James Veneris

At the end of military action, all POWs in Korea were given the option by their captors of returning to their home countries or remaining with the Chinese. Veneris elected to stay in China since his days in the prison camp he was treated well and learned Chinese. He was promised employment and education if he remained in China, so he decided to remain. (Personal Communication, 1978)

He and fellow former POW Howard Gayle Adams stayed in Jinan through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution sheltered by their factory co-workers and an announcement by Premier Zhou Enlai calling them "international freedom fighters". In 1963, he was allowed to study at the People's University of China. After graduation, he returned to the same factory. His first Chinese wife died from lung disease after ten years of marriage. In 1967, he married a Chinese divorcee. In 1977, he became an English professor at Shandong University. Veneris returned to the United States twice, first in 1976 to celebrate the bicentennial and again some time in the late 1990s. He has a daughter and a son who were raised in China and later moved to the US in the 1990s. He was one of the subjects of the 2005 documentary They Chose China which was directed by Shui-Bo Wang and produced by the National Film Board of Canada.