specific...
...But when it came to their actual participation in germ warfare, they were less definite...
...People not only accepted the inoculations, but farmers who had always considered one towel enough for the whole family rushed into town to buy an individual towel for each member...
...Step by step they had been led to admit that the U.S...
...The Communist representatives were attractive, persuasive young men...
...It was during this latter stretch, on May 9, 1952, that a Communist official appeared saying, "Here is the proof that the American aggressors are using germ warfare in Korea...
...Perhaps the United States has spent $500,000,000 and has drafted the best scientific minds to perfect germ warfare, as the Communists charge...
...But the crux of the problem still depended on the initial charges that this was launched in January and February when there was ice, snow, sunshine, and "ten degrees below zero...
...They received their instructions to drop the "duds" F. OLIN STOCKWELL, Methodist missionary to China for two decades, was recently released after serving two years in Chinese Communist prisons, fourteen months of which were in solitary confinement...
...Could this have been the reason that these "confessions" of this germ warfare were not released to the Chinese press until May 9, late in the spring when fly and mosquito season came again and when people had forgotten about the cold winter...
...But that a military command would go to all this trouble to perfect such a weapon, then initiate its use under conditions where even a school boy would know that it would be useless and would betray itself to the enemy—that is more than the average man can swallow...
...plus the detailed statements of Enoch and Quinn, the fliers, appeared in English as special supplements to People's China and New Times, published in Peking and Moscow...
...military may be as ruthless as they assert...
...But the average reader does not know that...
...In prison I had time to go through them all...
...Thus, in a few months the authorities succeeded in putting over more concrete health information and practice in Korea and China than could have been possible in an entire generation under normal curcumstances...
...in January or July, the evidence comes out of the same propaganda spout...
...Having had fourteen months of this, I could understand how effectively it could change attitudes...
...Day after day we read the "proof" of the "dastardly, inhuman weapon" that had been launched against the helpless, innocent people of North Korea, Manchuria, and Shangtung by the savage "Fascist war-mongers" of Wall Street and the Pentagon...
...They gave the names of many fellow-officers who were there, the names of their instructors, and even described the furniture in the rooms...
...Traditional resistance to inoculation, vaccination, and clean-up campaigns melted in the face of the patriotic drive to counteract the germs of the American "beasts...
...All of this material, summarized...
...It was my introduction to the most effective propaganda stunt of the Korean War...
...Actually, "germ warfare" propaganda was a two-edged weapon, the one blade against America, the other effectively cutting away the lethargy and ignorance of the peasants in matters relating to public health...
...The charges that the United States was waging bacteriological warfare continued throughout the spring and summer of 1952, and have now been revived in 1953...
...For it did not take any expensive experiment in Korea to prove that [lies, [leas, rats, spiders, lice, and other germ-carriers cannot live at ten degrees below zero and could not [unction in the snow and ice o[ a Korean winter...
...A large delegation of lawyers from Europe came to China to check the facts and lend credence to the story...
...military was prepared to use germ warfare, next that they had attended lectures in Japan and in Korea where germ warfare was discussed and where they were warned the enemy might use it, next that they had flown several missions with "dud" bombs under their wings, and finally that these "duds" were filled with germs...
...13, 1952, were separated and kept in solitary imprisonment for a month...
Vol. 17 • April 1953 • No. 4
