by MAJOR WILLIAM E. MAYER
TO FREEDOM FORUM XVIII SEARCY, ARKANSAS. APRIL 15, 1957
Distributed by THE NATIONAL EDUCATION PROGRAM
Introducing Major Mayer:
Major William N. Slayer is instructor in Neuropsychiatry at the U.S. Army Medical
Service School, Fort Sam Houston. He is the Army's foremost authority on Communist
''brain-washing.'' As a top psychiatrist on the prisoner-study project m Japan, he
interviewed and examined the complete records of more than 1,000 American soldiers
released from prisoner of war camps in Korea. Since then he has addressed military
and civilian groups all over the United States.
Major Mayer took his undergraduate work at the University of Washington,
Seattle, and North western University, Evanston. After considerable psychiatric practice
in service and a period of teaching at the University of California Medical School, Major
Mayer, in July, 1950, was sent to the Far East as Chief of Psychiatry and Neurology
Service of the U. S. Naval Hospital at Yakosuka, Japan, and in six months saw the
hospital expand from 80 to 5000 beds.
In 1952, after service with the Marine Corps, he was transferred to the Regular
Army Medical Corps and became assistant chief of the Neuropsychiatric Department at
the 8167th U.S. Army Hospital and Tokyo Army Hospital in Japan. It was during this
period that he was assigned to the special project of studying returning prisoners of war.
Major Mayer holds the Bronze Star Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, Presidential
Unit Citation for Marine Corps, Navy Unit Commendation, Korean Service Medal, and
other decorations. He is a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honorary Medical
Society, Nu Sigma Medical Fraternity, the American Medical Association, and he is a
Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
Communist Indoctrination - - Its Significance To Americans
By MAJOR WILLIAM E. MAYER
TO FREEDOM FORUM XVIII SEARCY, ARKANSAS. APRIL 15, 1957
TO FREEDOM FORUM XVIII SEARCY, ARKANSAS. APRIL 15, 1957
Dr. Benson, Ladies and Gentlemen: On this the last unpenalized day of paying the subsidy you are paying to support the United States Government I am acutely aware
of the privilege of talking to you. I was trying to figure out a few moments ago how much
it is costing each of you to keep me in business and I figure there's hardly anyone in the
room who is paying less than a dollar a day for the defense establishment, which is
considerable. You have a right, we think, therefore, to know something about where
your money is going and what problems we're having using it properly; and I personally
also think you have not only the right but the obligation to know even more about the
reason Dr. Benson mentioned for our existence: the nature of international Communism.
We exist for almost no other reason.
Unlike most armies on earth we are not also an internal security organization.
And we are genuinely, and feel it more acutely these days than ever, the servants of the
sovereigns of this country.
We are having problems in the military service which I would like to talk to you
about, because these are problems insoluble within the framework of the Defense
Department. They are problems for the whole social organization. They are reflections,
as are most of our attitudes and trends and techniques in the armed forces, of attitudes
and trends and techniques in industry, primarily, from whom we borrow very freely; and
of some currents which exist throughout the whole society.
I'm going to talk about Communist indoctrination, for the very simple reason that
only in the last few years have we really had a chance to learn anything about it that
wasn't just horror stories, or the sometimes objective but statistically insignificant stories
of individuals who'd been held in Communist captivity.
of the privilege of talking to you. I was trying to figure out a few moments ago how much
it is costing each of you to keep me in business and I figure there's hardly anyone in the
room who is paying less than a dollar a day for the defense establishment, which is
considerable. You have a right, we think, therefore, to know something about where
your money is going and what problems we're having using it properly; and I personally
also think you have not only the right but the obligation to know even more about the
reason Dr. Benson mentioned for our existence: the nature of international Communism.
We exist for almost no other reason.
Unlike most armies on earth we are not also an internal security organization.
And we are genuinely, and feel it more acutely these days than ever, the servants of the
sovereigns of this country.
