Brian D. McKnight's meticulously researched and well-written We Fight for Peace explores the individual motivations of the twenty-three American prisoners of war who opted to remain with their Communist captors following the Korean War armistice, as well as the consequences of their decisions. Prisoners of war played an unusually central role in the Korean War. The final two years of the conflict were stalemated, both on the battlefield and at the peace table, with the primary sticking point in deadlocked negotiations being prisoner repatriation. While the United Nations demanded voluntary repatriation – allowing prisoners to choose whether or not to return to their home countries, not surprisingly the Chinese and North Koreans fervently opposed this. The United Nations was confident that when given the opportunity to “vote with their feet,” Communist prisoners would choose the “free” ways of the West, thus demonstrating that system's superiority, but was unprepared for what would follow. More than 22,000 Chinese and North Korean prisoners opted not to repatriate; however, in a shocking turn of events, twenty-three Americans also decided not to return home.

McKnight sheds new light on the lives of these twenty-three men by examining, in unprecedented detail, their backgrounds, the nature of their capture, the conditions of their confinement, and the repercussions of their decision not to repatriate, including the trials of the two who were prosecuted by the army. McKnight's thorough characterization of these men and descriptions of the physical and psychological horrors of the prison camps reveal that these prisoners (and thousands of others) were subjected to extreme and exceptional circumstances for which they were unprepared by the United States military. We Fight for Peace successfully demonstrates that while these men collaborated with the enemy, “pragmatism,” as opposed to a strong ideological belief in communism, primarily accounted for their actions (13). McKnight advocates for these men, writing that, in the brutal prison camps, “Within weeks, many of those who had been only a short time before the steadiest of soldiers, began a steep descent into the ultimate form of pragmatism. Each had to decide whether he would remain loyal to the principles of his military duty or save his own life” (49). Importantly, McKnight suggests that while many Americans collaborated with the enemy to some degree during their captivity, these twenty-three men were selected by their captors to stay behind: whether they realized it or not, non-repatriation was not their choice.

We Fight for Peace extends beyond portraying these twenty-three Americans as victims of their captors, demonstrating that they were also victims of their own nation. Rather than empathizing with these men, the United States “began exacting revenge” (1). Other notable book-length studies of Korean War prisoners, such as Raymond Lech's Broken Soldiers (2000), Lewis Carlson's Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War (2002) and, most recently, Charles Young's Name, Rank, and Serial Number (2014), have also emphasized the exploitation of Korean War prisoners during and after the conflict by both the Communists and the United States, but cover a broader scope than McKnight, whose study centres on the twenty-three who chose non-repatriation.

We Fight for Peace especially focusses on the persecution of two soldiers who changed their minds and returned to American lines after their initial decision not to repatriate – Edward Dickenson and Claude Batchelor. Soon after their arrival stateside, these men were court martialed and convicted for collaboration with the enemy (despite misleading assurances by the army that they would not be prosecuted). Shockingly, while Dickenson and Batchelor were serving prison terms, the non-repatriates who did go to China began trickling back to the United States without punishment. Thus, as McKnight asserts, “Dickenson and Batchelor became scapegoats for McCarthy's America,” and provided an opportunity for the military to demonstrate a tough stance on “communists” within their ranks (1). Rather than punish Dickenson and Batchelor, McKnight contends that the army, government, and people of the United States should have tried to understand why these men and their twenty-one counterparts decided not to repatriate, in order to prevent similar events in future.

We Fight for Peace admirably voices the stories of these twenty-three soldiers, prisoners and “turncoats.” At times, the individual stories are perhaps too detailed, but for the most part they are informative and interesting. The media's role in poisoning public perceptions of Korean War prisoners could have received more emphasis, and the larger context of the prisoner-of-war situation post-Korea could have been more developed, but overall We Fight for Peace is a comprehensive and fascinating addition to the sparse literature on these twenty-three American prisoners.