“WWII Comrades to Korean War Enemies and Cold War Strangers: Three Chinese Interpreters’ Trans-imperial Encounters” – David Chang

“WWII Comrades to Korean War Enemies and Cold War Strangers: Three Chinese Interpreters’ Trans-imperial Encounters”

David Chang (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

Join us for our first Spring semester lecture titled “WWII Comrades to Korean War Enemies and Cold War Strangers: Three Chinese Interpreters’ Trans-imperial Encounters” in the Curti Lounge (5233 Mosse Humanities Bldg)!

In the Second World War, more than 4,000 Chinese college students were mobilized to serve as interpreters for the American and British Allied forces in the China-Burma-India theater. By the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, most of these former interpreters remained in China, while some 200 fled to Taiwan, and over 100 studied or worked in the United States. In the Korean War, the United Nations Command (UNC) hired more than 70 linguists from Taiwan, mostly former WWII interpreters. These interpreters served not only at the headquarters in Tokyo but also on the front lines, in POW camps, and in the negotiation tents at Panmunjom in Korea, contributing to the rise of the anti-Communist POWs and the prolongation of the armistice negotiations and the war. On the Chinese Communist side, a small number of former WWII interpreters served as doctors and POW interrogators. During the Cold War, these interpreters’ trajectories diverged even further, spanning China, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, and the United States.

Drawing on archival documents, oral history, memoirs, and private papers, historian David Cheng Chang will examine the lives of three former interpreters from the Second World War through the Korean War to the Cold War. His talk will highlight the multifaceted encounters between the Chinese interpreters and the Americans, first as comrades and later as allies, enemies, and strangers.

David Cheng Chang is Associate Professor of Humanities at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Visiting Professor of History at Ewha Womans University. He received his Ph.D. in modern Chinese history from the University of California, San Diego. He studies the Korean War, the Cold War, US-China relations, and the social history of war and revolution as experienced by ordinary individuals such as WWII interpreters, Korean War soldiers, and prisoners. His first book, The Hijacked War: The Story of Chinese POWs in the Korean War, was published by Stanford University Press in 2020.

Sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies and Harvey Goldberg Center