Each Marine returnee was interviewed by a two-man debriefing team that consisted of a Marine and a Navy officer, the latter usually a counterintelligence expert. The three-phase interrogation averaged 9–12 hours and covered personal data, counterintelligence, and a detailed military questionnaire. The latter, particularly, sought information about UN personnel still held captive by the enemy. Since all of the 15 Marine POWs had been captured relatively recently (either in the October outpost contests or the Vegas battle the previous month), the information they had about the enemy was of limited intelligence value. From debriefing reports of Marine returnees, many of whom brought address books with them, it was learned that at least 115 more USMC and Navy prisoners were alive and still held in POW camps.
Upon completion of counterintelligence processing, returned personnel were available for press interviews. Long-distance telephone calls to parents or other family members were arranged by the Red Cross. Summer service uniforms and campaign ribbons were issued, pay provided, and administrative records updated by representatives dispatched by Colonel John F. Dunlap, Commanding Officer, Marine Barracks, Yokosuka.
All of the 19 Marine and Navy POWs had been released by 25 April. After final processing and clearance for return to the U.S. the men were flown home, via Hawaii, in three groups that departed 28 April, 30 April, and 4 May. Each was accompanied by a Marine Corps officer. Members of the first contingent of POWs arrived at Travis Air Force Base, California, on 29 April, thereby completing their 7,000-mile journey from Communist prison camps. Another small group of POWs considered possible security risks were airlifted directly from Japan to Valley Forge Hospital, near Philadelphia, for further interviewing. No Marines were among them. With the initial prisoner exchange completed, staffs of the major Far East commands began to prepare for the final return of all POWs. Operation BIG SWITCH would take place after the ceasefire that, hopefully, was not too far away.
On the day that Operation LITTLE SWITCH ended, 26 April, plenary truce talks resumed at Panmunjom. The stormy issue of repatriation of prisoners, which had already prolonged the war by more than a year, was still the one major problem preventing final agreement. There was indication, however, that the Communists appeared to be softening on their rigid insistence of forced repatriation. And, on 7 May, the Communists accepted the UN proposal that nonrepatriate prisoners be kept in neutral custody within Korea (rather than being removed to a foreign neutral nation) and offered an eight-point armistice plan. With modifications, this ultimately became the basis for the armistice. While discussions and disagreements continued on this proposal, another real problem developed from a totally different source.
Since early in April rumblings had been heard, through the polite ambassadorial circuits, that Syngman Rhee, the aging South Korean president, was dissatisfied with major truce issues. In particular, he was disturbed over the possibility that Korea would not become reunited politically. Further, Rhee gave indication that he might take some kind of action on his own. The Korean leader had advised President Eisenhower that if any armistice was signed that permitted Chinese Communist troops to remain south of the Yalu, with his country divided, he would withdraw ROK military forces from the UN command. Since South Korean troops, backed by American specialized units, presently manned the bulk of the UNC front line, Rhee’s threat to remove them from General Clark’s command presented harrowing possibilities.
Meanwhile, on 13 May, General Harrison, senior UN representative at Panmunjom, made a counterproposal to the Communist plan. This incorporated three measures aimed at reconciling differences in the long-controversial repatriation issue.[402] Arguments flew back and forth at Panmunjom, with a temporary recess called in the talks; but on 4 June the Communists accepted this UN final offer. The dispute of 18 months’ duration had ended and the Allied principle of voluntary repatriation had won out in the end. About the only homework left for the negotiating teams was to map out final details of the Demilitarized Zone.
[402] In brief, these were: (1) that the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission (NNRC) take custody of Chinese nonrepatriates but give Korean POWs the option of settling either in North or South Korea, as they wished; (2) that troops from just one country (India) be used to guard nonrepatriates, rather than the unwieldy five-nation force earlier proposed by the Communists; and (3), that specific procedures, which were clearly spelled out, be followed for granting political asylum to returning prisoners who refused repatriation.
President Rhee now even more violently denounced the projected armistice plan. He declared that he and the Koreans would fight on alone, if necessary. South Korean delegates boycotted the Panmunjom truce meetings, and Rhee began a campaign to block the cease-fire. Final agreement on the POW issue was reached 8 June. It provided that the NNRC offer a “civilian status” to former POWs who did not exercise their right of repatriation within four months after being taken into custody by the commission. Those POWs who desired asylum would be set free. The South Korean National Assembly unanimously rejected the truce terms the following day.
Revision of the truce line, to correspond to current battle positions, and other concluding details of the truce were being settled by 17 June. On 18 June, chaos suddenly replaced progress. Acting on orders from Rhee, during early morning hours ROK guards at the South Korean prisons released approximately 27,000 North Korean anti-Communist POW inmates (the majority of the large group of NKPA who did not wish to be repatriated). They quickly escaped and became absorbed into the civilian populace of South Korea. Immediately the Communists charged the Americans with complicity and demanded to know whether the United Nations Command was able to control its South Korean ally or not.
For the next two weeks the American ambassadorial and military team tried to restore some measure of international good grace and hope to the crisis. Daily talks (and pressure) took place with Rhee, as well as with the Communist negotiators, to set the course back on track again in the direction of a final truce agreement. At the end of June, UNC Commander Clark was authorized by Washington to work out a way in which it would be possible to sign the tenuous armistice—without the Koreans, if necessary.