James Veneris

James George Veneris or Lao Wen (b. 1922 Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, d. before 2005 China), was a soldier in the American forces during the Korean War, was captured by the Chinese and was one of 21 US soldiers at the end of the war who decided they would rather stay in China than return to the US.

Veneris had served in the South Pacific during World War II, and said he re-enlisted because he couldn't find anything else to do and hoped Army life would provide security. After he chose to live in China, the Army gave Veneris a dishonorable discharge and refused to provide back pay for his time in prison camp. The Chinese gave him a stipend and moved him to Shandong province, where he was given a job in a state-run pulp factory in Jinan that turned discarded cloth shoes into toilet paper for export to Hong Kong. He alone of the defectors stayed through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution sheltered by his co-workers at the factory and an announcement by Premier Zhou Enlai calling him an "international freedom fighter". After a third marriage, to a botanist, Veneris remarried his second wife in 1989. Veneris returned to the United States twice, first in 1976 to celebrate the bicentennial and again some time in the late 1990s. He was one of the subjects of a 2005 documentary called They Chose China which was directed by Shui-Bo Wang and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

Veneris died in China in 2004.^[1]

External links

• They Chose China, NFB documentary (2005) on American POW's who chose to stay in China
• Where are they now? New lives, old secrets

References