We are having problems in the military service which I would like to talk to you
about, because these are problems insoluble within the framework of the Defense
Department. They are problems for the whole social organization. They are reflections,
as are most of our attitudes and trends and techniques in the armed forces, of attitudes
and trends and techniques in industry, primarily, from whom we borrow very freely; and
of some currents which exist throughout the whole society.
I'm going to talk about Communist indoctrination, for the very simple reason that
only in the last few years have we really had a chance to learn anything about it that
wasn't just horror stories, or the sometimes objective but statistically insignificant stories
of individuals who'd been held in Communist captivity.
PRIMARY WEAPONS
Communist indoctrination and their methods present to us the Communist
primary weapon, the weapon with which they've done this fabulous thing that was
mentioned here a few minutes ago, in expanding to such an incredible degree just in the
last few years.
Our primary weapon in this country, despite the fact that everything you read and
see and hear is about guided missiles and push-buttons and gadgets, is still the human
being. And the quality of the human beings which make up our defense establishment is
something which has to be scrutinized from time to time and really continuously, and the
attempts to make them into finer instruments for the preservation of our freedoms
against foreign intrusion is an effort that can never be let down. We've reason to believe,
I think, that this weapon needs some work.
Now what I'm about to say will be drawn primarily from data which was collected
officially by the United States and its military and some civilian agencies. The facts I will
give are facts. The opinions and conclusions I shall draw are mine and not necessarily
those of any agency of the United States, particularly the Department of Army or the
Department of Defense.
primary weapon, the weapon with which they've done this fabulous thing that was
mentioned here a few minutes ago, in expanding to such an incredible degree just in the
last few years.
Our primary weapon in this country, despite the fact that everything you read and
see and hear is about guided missiles and push-buttons and gadgets, is still the human
being. And the quality of the human beings which make up our defense establishment is
something which has to be scrutinized from time to time and really continuously, and the
attempts to make them into finer instruments for the preservation of our freedoms
against foreign intrusion is an effort that can never be let down. We've reason to believe,
I think, that this weapon needs some work.
Now what I'm about to say will be drawn primarily from data which was collected
officially by the United States and its military and some civilian agencies. The facts I will
give are facts. The opinions and conclusions I shall draw are mine and not necessarily
those of any agency of the United States, particularly the Department of Army or the
Department of Defense.
LETHARGY OUR DANGER
I couldn't agree more that Americans are in danger of something connected with
lethargy. We've been manifesting a good bit of lethargy about civil defense, for one
thing. For about twenty years we've been manifesting a good bit of it about
Communism. Now this is partly by design of the Communists. Their program for tyranny
is clothed in such complicated and often boring and repetitious and abstruse economic
and political theory that a great many people who could understand Communism simply
abandon the attempt because it gets so complicated that it's almost not worth the effort;
and you get lost and we're content to call it names and realize and agree among
ourselves that it's bad; and yet we're terribly unrealistic about it; it's awfully hard to
convince people that there it is, well, much of the Fifth Column that Dr. Benson
mentioned.
It's hard to realize that these people are any more serious than Hitler was when
he wrote that book and said that he was going to do exactly what he went ahead and
did. And the Communists have been doing this for thirty-five years: writing and stating in
their official documents that sooner or later and one way or another - and they think now
they can do it internally without having to shoot - one way or the other they're going to
destroy us.
And so it's time that we slipped out of this lethargy a little and tried to understand
Communism, its mechanics and its intentions, in a much more specific way. We haven't
ever before overcome any kind of an adversary by calling it names and then trying not
to think about it and hoping it will go away.
lethargy. We've been manifesting a good bit of lethargy about civil defense, for one
thing. For about twenty years we've been manifesting a good bit of it about
Communism. Now this is partly by design of the Communists. Their program for tyranny
is clothed in such complicated and often boring and repetitious and abstruse economic
and political theory that a great many people who could understand Communism simply
abandon the attempt because it gets so complicated that it's almost not worth the effort;
and you get lost and we're content to call it names and realize and agree among
ourselves that it's bad; and yet we're terribly unrealistic about it; it's awfully hard to
convince people that there it is, well, much of the Fifth Column that Dr. Benson
mentioned.
