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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ★ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I graduated from Wuhan University in 1961 with my bachelor’s degree in Chinese language and literature. The university threw a farewell party for us, and everybody had to make a speech, including me. Some official asked me to comment on my university experience. I said it was a great university, but that there is always the bad with the good. I told them that, generally speaking, I did not like the intellectuals because I did not think they were candid or completely honest. I said I enjoyed being with the common people who worked for the university, but not with those in the upper echelons. Lin did not like what I said, but I had to be honest. After all, I had learned about self-criticism when I was a POW, and I meant my comments to be constructive. I told them they needed to know this for any future foreigners who might come to study. When I offered my criticism, they did not appear to be angry with me. Of the nine former American POWs who attended a university, five of us completed our studies. Morris Wills and William White had remained at the People’s University in Beijing and graduated; Harold Webb and Richard Corden completed their studies with me in Wuhan. The others went home or dropped out. William Cowart, Lewis Griggs, and Otho Bell left in the summer of 1955. By the end of 1958, Richard Corden and several others, including Lowell Skinner, had also returned to the States. I guess Skinner was disappointed after discovering he was not going to become a general. Harold Webb married a Polish girl he met in Wuhan and moved to Poland, and John Dunn moved to Czechoslovakia with his Czech wife. Scott c h a p t e r e i g h t The Foreign Languages Press, Africans, and the Vietnam Broadcasts Growing up, I had a very negative impression of Africans. . . . We were told that Africans were savages who ran around in grass skirts, lived in jungle huts, and were cannibals. Worst of all were the Tarzan movies, with the great white apeman . . . . But in Beijing the African diplomats accepted me with open arms, and I discovered they were a lot smarter than I and ten times better educated. —Clarence Adams The U.S. Army called me the new Tokyo Rose when I made those broadcasts directed at the black soldiers in Vietnam. That’s why they hated me so much. . . . They did not want blacks to have a brain. The army made it clear: “We don’t pay you to think. Just obey.” —Clarence Adams 94 : an american dream Rush, Morris Wills, and William White married Chinese women and brought them back to America when they returned. James Veneris and Howard Adams also married Chinese women but remained in China.1 The Chinese sent me to Beijing after my graduation. I had no choice in the matter, but I was very happy to return to Beijing because it was a great metropolitan city. In Wuhan I was pretty much cut off and isolated from the outside world, but in Beijing I could find out what was happening outside of China. By this time my command of the language was good enough to do simple translations. I had also developed an interest in classical Chinese novels, as well as the more modern writers like Lu Xun, so I was delighted when I was given a job at the Beijing Foreign Languages Press. William White and Morris Wills were also assigned to the Foreign Languages Press as translators. Lin was not able to get a teaching position in Beijing because the government officials were suspicious of her. I am not sure why. Perhaps because of her family background or the problems we had with her university, they thought she might be a bad influence on her students. Whatever the reason, we later learned that government officials had warned some of our friends to stay away from us because they did not consider Lin to be completely trustworthy . Of course, no one ever came out and said, “We do not want you to work.” They would make excuses like, “We can’t find anything for you,” which was not true, because other colleagues were getting positions. According to its own policies, the government had to provide a job for her, so it paid her sixty yuan a month not to work. As one of...

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