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本帖最后由 宁娜 于 2012-5-29 10:27 编辑 ) s% L' O6 z" d7 I% m* f4 F
" m3 i; Z3 Y7 U x+ S( [9 S当年“Time” 登载的消息：/ n. I, N( v4 J
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FOREIGN RELATIONS: U.S. Prisoners in China
, V: p, [+ a* {; F) q& I2 b( pMonday, Dec. 06, 1954
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The Peking radio announced last week that 13 Americans who had "sneaked into China by air to conduct espionage activities" had been convicted of spying and sentenced to prison terms ranging from four years to life. While the U.S. reacted with indignant denials, the world noted a harsh break in the "peaceful coexistence" theme with which the Communists have been wooing the West.0 d+ |) U4 Y! D) e
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One Got Life. Eleven of the 13 Americans had been on the same plane, a B-29 shot down high over the Yalu 22 months ago. Colonel John K. Arnold Jr., commander of the 581st Air Resupply and Communications Wing, was aboard. The Chinese said that he confessed that the mission of his wing was "the introduction, supply, resupply, evacuation or recovery of underground personnel." The U.S. story is that Arnold's group was engaged in psychological warfare on a routine leaflet-dropping mission, that Colonel Arnold and his operations officer, Major William H. Baumer, went along for the ride. The Defense Department said the spying charge was "utterly false.", j5 V1 C" U( p6 Z# u9 j
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Colonel Arnold, a 41-year-old West Pointer and native of Silver Springs, Md., was sentenced to ten years. Major Baumer, 32, of Lewisburg, Pa., got eight years. Captain Eugene J. Vaadi, 33, of Clayton, N.Y., who was shot down near Berlin in 1945, got six years. Captain Elmer F. Llewellyn, 29, of Missoula, Mont, and Lieut. Wallace L. Brown, 28, of Banks, Ala. got five years each.
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+ }8 t! t( Y+ {5 @/ ~3 j& R# AThe rest were given four-year terms: Lieut. John W. Buck, 35, Armathwaite, Tenn., farm boy whose mother is a cousin of former Secretary of State Cordell Hull; Sergeant Howard W. Brown, 31, Air Force regular from St. Paul, Minn., who flew 100 missions in Korea, was sent home, volunteered to go back; Airman Steve E. Kiba Jr., 22, Akron, Ohio, one of eleven children of a Hungarian immigrant; Airman Harry M. Benjamin Jr., 22, of Worthington, Minn., who joined the Air Force because "I'll always have a place to sleep and plenty to eat"; Airman John W. Thompson III, 23, former Orange, Va. meatcutter; and Airman Daniel C. Schmidt, 22, of Portland, Ore., who wrote home from a Chinese prison asking whether his baby was a boy or a girl (it's a boy, now 20 months old).5 D% g7 j, j. ]& {; V( @$ ^
& r0 I9 x" Z+ [6 r) Y7 ?5 gThe two civilians got tougher treatment. Twenty-four-year-old John Thomas Downey of New Britain, Conn., a cousin of singer Morton Downey, and onetime captain of the Yale wrestling team, was sentenced to life imprisonment. Richard G. Fecteau, 27, of Lynn, Mass., whose parents told newsmen he had been working for Army intelligence, was given a 20-year sentence.: X) N1 t4 B+ K* F& S
3 Y8 E; e1 v; eThe Reds accused Downey and Fecteau of being Central Intelligence agents who were captured when their C-47 was trying to drop supplies to Chinese spy teams they had trained. The official U.S. version of the disappearance of Downey and Fecteau is that they were on a routine flight from Seoul to Tokyo when their plane vanished two years ago. In connection with the charges against Downey and Fecteau, the Chinese Reds announced that since 1951 they had executed 106 special U.S. agents; presumably, all or most of these victims were Chinese.0 Z; V" N' D) B- V9 X
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The mother of Major Baumer accused Washington of "dillydallying" but she was comforted when the White House called, assuring her that everything "humanly possible within peaceful means" was being done to get the Americans released. Said the State Department: "A most flagrant violation of justice." The British government was shocked out of its usual line of "Let's not be beastly to the Chinese Reds"; the Foreign Office called the imprisonment of the 13 Americans "outrageous" and promised to "do all in our power to mitigate this great, grievous wrong." Senator William F. Knowland called for "a tight naval blockade of the entire China coast." Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., said the sentences were "a new act of barbarism" which "adds still another item to the long list of reasons why the unspeakable gang in Peking is unfit to sit in the U.N."
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: @* M: X6 d0 R. O0 cAnswering Nehru. Since most of this reaction was predictable, the Chinese announcement raised the question of why Peking had gone out of its way to hand new ammunition to those who have been warning the free world against "peaceful coexistence" blandishments from the Red camp. The best explanation of the Chinese Communist motive lay in Asian politics. India's Nehru and others have recently been pressing the Chinese Communists to desist from subversive activities in other countries. The Reds will not—in a sense, cannot—drop their underground groups. To ease the pressure from Nehru they chose to publicize the trial of 13 Americans whom they called "spies."
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( T$ f4 s- h. e8 O' G7 Hhttp://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,820925-2,00.html |
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发表于 2012-5-26 11:40:51
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