William C. White (1930–?)

William C. White was an African American U.S. Army private who was one of twenty-one American prisoners of war (POWs) who chose to remain in China after the close of hostilities in the Korean War.

William C. White was born on May 9, 1930, in Plumerville (Conway County). His parents divorced when he was an infant (his mother, Mattie Lee, later married Walter Gorman), and his grandmother raised him for the first five years of his life.

White moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to live with his aunt Bertha Johnson while he attended high school. He dropped out before his last semester and joined the U.S. Army on March 17, 1948, earning his high school diploma through army correspondence courses. He was serving with the Second Division when he was captured on either November 30 or December 1, 1950, near Pyongyang, North Korea.

White was a POW in Chinese prison camps for three years, and some fellow prisoners said that he became an informer who was “rewarded by being given special privileges and a soft job as prison camp mailman.” White was also one of about fifty POWs who were featured in a North Korean propaganda movie depicting atrocities by U.S. soldiers. When an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, ending Korean War hostilities, White was among twenty-one soldiers who chose to remain in China.

He spent a year studying Chinese at Taiyuan before entering People’s University in Beijing, studying eighteen hours a day. He entered law school in 1956 and received a degree in international law. He met and married Hsieh Ping while in college; they would have a son and a daughter. White briefly practiced law before becoming a translator, translating books from English to Chinese and vice versa for the Foreign Language Press. He and a fellow former POW became active in the black market, and White also reportedly engaged in “immoral relations” with women. White was eventually arrested for his black market dealings and jailed for several weeks before agreeing to leave China.

In August 1965, after more than eleven years in China, he and his family crossed the Lo Wu border bridge between China and Hong Kong. Chinese border guards took his diary, law books, and all but $18.50 of his savings before allowing the family to leave. At a press conference he stated that “I still have not betrayed my country. I have always been an American. I still am an American.”

Returning to the United States, White visited his aunt in Kansas City. By 1966, he and his family were living on the farm of Stephen Jacoby in South Kortright, New York, where Jacoby was planning to open a college for sixty to one hundred students, and White would teach Chinese and history. The two men and their wives founded the Central New York State China-America Friendship League, a “non-political” organization “promoting friendship and understanding” between the two countries.

White gave a lengthy interview with a New York newspaper regarding his decision to remain in China following the war, saying, “I went there to study Chinese literature, culture and language. I always planned to come back here when I attained what I was after.” He said he “never informed on his fellow Korean war prisoners…never joined the Communist Party…always intended to come back to this country to work for ‘human progress.’” He added that he returned “because this is my country. I want to live here and die here but I don’t believe in ‘my country’ right or wrong.”

In a December 1966 article, Jacoby announced that the plans for the new college were on hold and that the White family had left and he did not know where White and his family were living. This was apparently the last newspaper reference to White, and his subsequent activities are unknown. There is a William C. White, who was born in 1930 and died in 1974, buried at Edmondson Cemetery in Plumerville. While the birthdate on the gravestone (September 1) is different than the one on record for White (May 9), the person buried there may be the former POW.

For additional information:
“Defectors: The Chinese Lawyer.” Time, August 27, 1965. Online at https://time.com/archive/6624485/defectors-the-chinese-lawyer/ (accessed September 13, 2025).

“Korea Turncoat of Arkansas Explains Reasons for Voluntary Exile in China.” Arkansas Gazette, June 5, 1966, p. 6.

Pasky, Virginia. 21 Stayed: The Story of the American GI’s Who Chose Communist China—Who They Were and Why They Stayed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1955.

“Plans Stalled for New College.” Oneanta [New York] Star, December 20, 1966, p. 5.

McKnight, Brian D. We Fight for Peace: Twenty-Three American Soldiers, Prisoners of War, and Turncoats in the Korean War. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2014.

Sturdevant, Jan. “Bill White’s Plan for Peace.” Oneonta [New York] Star, June 4, 1966, p. 4.

“U.S. Will Interrogate GI Turncoat, Decide If He’ll Be Admitted.” Arkansas Gazette, August 18, 1965, p. 1B.

“William C White.” Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/120743527/william-c-white (accessed September 13, 2025).

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas