When Chinese soldiers began appearing in prisoner of war (POW) camps in late 1950, American officials realized they had a communication problem. They lacked Chinese translators. Not only did this make managing the camps difficult, it was also a devastating intelligence failure. Many of the Chinese prisoners—some willing defectors—had valuable information to share with US and UN forces. In early 1951, American officials made a seemingly mundane and routine decision that had significant unintended consequences: Chinese translators from Taiwan were hired to work in UN POW camps—first just a couple of dozen, and later many times that. Psychological warfare specialists soon followed. The relatively small number of Taiwanese interpreters had an outsize impact as the infusion of Nationalist politics into POW camps helped prolong the Korean War.
David Cheng Chang's The Hijacked War is about a lot more than translators, of course. But this anecdote highlights what Chang aims to...
