Security· Korean War
Operation BIG SWITCH
Operation BIG SWITCH was the large-scale exchange of prisoners of war that followed the armistice, the final accounting of the conflict and the return of the men held captive on both sides.
Building on the earlier limited exchange of sick and wounded prisoners, BIG SWITCH brought home the Americans, including Marines, and other United Nations personnel who had endured the enemy's prison camps, while returning Chinese and North Korean prisoners to their own lines. The process unfolded at the exchange point near Panmunjom, the freed men passing back through the lines to processing and care. For the Marine Corps it closed the human ledger of the war, recovering those taken in the bitter outpost fighting and the earlier campaigns. BIG SWITCH was not a battle but the war's coda, the moment when the last of the captured came home and the Korean conflict, fought to a stalemate and halted by truce, reached its quiet conclusion.
Record no. 646