The Army’s Last Segregated Unit: Black Prisoners at Camp 5, North Korea

Abstract

Only the Civil War saw more Black soldiers held prisoner than the Korean Conflict, yet the story of these soldiers has generally been overlooked by both scholars of that war and those of African American military history. Despite President Truman’s 1948 executive order desegregating the armed forces, when hostilities broke out in Korea in 1950, the US Army remained rigidly segregated. As a result, a number of all-Black units were at the front lines early in the conflict when the majority of American soldiers were taken prisoner. Hundreds of Black soldiers found themselves imprisoned for almost three years in North Korea, most at Camp 5 on the Chinese border, where they faced not only extreme deprivation but also racial segregation and communist indoctrination. Based on oral histories and other primary materials, the story of these prisoners from the “forgotten war” is told here.