Military Books

The Flag, My Story: Kidnapped by Red China, a True Story by Steve E. Kiba

The Flag is the true story about Steve Kiba, Radio Operator on an unarmed B-29 during the Korean War. He graphically details the horrors that began with his being shot down over North Korea and being captured and ended almost 32 months later with his release from a political prison in Peking, Red China.

Steve vividly takes us from prison to prison on a "virtual reality" journey through the Red Chinese gulag system. He shares his feelings of fear, anxiety, frustration, despair, abandonment, and hopelessness. His story allows us to endure vicariously the POW/MIA experience: unending hours of solitary, excruciating pain of seemingly endless interrogation and re-education sessions, the constant pain of hunger and unquenched thirst, and the devastating effects of prolonged sleep deprivation.

Coupled with the pains of deprivation, we share his physical, emotional, and mental distress of living in utter filth, being denied even the most basic sanitary and hygienic needs, being daily threatened never to be released, and suffering the continuous barrage of false accusations: violating Red Chinese airspace, working for the CIA, and engaging in germ warfare.

In October 1954, Steve was judged guilty of war crimes, and in November he was sentenced to four years imprisonment.