Where we learned "enhanced interrogation"

One can only wonder what Harold E. Fischer Jr., a Korean War ace whose engine stalled over North Korea, thought of current events.

Col. Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American fighter pilot who was routinely tortured in a Chinese prison during and after the Korean War, becoming — along with three other American airmen held at the same prison — a symbol and victim of cold war tension, died in Las Vegas on April 30. He was 83 and lived in Las Vegas.

The cause was complications of back surgery, his son Kurt said.

From April 1953 through May 1955, Colonel Fischer — then an Air Force captain — was held at a prison outside Mukden, Manchuria. For most of that time, he was kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air.

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Captain Fischer was an ace. By April 7, 1953, the day his Sabre Jet crashed north of the Yalu River, he had already shot down 10 MIGs. That day, he downed his 11th. Then his engine stalled, emitting smoke. He ejected.

On the ground, after unbuckling his parachute, the captain realized that he was north of the Yalu, “the boundary over which no Air Force pilot was allowed to cross,” he told Life magazine in a first-person account soon after his release.

Peasants surrounded him; then Chinese soldiers pulled up in a jeep. Ten days later, he was taken to the prison near Mukden. Days after a cease-fire was declared on July 27, 1953, guards told Captain Fischer that the Korean War was over. His hopes that he and the others would soon be released faded as weeks and months passed.

Nine months into his captivity, Captain Fischer managed to escape by digging a hole through the wall of his cell. He was re-captured at a railroad station. Relentless interrogation, led by a guard named Chong, began.

“He wanted me to admit that I had been ordered to cross the Manchurian border,” Captain Fischer told Life magazine. “I was grilled day and night, over and over, week in and week out, and in the end, to get Chong and his gang off my back, I confessed to both charges. The charges, of course, were ridiculous. I never participated in germ warfare and neither did anyone else. I was never ordered to cross the Yalu. We had strict Air Force orders not to cross the border.”

“I will regret what I did in that cell the rest of my life,” the captain continued. “But let me say this: it was not really me — not Harold E. Fischer Jr. — who signed that paper. It was a mentality reduced to putty.”