User:Harley500/John Roedel Dunn

John Roedel Dunn (June 29, 1928 - May 16, 1996) was an American soldier during the Korean War who was captured by the Chinese and later, at the end of the war, was one of the 21 who chose to stay in China, and later moved to Czechoslovakia. He was the only one of the 21 defectors who never once returned to the United States following his defection (although James Veneris also chose to stay in China for good, he did visit the US twice later.)

Early life

Dunn was born on June 29, 1928 in Altoona, Pennsylvania to William Roedel Dunn and Irene Fenton, he had a younger brother and a sister. When he was fourteen, his family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he attended Baltimore City College, the fourth-oldest high school in the United States, where he was elected president of his senior class. After graduating, he worked as a salesman for a potato chip company, while studying architecture at night.

Military

Dunn enlisted in the Army in December 1950, and after being trained as a radio operator, was shipped off to Korea in May 1951. On June 9, he was assigned to the 23rd Infantry Regiment, and was captured on July 24, 1951 by the Korean People's Army.

Regarding his period of captivity in a camp administered by the Chinese Army, he states in his biography of November 9, 1959, among other things, "When I was taken prisoner, I realized the true nature of the Korean War and rebelled against the idea that I was in an invader camp against the Korean people. Since that day, I have been doing everything for the sake of world peace. When I was in Korea, I studied Marxist science intensively, and toward the end of the war I came to the conviction that I did not want to return to America. Therefore, I asked permission to stay in China and continue my studies."

Defection

In February 1954, Dunn arrived in China and began his studies in the People's University in Beijing. In October 1957, while studying, he met a Slovak woman, Emília Porubcová (born August 6, 1932). Porubcová came from a staunch Communist family, and in January 1948 had been admitted to the Czechoslovak Communist Party herself for her active and conscious activities in Communist youth organizations. After graduating from the girls' gymnasium in Žilina, she worked as a clerk and applied for further studies in the USSR. While it was rejected, she was eventually granted permission to study in China, and went to Beijing, where she took a four-semester Chinese language course in 1952-1954 and then studied Chinese history in the People's University from 1954 to 1959.

On January 13, 1959, Dunn applied for a Czechoslovak visa and also to marry Porubcová. After his visa was granted, he arrived in Czechoslovakia on October 13, 1959, and married Porubcová on October 28. At first, they lived with Porubcová's parents. Immediately after their arrival, a through investigation of them by Czechoslovakian secret police, ŠtB, began. Dunn lacked American documents and StB suspected he might have been an agent of American intelligence.

In November 1959, Dunn applied for Czechoslovak citizenship, and in the aforementioned biography, wrote that in 1953, with the help of the repatriation commission in Korea, he had severed all ties with the U.S. and his only desire for the next eight years was to continue living in a socialist society, and petitioned to have his name changed to Ján Dan and his wife's last name to Danová. He received his citizenship next year, but his name change was not approved.

On April 15, 1960, Dunn's wife entered the Faculty of Education in Prešov. He also tried to get a position there as an English teacher, but because he couldn't speak Slovak, he was not accepted. In Prešov, they lived in a single dormitory room, on his wife's monthly salary of 1,030 Czechoslovakian korunas per month. Their first daughter was born in August 1960, then twin daughters in November 1961 and finally a son in November 1962. With Dunn's wife on maternity leave and Dunn unable to find employment, they still continued to live in the single dormitory room.

Dunn only managed to land a job in 1964, when he began working at Severoslovenské tehelne brickworks in Žilina. His wife also started work in the Marxism-Leninism department at local University of Transport in Žilina. In 1965, they were assigned an apartment in Žilina by the university, in Hliny district. Later, Dunn began working as a grinder at ZVL (závody valivých ložísk - ball bearings factory) in Žilina's Bytčica district, guild 8.

ŠtB kept monitoring the Dunns in their workplace and place of residence. According to his ŠtB file, Dunn felt inferior, shunned people and still couldn't speak Slovak. On September 1, 1976, due to the Sino-Soviet split, the Dunns were recruited by the ŠtB for surveillance in the Chinese embassy in Prague, which they visited from time to time. Dunn was assigned code name "Zajatec" (captive), and his wife "Knihovník" (librarian). According to the ŠtB file, he was still struggling with Slovak language, but neither the informants nor their own monitoring uncovered any negative findings about him.

One of the notes from the StB bundle, changed from an observation bundle to that of a collaborator-confidant "Zajatec", says: "The staff of the PRC Foreign Office in Prague then sent to their address objectionable magazines, which were sharply directed against socialist countries, especially the USSR." For these services, both were compensated in the hundreds of crowns, including reimbursement for travel expenses from Žilina to Prague. In May 1985, the volume of the confidant "Knihovník", and in July 1985 the volume of the confidant "Zajatec" (Dunn) were deposited for five years in the archives of the Evaluation and Statistical-Evidence Department (VŠEO) of the SNB Banská Bystrica Administration after approval. The justification was that both ŠtB confidants lost the possibility of contact with the staff of the Chinese Foreign Office in Prague and written contact to China.

Dunn died on May 16, 1996, his wife Emilia died on December 9, 2000. Both are buried in the Žilina Old Cemetery (Starý cintorín).