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 do in his fascinating book: methodically unpack and reassess seemingly small details and events during the Korean War to make big claims about responsibility and outcomes. Chang argues that the Korean War dragged on at least fifteen months longer than necessary because anti-Communist Chinese POWs and their Nationalist allies were able to “hijack” armistice talks by insisting on a policy of voluntary repatriation. Ill-prepared and uninformed, the Americans were pushed—in part by what Chang calls a “prisoner-interpreter-Taipei nexus”—into adopting a policy that they did not actually care much about but the People's Republic of China (PRC) vehemently opposed. For Mao, complete prisoner exchange was the only option. Stalemate ensued.

The costs were staggering. Hundreds of thousands of people died between mid-1952 and the end of the war, including more than 12,000 American soldiers. As Chang provocatively calculates, the United States traded the life of one American soldier to “secure one Chinese prisoner's ‘freedom’ not to return home but to go to Taiwan” (p. 5). Of the 21,000 Chinese prisoners taken, 14,000 chose not to be sent to the mainland but to Taiwan. The program was thus a victory for Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists in Taipei but a failure for everyone else. Complicating matters, as Chang shows, more than half the men who “chose” Taiwan likely did so under great duress. As his detailed description of camp life demonstrates, there was little “voluntary” about the choices that were made. He estimates that about 3,000 of the Chinese prisoners were fervent Nationalists with a desire to go to Taiwan. Given the costs, it is no wonder, Chang writes, that the war has long been “forgotten” in the United States.

The Hijacked War moves roughly chronologically from the Chinese Civil War through the Korean War. The sixteen chapters can be roughly broken into those that deal with high politics and diplomacy and those that examine the intimate daily lives of the Chinese soldiers who were taken prisoner. Chang aptly shows how policy makers across American administrations were ill-informed and frankly incurious about China and Chinese politics. From the trope that “Chinese Communists are not really Communists” to an arrogant dismissal of Chinese abilities, US policy makers repeatedly misjudged and underestimated their adversary.

The usual suspects make appearances—Truman, MacArthur, Ridgeway, Chiang, Mao, Zhou—but the real power of Chang's work is the stories he reveals about the Chinese soldiers and prisoners. Using a rich array of sources—most notably, eighty-four interviews conducted by the author—Chang explains how individuals were deployed in Korea with Mao's Chinese Volunteer Army and then ended up in POW camps. Some defected, others were captured. Chang details the physical organization of the POW camps, as well as the ways in which different factions within the camps vied for power and influence. The Chinese Civil War was essentially replicated behind barbed wire as Nationalist and Communist partisans sought allegiance and support. Chang shows how a small cadre of the most devoted Nationalists were able to take advantage of the chaos in the camps and US ignorance more broadly to promote their plans for prisoner exchange. Everywhere violence was the norm. Indeed, prisoners were subject to torture, abuse, and trauma from their captors, their fellow campmates, and the countries that eventually took them in. Later chapters explore the role of “China hands” in POW policies as well as the alleged massacre of prisoners on Cheju Island in October 1952. As the final chapter highlights, the prisoners returned to the PRC were—at best—marginalized and treated as traitors. Many of those who moved to Taiwan were forced to join the military.

The Hijacked War will be of great interest to specialists on the Korean War, East Asian history, and US diplomacy, as well as scholars interested in POWs and international rights regimes. Given the length of the book, it is unlikely to be adopted for classroom use. However, I could imagine that Chang's interviews, if made available, would be a rich teaching resource. The Hijacked War is a welcome and important intervention into Korean War historiography. Chang's focus on the lived experiences of those involved in POW discussions and camps suggests the ways that local stories can reorient our understanding of events, particularly a conflict that is often told in terms of high politics and military strategy.