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Search For Primary Sources Of The United States And China

Decent Essays

I. Search for Primary Sources
On June 1st, on my way to Eisenhower Library at Abilene, KS by taking the I-70 highway, I stopped at Independence, MO, where the Truman Library is located. Although this visit was not listed in my research plan, I spent half a day in its reading room and went over six folders kept in two boxes: Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, White House Official Files OF-471B, Box 1499 and 1500. The folders are primarily about the issues regarding the prisoners of war in the Korean War during the peace negotiation between the United Nations and China. The materials in Truman library will fall into two categories. The first one is about the servicemen’s family’s questioning about the rationale of the “voluntary …show more content…

After leaving Truman Library, I proceeded to Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library as planned on June 2nd. When making the plan, I significantly underestimated by reading speed. As a result, even I went over much more folders than planned; it only took me three days in this library. Here is a list of the boxes I have consulted during the first week of June:
DDE Library, White House Central Files, Official Files, 1953-1961, Box 87, 88
DDE Library, White House Central Files, General Files, Box 227, 228, 686, 937, 1285
DDE Library, White House Central Files, Alpha Files, Box 2503, 3197
These eight boxes contain the missing members of the armed forces during Eisenhower’s presidency, as well as prisoners of war and memorials. These boxes keep letters between family members and the White House shortly after the Korean War (up to 1961). Most of them are the families’ cry for returning their relatives, though most of them still remain missing today. An interesting phenomenon is that the words of these families gradually developed from begging to furious, then to sarcastic. The family members also launched a campaign by sending back medals or personal artifacts of their sons or husbands to “remind” the president of the missing servicemen and to criticize the governments’ contact with the Soviet and China. The Box 1285 holds the government policies in dealing with a nascent family organization which mobilized several hundreds of families to Washington, DC and urged the

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