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Headline text
Marijuana Use During the Korean War'''

'Italic text == Background: ==    The Korean War (195o-53) will always be remembered as a large scale "Police Action". It was one of the high water marks of the cold war between capitalism and communism. This conflict involved a test of resolve, patience and strength for both sides. And nowhere on the Allied side was this burden carried more than by the U.S. and other Allied Pow"s captured by North Korean and Chinese Communist forces. With hardly any exception, life became hell for thousands of Allied POW's caught in the communist net in the early stage of the war, mostly due to high level military bungling.    Communist treatment of the POW's was extremely brutal, and the prisoners were herded off in various size groups on death marches to camps in North Korea. (They were sort of lucky, the ones who could not walk were summarily shot at capture point or some were just executed anyway.)

After Capture The string of camps in the moutainous valleys of northern North Korea became extermination centers in their own right. 98% of all Allied POW deaths occured in the first year of incarceration, most during the first winter. By the summer of 1951, the Chines, (who had assumed control of the camps), realized that they have to have some POW survivors if anyone was going to believe their propaganda of "lenient treatment" of their captives. Conditions gradually started to improve for the prisoners. In the meantime, the POW's were woefully ill-trained and unprepared for their tenure of very inhumane treatment. They were rouinely interrogated, tortered and beaten, etc. for the most trivial of offenses, fed a starvation diet, and forced to listen to communistic "re-education" lectures in the harsh North Korean winter cold. Military discipline broke down, prisoners stole from each other, and worse. Wood for cooking and heating was in short supply, too. Documented Eveidence of Pot Use in the Camps It is at this point that we get to the gist of our story. There are several sources of documentation for the evidence below. It's believeable that there is enough evidence information to establish a minimal basis for presentation and analysis. In his book on the Korean War by Max Hastings, a reknowed British writer and journalist, a single paragraph is devoted to the subject...

"For the weakened men, the greatest hardship was the regular wood detail. Their lives depended on collecting sufficient wood to keep their fires and cookers alive. Yet with each trip they were compelled to forage further and further afield into the mountains. The supply began to falter. Crossly, the Chinese summoned a meeting and harangued the prisoners upon their negative attitudes toward labor, pointing out that it was not for the captor's benefit, but that of the captives.    Then, as spring came, there was a surge of volunteers for the wood detail. The Chinese were delighted to discover that "your attitude for labor has improved". Yet it was not wood that called the men but the discovery of marajuana (italics included). First identified by some of the Mexican prisoners, it grew wild in the hills. Through the next two years it became, for some men, the only means of making captivity endurable. It caused some excesses which puzzled the Chines-suddent exuberant singsongs from groups of black prisoners, one morning a helplessly stoned figure racing around the compound screaming, "The Indians are coming!The Indians are coming! But the Chinese were told that he was shellshocked.    Curiously, in two years, they never appeared to grasp the truth."(1)

Mr. Hastings statements differ somewhat from the account of an American POW, who defected, (mostly out of curiousity), who never collaborated, and was never charged with that, and later returned to the U.S. In Morris L. Wills book, Turncoat, which also only has one paragraph in it, he says: "Another thing happpend, Some of the POW's found that marajuana was growing all around the camp. Everytime they would go out on a wood detail, they would bring some back and smoke it. At first, only a few people would smoke it, but then it suddenly swept the whole camp. I started smoking it too, one rainy day when the others were sitting around and smoking it. It made you feel high and very reflective. Almost everyone enjoyed it and kept doing it. Later, where the Chines found out, they clamped down. They were ruthless, If they found some on you, you were punished. By the winter, the supply was scare. I was reduced to smoking stems and seeds." (2)

The differences, such as the Chinese crackdown, makes it appear that they were situated in different camps, or there was no unified or consistent Chines policy on the matter. The third reference sheds light on the subject in a different way. In his book on Korean War POW's, March to Calumny, Richard Biderman quotes a 1957 Coumbia Law School study on the military justice system. It was commenting on a book by Eugene Kinkead about the collaboration of POW's with their captors, a familiar charge in during the age of McCarthyism.

"Their is a tendency in the Kinkead book to equate prisoner misconduct with collaboration. Not all men with derogartory charges against them were charged with misconduct involving aid to the enemy. Among other types of allegations were breaches of discipline, assault, theft, suspicion of having surrendered when further resistance was possible, and smoking marajuana. (Marajuana grew in profusion in and about camp sites. It was presumably culturarlly acceptable to some of the Negro and Spanish-American prisoners, Turkish prisoners, and some Chinese guards. Chines authorities sometimes tried to control it's use. (Grant, n.d.) (3)

This supports the main them of the article, but keeps the Chinese reaction unclear.

References: (1) The Korean War, by Max Hastings, Simon and Schuster, c. 1987 (Search index for term "marajuana") (2)Turncoat, by Morris L Wills, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,Prentice  Hall, c. 1968)    (See chapters on prison life)      (3)March to Calumny, by Richard Biderman, MacMillian, c. 1967      (Check end of app. chapter 3)      *Sorry, but page nos. not available at this time.