Samuel David Hawkins
| Samuel David Hawkins | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 1, 1933 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma |
| Allegiance |
 United States (1950–1953) China (1953–1957; defector) |
| Service/branch |
 United States Army
|
| Years of service | 1950–1953 (defected) |
| Rank |
 Private
|
Samuel David Hawkins (born August 1933) was the youngest of the American defectors of the Korean War. Hawkins was one of only twenty-two American and British servicemen to defect to China after the conclusion of the war in 1953. Hawkins returned to the United States in 1957.
Hawkins was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His father, Clayton O. Hawkins, whom Hawkins says he had an unhappy relationship with during his childhood, had served in World War II. He enlisted in the U.S. Army at the age of 16. Captured and made a prisoner of war by the Chinese People's Volunteer Army troops, he chose to remain in China after the signing of the 1953 , one of twenty-two American and British servicemen to do so. While in China, he studied politics at the People's University of China in Beijing, and later worked in Wuhan as a mechanic. Hawkins was featured in Virginia Pasley's 1955 book 21 Stayed: The Story of the American GI's Who Chose Communist China—Who They Were and Why They Stayed. His father died in a fire in Tuskahoma, Oklahoma while Hawkins was in a prisoner-of-war camp in China. In 1954 Hawkins was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army. In 1956 he married a White Russian woman named Tanya who had grown up in a French convent in China and worked at the Soviet embassy in Beijing.
...
Wikipedia