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WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Were U.S. Servicemen Held in Soviet Gulag? Russian Memoir Brings News, Pain to Families of MIAs Includes FBI Documents and Audio April 3, 2000 By Tami Sheheri Samuel Busch in uniform NEW YORK (APBnews.com) -- A recently released memoir from a former Russian gulag prisoner has raised the uncomfortable possibility that some Americans who went missing in action during the Cold War were kept for years as prisoners in the Soviet Union. The memoir, a transcript of which was released to some of the families by the Department of Defense, comes from an unnamed source who had been "living in internal exile in the former Soviet Union." The Defense Department notes that the information in the memoir was "collated from second-, third- or fourth-hand reports." Related Audio: Brother Says Vets Questioned Over POW The images conjured by the memoir -- of tortured and starved young men forced to march through the snow before being drowned -- have brought renewed pain to the families of those they left behind. Some say they can draw cold comfort from the memoir's conclusion that the deaths spared their loved ones from a worse fate: years in the gulag. 'Never supposed to talk about it' The memoir states that the fliers were held for a time in the Soviet Union before being tortured and executed. U.S. officials are attempting to verify information in the document and, if possible, bring the dead men's remains home. It's been close to 50 years since Maj. Samuel Busch, his B-29 bomber and 11 fellow crew members disappeared into the sky over the Sea of Japan on a classified mission during the Cold War. "I was told I was never supposed to talk about it," said Ruth Heller, 76, Busch's wife. "'You don't discuss it with anyone,'" she said a personal affairs officer had warned her at the time. But she thought about it. She listened to tales from men who returned home from Korean War missions and were also instructed not to speak. She heard rumors of men being taken captive in the Soviet Union and tortured. She didn't sleep at night for years. She heard virtually nothing from the U.S. government -- until last year when Pentagon investigators handed over a Russian emigre's memoir that mentioned her husband's name. New Revelations About Missing Pilot "The thing is, [the torture] was true," said Heller. "I didn't sleep for nights after reading those papers. I was upset again for weeks." The memoir is blunt: "The guys from within 'worked over' the Americans so badly that only eight were take [redacted]. And those had nowhere to go after that. And so what? Do know what sort of arrogance they had? They were American. You understand." Busch's body could very well be buried somewhere in the Soviet Union, after he was held and executed for being an "arrogant" American, as the memoirs put it. The memoirs note that Busch and fellow crewman Master Sgt. David L. Moore may have been killed, even beaten, in Khabarovsk, which is a Siberian city. "But he [an acquanitance of the writer] did learn the names of two crew members of the aircraft, BUSH and MOORE, who will forever remain in the soil of the Khabarovsk Region," said the memoir. 'Vastness of gulag's underworld' Busch's crew The memoirs' release was triggered by former Russian President Boris Yeltsin's 1992 admission that the Soviets in the 1950s had shot down U.S. planes and taken American airmen into custody. A U.S.-Russian commission was formed to focus on finding clues as to the Americans left behind in Russia. The memoirs support an investigation initiated by the Pentagon that probed how some Americans may have disappeared within the Russian gulags, forced labor camps spread across the Russian countryside. Related Audio: Sister Says POW Was Seen by Japanese Busch and Moore, if the memoir is true, were lucky: "And however blasphemous this thought may appear to the uninitiated, let people take my word. By their horrible fate they were spared the vastness of the gulag's underworld." Today, there is a team of three or four Americans in Russia trying to find out what happened to military men who went missing in action. "Our guys are stationed over there full time and are continuing to go through Russian archives looking for specifics mentioned in these memoirs," said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Defense Department's POW/MIA office. "[The Russians are] not very restrictive, frankly, about our movements in the country. They know our people are there for strictly humanitarian purposes, not collecting intelligence." Girl meets boy, boy goes to war Is this Busch? This photo was pulled from the National Archives. George Busch described his big brother Sam as the strong, quiet type. "He's the stable one," he said. "He's the brother that ruled." Sam Busch, who grew up in Philadelphia, was the oldest of four children, and he and his two brothers served in the military: Morris died defending his country in World War II; George served in Korea. After combat in World War II, Sam enlisted in the reserves to help pay for his pharmaceutical education through the G.I. bill, Heller said. He also did it, she said, for an opportunity to continue flying. Heller said she met her future husband through her older brother. "He used to come to the house all the time," she said. "I guess it just happened gradually. We fell in love. Right before my high school prom, we realized we cared so much for each other." Toward the end of World War II, Busch and Heller married. Busch went to school, they had a son, Michael. Then, Sam and George Busch were called back to active duty during the Korean War and moved to Spokane, Wash. "He was upset, and I was beside myself," said Heller. "We waited to have a child so he could be with us. " "The mindset was different in those days," said George Busch. "You're taking their money and using their equipment, and if you were needed, you were ready. You had made a commitment, and you would fulfill