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OCR Page 1 of 14that
3/14/54: Reel 2,
Cack 1, age l
MR. ACHESON:
The lack of discipline and lack of competence in running the camps had
shown itself in the fact that the camps were much too large; there were
too many prisoners in each camp; sufficient care had not been taken to see
that there was not a prisoner organization to create terrorist discipline
in
the various camps. The troops guarding the camps were not our best
troops; and they had a large number of South Koreans in them; and the
officers in charge were, as Dean Rusk has pointed out, not the top officers.
That turned out to be a very grave mistake, because at this time, looking
back on it, you can see that it was even more important to have the best
talent in charge of the camps rather than at the front, where there was
not particularly active fighting at this time.
MR. KENNAN:
Dean, may I point out that this does raise a very interesting general
problem of principle, which I think was never recognized by our army--
perhaps hasn it been to this day-in our military theory. Mainly, how
do you handle the question of prisoners when you fight against a regime
which holds its people by fear instead of enthusiasm? All the old theories
TRUMAN
6 NATIONAL REGINAN
of the Geneva Conventions and of chivalrous warfare go by the board here;
and the general concept of prisoners of war as worked out among western
Us
nations and as applied among western nations in the two World Wars becomes
inapplicable, really, to these situations. I think it is important to
note that we ought to face up to it if we ever have any other military
conflict of any sort.
MR. ACHESON:
That is very true.
MR. NITZE:
We did try to get such a study under way, because what George says is quite
right. And it was thoroughly realized that one ought to make a distinction
right off the bat after a man is captured as to whether he really is a
p risoner of war or whether he is mor e by way of being a political refugee
than a prisoner of war. And so this separation ought to be made right
pronto--that's what the Russians do.
VOICE:
Yes.
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