It's hard to realize that these people are any more serious than Hitler was when
he wrote that book and said that he was going to do exactly what he went ahead and
did. And the Communists have been doing this for thirty-five years: writing and stating in
their official documents that sooner or later and one way or another - and they think now
they can do it internally without having to shoot - one way or the other they're going to
destroy us.
And so it's time that we slipped out of this lethargy a little and tried to understand
Communism, its mechanics and its intentions, in a much more specific way. We haven't
ever before overcome any kind of an adversary by calling it names and then trying not
to think about it and hoping it will go away.
"LABORATORY" EXPERIMENT
In 1950 the first random samples crosssection of healthy young adult Americans
in our history got an opportunity to live in a Communist state. They lived there for almost
three years. We viewed these men as sources of a tremendous amount of information
about Communism, and so they were. More important, however, they proved to be a
tremendous source of information about Americans. And so I'll try to intertwine these
two things and describe to you what happened to them and how they reacted to it.
It shook us, those of us who did the study, to find that our preconceived ideas
were wrong - about how invulnerable we Americans are to anything as pointless and
kind of stupid and unrealistic as many Communist ideas seem to be.
There were 7000 American soldiers - they were mostly Army troops - who were
captured in Korea - and they provided us almost with a controlled study of a sort of a
microcosm of the Communist state. These men were, as I said in the beginning and I
wish to re-emphasize, a fair crosssection of young American males: the same ones that
worked in your shops, the same ones that you in education are turning out; they were
not garrison soldiers; they were not maladjusted civilians who sought refuge in the
armed forces: at least half of them were drafted in honor of the occasion. And these
men were also not uneducated. Compared to the troops who fought in World War II they were slightly better trained on the whole, militarily, and of a slightly higher over-all public
educational level.
They fell into enemy hands not because they were incompetent soldiers - which
is sometimes true of prisoners. They fell into those hands because they were suddenly
surrounded by such hordes of Chinese that there was no other alternative possible.
Many of our troops were captured in groups of several hundred.
in our history got an opportunity to live in a Communist state. They lived there for almost
three years. We viewed these men as sources of a tremendous amount of information
about Communism, and so they were. More important, however, they proved to be a
tremendous source of information about Americans. And so I'll try to intertwine these
two things and describe to you what happened to them and how they reacted to it.
It shook us, those of us who did the study, to find that our preconceived ideas
were wrong - about how invulnerable we Americans are to anything as pointless and
kind of stupid and unrealistic as many Communist ideas seem to be.
There were 7000 American soldiers - they were mostly Army troops - who were
captured in Korea - and they provided us almost with a controlled study of a sort of a
microcosm of the Communist state. These men were, as I said in the beginning and I
wish to re-emphasize, a fair crosssection of young American males: the same ones that
worked in your shops, the same ones that you in education are turning out; they were
not garrison soldiers; they were not maladjusted civilians who sought refuge in the
armed forces: at least half of them were drafted in honor of the occasion. And these
men were also not uneducated. Compared to the troops who fought in World War II they were slightly better trained on the whole, militarily, and of a slightly higher over-all public
educational level.
They fell into enemy hands not because they were incompetent soldiers - which
is sometimes true of prisoners. They fell into those hands because they were suddenly
surrounded by such hordes of Chinese that there was no other alternative possible.
Many of our troops were captured in groups of several hundred.
STRANGE BEHAVIOR
Now these men behaved in a way that was so profoundly different from our
expectations about the behavior of American soldiers under prolonged stress that we
began searching to see if we could find reasons - reasons outside the rather narrow
framework of the Armed Forces - for their behavior - not misbehavior. And as a result of
our search we found that the men who fought in Korea were a strikingly different group
of human beings from those who fought in World War II, in spite of the fact that they
were selected by the same procedure.