it." B-29 goes down, then silence The major's brother George Busch and sister, Charlotte Busch Mitnik On Friday, June 13, 1952, at 10:07 a.m., Busch and his crew of 11 airmen flew out of Yakoto Air Base in Honshu, Japan. "They told us it was a weather mission," Heller said. "When I went to my family physician for a checkup, I found out Sam had given him as a reference for a top-secret clearance. I could not understand that." The news was broadcast over the radio before any family members were informed: A U.S. B-29 was down. Heller's father heard it while in a barbershop. "They didn't give any names, but your heart tells you," said Heller. "You knew it was him." Then came the telegram. "It is with deep regret that I officially inform you that your son, Major Samuel N. Busch, has been missing since 13 June 1952 as the result of participating in Korean operations." For years the government had no more information to offer, said the family. Letter after letter to the family stated there was no news. Eventually, Busch was declared dead. But over the years, personal stories and unverified information began to hint otherwise. Government declassifies documents In the early 1990s, the government declassified documents from the 1950s that claimed perhaps as many as 33 missing Americans were on Soviet soil. These accounts came from refugees and released Japanese prisoners of war from the Soviet Union and China, who told stories of American prisoners of war in Soviet hospitals and prisons. The government pressed the Soviet Union for answers, receiving few answers and many denials. A declassified document from the '50s notes that the "Department is considering whether it has become appropriate as well as desirable at this time to question the Soviet Government specifically with reference to the detention of American fliers whose presence has been reported by repatriates from Soviet prison camps and detention places." It also states the Soviets had denied knowledge of the crew members' whereabouts. During the Cold War, intelligence missions often were carried out using B-29s like the one Busch was on. The aircraft would often fly close to the border of or just inside Russian airspace to collect information. But answers for the families weren't forthcoming. "We kept running up against brick walls by the government," said Charlotte Busch Mitnik, Busch's sister. "All we've really gotten is stories from the government, half-lies." Mitnik said that when Busch's plane went down, her father tried to call in some favors, knowing some influential people. Nothing came of it, and the family received yearly updated missives she called "the baloney letters" which told the family there was nothing new on her brother's situation. A sighting, and then a mystery Then in 1993, Korean War veteran Roland Robitaille was at a Veteran's of Foreign Wars Convention when he overheard a discussion about a downed B-29. Robitaille told a government POW/MIA representative that he had been on a search mission June 14, 1952, when he and another crew member spotted a B-29 in the water, about 19 miles off the Soviet coast. Robitaille said that after reporting the sighting, there was radio silence and then someone shouted for him to get off the airwaves. About 15 minutes elapsed before he was asked to go back to the scene, but there was nothing there except what appeared to be boxes or crates floating in the water. Robitaille told Mitnik that the trip logs from his search were taken and the men were never questioned about the incident. "That to him was a mystery," said Mitnik. "He never spoke about it all these years. He finally came forward during an American war meeting." Robitaille also noted numerous discrepancies in the initial transcript of an interview the Defense Department had done with him in the 1990s regarding the mission. Were men deliberately drowned? Defense officials are extremely tight-lipped about the source of the memoir, but they have already presented it to the Russians. The Russians "were initially skeptical about its credibility," said Greer. But when the government pointed out that the memoirs specifically mention two American pilots -- "BUSH" and "MOORE" -- it lent credibility to the information. The memoir details specific area maps that lead American investigators to specific detention camps. According to the memoirs, the two men "will forever remain in the soil of the Khabarovsk Region." They also note that the other crew members were most likely deliberately "drowned" by the Soviets after being pulled from the sea. "The story I got is that my brother was executed with Sgt. Moore, and even more shocking is they drowned the rest of them," said George Busch. "I was really in shock. ... What kind of threat did they pose for the Russians?" Indeed, the memoirs hint that airmen, possibly from Busch's crew, met the following fate: "They will be squeezed for what is required. And, of course, they will finish them off. They'll be worked to the bone and shipped off to Zeya and not for the first time. Svobodnyi is where they have their principal drowning base. In echelons, straight from the trains, they had been drowning people for thirty years like nothing. And that's all. They definitely will be counted in all the documents as having drowned. See, even TASS made the announcement: They fell, as it were, into the sea." 'You've been had your whole life' George Busch remains skeptical that the government is doing all it can. "You feel as if you've been had your whole life," he said. "Every effort should be made to get those boys back. It's a matter of closure." Heller, however, told APBnews.com that time does not heal all wounds. "Nothing takes the place of a child's father," she said. "Nothing will ever take the place of my husband. ... You learn to live with it, but you will never forget it. And that's the truth." Tami Sheheri is an APBnews.com staff writer *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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