OSS IN CHINA.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Album of photographs showing the liberation of POWs. A rare series of photographs taken after Japan's unconditional surrender, when the Office of Strategic Services launched eight operational missions to rescue prisoners of war across east and south-east Asia, showing smiling internees and their liberators. Two of the images show Lee Beom-Seok, a resistance fighter and the first prime minister of South Korea, who worked closely with OSS personnel in China.In one photograph, taken at night, Lee stands alongside soldiers in the uniform of Chiang Kai-Shek's National Revolutionary Army. Other images capture a team of US soldiers disembarking from a C47 cargo plane, while two at the end of the album show OSS personnel in discussion. At least one photograph appears to show Clyde Bailey Sargent (1909-1981), a sinologist who joined the OSS as a civilian and undertook intelligence-gathering missions in China and India; his short obituary is pasted on the inner rear cover.

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