During the war we expected that those men who were unfortunate enough to
become prisoners of an enemy would behave as Americans had, in all our recorded
history, behaved when someone attempted forcibly to deprive them of their individual
and collective freedom.
We knew that in the past Americans subjected to this have always reacted by
forming, first of all, tight little units - called the "Buddy System" in the service - units of
two or three or four, individuals. And this Buddy System operates, before organizations
develop, to preserve life of the individual. From these tight little groups develop the
characteristic kinds of social organization we're used to seeing, the stafftype
organization: collections of groups of human beings who more or less voluntarily band
themselves together under what they consider to be competent leadership, impose
certain checks on this leadership, and then support it for the purpose of gaining
strength. This never happened in Korea.
expectations about the behavior of American soldiers under prolonged stress that we
began searching to see if we could find reasons - reasons outside the rather narrow
framework of the Armed Forces - for their behavior - not misbehavior. And as a result of
our search we found that the men who fought in Korea were a strikingly different group
of human beings from those who fought in World War II, in spite of the fact that they
were selected by the same procedure.
During the war we expected that those men who were unfortunate enough to
become prisoners of an enemy would behave as Americans had, in all our recorded
history, behaved when someone attempted forcibly to deprive them of their individual
and collective freedom.
We knew that in the past Americans subjected to this have always reacted by
forming, first of all, tight little units - called the "Buddy System" in the service - units of
two or three or four, individuals. And this Buddy System operates, before organizations
develop, to preserve life of the individual. From these tight little groups develop the
characteristic kinds of social organization we're used to seeing, the stafftype
organization: collections of groups of human beings who more or less voluntarily band
themselves together under what they consider to be competent leadership, impose
certain checks on this leadership, and then support it for the purpose of gaining
strength. This never happened in Korea.
NO EFFORT TO ESCAPE
Secondly we know that Americans when confined have an almost overwhelming
impulse to get away. And the Japanese and Germans both wrote at some length about
the most uncooperative, noisiest, recalcitrant, stubbornest, most irreverent prisoners
that they ever tried to hold; namely, the Americans, who invariably had a kind of
diabolical sense of humor along with their attempts to get away. This apparently never
happened in Korea.
Well, we've seen other things among prisoners. We've seen the development of
a system of justice, based upon the presumption that laws and not men must govern.
And what could be remembered of the laws in the code of military justice and other
codes the men were familiar with have always taken precedence among groups of prisoners and been established as the laws under which men live. This never happened
in Korea.
And then something new was added. Before the men came home to us their
letters started coming home to us, letters written by PFC John Smith, U.S. Army; 81/2
years of formal education, lower middle-class social and economic background, small
urban community; and a letter written not as he learned it in composition class in 9th
grade but in the language of the materialist dialectician exhorting mother to band
together with other progressive and informed citizens and stop the senseless slaughter
of innocent civilians for the profit of the imperialist Wall Street warmongers.
Now, coming from Private John Smith this seemed a little odd and especially
when more and more of these came.
impulse to get away. And the Japanese and Germans both wrote at some length about
the most uncooperative, noisiest, recalcitrant, stubbornest, most irreverent prisoners
that they ever tried to hold; namely, the Americans, who invariably had a kind of
diabolical sense of humor along with their attempts to get away. This apparently never
happened in Korea.
Well, we've seen other things among prisoners. We've seen the development of
a system of justice, based upon the presumption that laws and not men must govern.
And what could be remembered of the laws in the code of military justice and other
codes the men were familiar with have always taken precedence among groups of prisoners and been established as the laws under which men live. This never happened
in Korea.
