American Experience: The Battle of Chosin

American-led United Nations troops were outnumbered and at risk of annihilation at the Chosin Reservoir by the sudden entrance of the People’s Republic of China, led by Mao Zedong, into the five-month-old Korean War. The two-week battle that followed, fought in brutally cold temperatures, is one of the most celebrated in Marine Corps annals and helped set the course of American foreign policy in the Cold War and beyond. Revisit this pivotal 1950 Korean War battle through the eyewitness accounts of participants.