Hello and thanks for downloading witness from the BBC World Service.

I'm Rob Walker.

And in this edition, we're going back to the end of the Korean War in

1953.

It's the story of a black American soldier called Clarence Adams. He was captured and held in a Chinese

prisoner of war camp. When the war ended he decided not to go home to America and

instead to go to communist China.

His daughter is Della Adams.

You know, my father was always very, very intelligent

and very observant and have always been extremely angry and in fact enraged at his own situation in America,

especially in the South and Memphis, Tennessee, about what goes on and the racism that goes on.

And then when he continued to see that in the Army where everyone has sacrificed so much,

naturally he became very angry, became very awoke.

Although Clarence Adams and the other prisoners held by the Chinese were subject to many

hours of indoctrination, his daughter Della says this wasn't what persuaded him to go to China.

Rather, it was his experience of racism in the United States Army,

even during his three years in the prisoner of war camp.

Initially, the camp was integrated.

You had whites and blacks in the same barracks or whatever you want to call them, and fights were

breakout mainly because even in that kind of dire situation when everyone is in such a horrible, horrible situation, racism still managed to raise his ugly head. And there were whites threatening the black

soldiers and telling them, you know, calling them the in word, going to kill them.

By 1953, China and North Korea had agreed an armistice with the United States and its allies.

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