And then something new was added. Before the men came home to us their
letters started coming home to us, letters written by PFC John Smith, U.S. Army; 81/2
years of formal education, lower middle-class social and economic background, small
urban community; and a letter written not as he learned it in composition class in 9th
grade but in the language of the materialist dialectician exhorting mother to band
together with other progressive and informed citizens and stop the senseless slaughter
of innocent civilians for the profit of the imperialist Wall Street warmongers.
Now, coming from Private John Smith this seemed a little odd and especially
when more and more of these came.
AIDING RED CAUSE
Then we saw articles written by similar soldiers appearing in those well-known
documents such as the Daily Worker and Masses and Mainstream and the Shanghai
Daily News, Pravda, The Peoples World; also written by Americans and also written in
the typical Communist dialectics, and always there was something about the imperialist
Wall Street warmongers "who sent us here."
Then we started seeing cartoons (by American prisoners of war) printed in
Crocodile and other Communist publications: and even in the non-Communist
(supposedly) propaganda material which is disseminated in such huge quantities all
over the earth today by the Communists: cartoons defaming American characters or
American institutions.
Well, taking all these things into account, the letters and the newspaper articles
and the cartoons and the fact that nobody seemed to be getting out of these camps and
escaping back to our lines, and nobody ever managed to steal enough radio equipment
from the Chinese to communicate with us - which incidentally they have always done in
the past - all these things combined led us to believe something strange indeed had
been done to this group of young men. After all they couldn't in ten years be so
profoundly different, could they, from the men who fought in World War II?
documents such as the Daily Worker and Masses and Mainstream and the Shanghai
Daily News, Pravda, The Peoples World; also written by Americans and also written in
the typical Communist dialectics, and always there was something about the imperialist
Wall Street warmongers "who sent us here."
Then we started seeing cartoons (by American prisoners of war) printed in
Crocodile and other Communist publications: and even in the non-Communist
(supposedly) propaganda material which is disseminated in such huge quantities all
over the earth today by the Communists: cartoons defaming American characters or
American institutions.
Well, taking all these things into account, the letters and the newspaper articles
and the cartoons and the fact that nobody seemed to be getting out of these camps and
escaping back to our lines, and nobody ever managed to steal enough radio equipment
from the Chinese to communicate with us - which incidentally they have always done in
the past - all these things combined led us to believe something strange indeed had
been done to this group of young men. After all they couldn't in ten years be so
profoundly different, could they, from the men who fought in World War II?
FIRST-HAND STUDY
Then they came home. We took about a thousand of them and for comparative
purposes had several hundred troops who had also been prisoners of other
nationalities, particularly Turks, and some Columbians, and we studied them all in
Japan, before they got home.
We noticed some very odd things about these American men. First of all we
noticed that they wouldn't talk to each other. They would talk about each other like no
Americans we had ever seen before. They would talk about each other with a strange
absence of affect, no feeling, no emotion; they simply would talk about each other,
purposes had several hundred troops who had also been prisoners of other
nationalities, particularly Turks, and some Columbians, and we studied them all in
Japan, before they got home.
We noticed some very odd things about these American men. First of all we
noticed that they wouldn't talk to each other. They would talk about each other like no
Americans we had ever seen before. They would talk about each other with a strange
absence of affect, no feeling, no emotion; they simply would talk about each other,
anything. But not to each other.
And then when they were checked out medically and we knew they were OK we
would say, "You can go down town on a pass if you like, and see the sights and sounds
and smells of Tokyo" - which is quite a city to see - and some did, about
one out of fivewent on a pass, after three years of being locked up. And those that did go on a pass
went on pass by
Then we noticed what happened when the Red Cross came by with a wonderful
proposition, that you could call home, call anybody you wanted, your friends or your girl
or your mother or your wife, if you had one - anybody, any place in the United States,
talk as long as you wanted and the Red Cross would pick up the tab - it normally, you
know, costs $5 a minute from Japan and these people hadn't been paid. We found
curiously enough that
anybody they thought they wanted to talk tothemselves, which soldiers never do.more than half of the returning prisoners said there wasn't. And that seemed odd.
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