Why an American POW chose Mao’s China over home
As an uneducated black man from Tennessee, Clarence Adams figured he was better off in China than the US after his release from a prisoner-of-war camp following the Korea conflict. In 1966 he walked into Hong Kong and a barrage of questions. His daughter, Della, tells Stuart Heaver what followed
When an American war veteran walked across the Lo Wu border into Hong Kong with his Chinese wife and two young children, 50 years ago last week, he knew there would be no going back.
After living in China for 13 years, Corporal Clarence Adams also knew his return to the United States would spark controversy, but even he was not prepared for the hostility, poverty and injustice that awaited.
His first high-risk journey had been made in 1953, when he and 22 other American prisoners of war being held captive in North Korea elected not to return home at the end of the Korean war. Instead, they chose to forge a new life in China.
In the middle of the cold war, with Senator John McCarthy encouraging the persecution of communist sympathisers in the US, many considered Adams and the others to be nothing short of traitors who had “joined the enemy”. He was branded a turncoat at home but Adams simply reasoned that, in 1954, as an uneducated black man from Memphis, Tennessee, he had more chance of finding freedom and opportunity in China than at home.
After 13 happy years there, during which he studied at university, met his wife and started a family, the dawn of the Cultural Revolution was changing everything and the homesick soldier wanted out.