Back to the Korean War..... while I agree that both sides
commits war crimes.. I would like to focus on the war crimes of the
UN.
Pulitzer Price - Winner
By SANG-HUN CHOE
CHARLES J. HANLEY
and MARTHA MENDOZA
Associated Press Writers
It was a story no one wanted to hear: Early in the Korean War,
villagers said, American soldiers machine-gunned hundreds of
helpless civilians, under a railroad bridge in the South Korean
countryside.
When the families spoke out, seeking redress, they met only
rejection and denial, from the U.S. military and their own
government in Seoul. Now a dozen ex-GIs have spoken, too, and
support their story with haunting memories from a "forgotten"
war.
These American veterans of the Korean War say that in late July
1950, in the conflict's first desperate weeks, U.S. troops --
young, green and scared -- killed a large number of South Korean
refugees, many of them women and children, trapped beneath a bridge
at a place called No Gun Ri.
In interviews with The Associated Press, ex-GIs speak of 100, 200
or simply hundreds dead. The Koreans, whose claim for compensation
was rejected last year, say 300 were shot to death at the bridge
and 100 died in a preceding air attack.
American soldiers, in their third day at the warfront, feared North
Korean infiltrators among the fleeing South Korean peasants,
veterans said. "It was assumed there were enemy in these people,"
ex-rifleman Herman Patterson of Greer, S.C., told The AP.
American commanders had ordered units retreating through South
Korea to shoot civilians as a defense against disguised enemy
soldiers, according to once-classified documents found by the AP in
months of researching U.S. military archives and interviewing
veterans across the United States.
Six veterans of the 1st Cavalry Division said they fired on the
refugee throng at the South Korean hamlet of No Gun Ri, and six
others said they witnessed the mass killing. More said they knew or
heard about it.
"We just annihilated them," said ex-machine gunner Norman Tinkler
of Glasco, Kan.
After five decades, none gave a complete, detailed account. But
ex-GIs agreed on such elements as time and place, and on the
preponderance of women, children and old men among the victims.
They also disagreed: Some said they were fired on from beneath the
bridge, but others said they don't remember hostile fire. One said
they later found a few disguised North Korean soldiers among the
dead. But others disputed this.
Some soldiers refused to shoot what one described as "civilians
just trying to hide."
The 30 Korean claimants -- survivors and victims' relatives -- said
it was an unprovoked, three-day carnage. "The American soldiers
played with our lives like boys playing with flies," said Chun
Choon-ja, a 12-year-old girl at the time.
Armed with new evidence that U.S. GIs had confirmed much of their
account, the Korean claimants called for a U.S. investigation into
the killings.
"We hope the U.S. government will meet our demands and console the
wandering souls of those who died an unfair death," the claimants
said in a statement.
In the end, the Koreans have said in a series of petitions, some
300 refugees lay dead under the bridge's twin arches. About 100
others were killed in a preceding attack by U.S. Air Force planes,
they say.
That would make No Gun Ri one of only two known cases of
large-scale killings of noncombatants by U.S. ground troops in this
century's major wars, military law experts note. The other was
Vietnam's My Lai massacre, in 1968, in which more than 500
Vietnamese may have died.
From the start of the 1950-53 conflict, North Korean atrocities
were widely reported. But the story of No Gun Ri has remained
undisclosed for a half-century, despite sketchy news reports in
1950 implying U.S. troops may have fired on refugees.
No Gun Ri's dead were not alone. Veterans told the AP of two
smaller but similar refugee killings in July and August 1950. They
also told of refusing orders to fire on civilians in other
cases.
Hundreds more South Koreans were killed on Aug. 3, 1950, when
retreating U.S. commanders blew up two bridges as refugees streamed
across, according to ex-GIs, Korean eyewitnesses and declassifed
documents.
The Americans wanted to deny the crossings to the enemy, reported
massing more than 15 miles away. But the general overseeing one
bridge-blowing, the 1st Cavalry Division commander, had sought to
stop the refugee flow as well. He told a correspondent he was sure
most refugees were North Korean guerrillas.
For decades in U.S.-allied South Korea, the No Gun Ri claimants
were discouraged from speaking out. After they filed for
compensation in 1997, their claim was rejected by the South Korean
government on a technicality.
The U.S. military has said repeatedly it found no basis for the
allegations. On Wednesday, just after the AP report was released,
Pentagon spokesman P.J. Crowley said, "We just have no information
in historical files to lend any clarity to what might have happened
in July 1950.
AP research also found no official Army account of the
events.
Defense Secretary William Cohen said on Thursday that the claims
could be examined if there were new evidence.
"I am not aware of any evidence that would support or substantiate
those claims. But to the degree that any substantive information is
forthcoming, we certainly would look at it," he told a press
conference in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Speaking at press conference in Washington later Thursday, Army
Secretary Louis Caldera promised a "complete and thorough review,"
of the allegations.
The South Korean government said it will investigate whether the
survivors' claims are true or not.
"With keen attention, we'll try to verify the truth of all related
things concerning the case," Foreign Ministry spokesman Chang
Chul-kyun said. "Any further action will be decided after those
efforts are finished."
Some elements of the No Gun Ri episode are unclear: What chain of
officers gave open-fire orders? Did GIs see gunfire from the
refugees or their own ricochets? How many soldiers refused to fire?
How high in the ranks did knowledge of the events extend?
The Korean conflict, which ended in stalemate, began on June 25,
1950, when the communist North invaded and sent the South Korean
army and a small U.S. force reeling southward toward the
peninsula's tip.
American units rushed from Japan to stop the North Koreans were
poorly equipped and ill-trained. The 1st Cavalry went in with
little understanding of Korea. Half its sergeants had been
transferred to other divisions. Teen-aged riflemen and young
officers with no combat experience were thrust overnight into a
hellish war, told to expect guerrilla fighting and be wary of the
tens of thousands of South Korean civilians pouring south with
retreating Americans.
The untested 7th Cavalry Regiment, part of the 1st Cavalry
Division, reached the front July 24. Within a day many of its 2nd
Battalion infantrymen were scattering in panic, tossing away
weapons, at word of an enemy breakthrough nearby.
Records show that on the third day, July 26, the battalion's 660
men were regrouped and dug in at No Gun Ri, a hamlet 100 miles
southeast of Seoul, South Korea's capital. Word was circulating
that northern soldiers disguised in white peasant garb might try to
penetrate U.S. lines via refugee groups.
The refugees who approached the 2nd Battalion's lines on July 26
were South Koreans ordered out of two nearby villages by American
soldiers, who warned them the North Koreans were coming, Korean
claimants told the AP.
Declassified records show that 1st Cavalry Division soldiers did
move through that village area the previous three days.
As the refugees neared No Gun Ri, leading ox carts, some with
children on their backs, American soldiers ordered them off the
southbound dirt road and onto a parallel railroad track, the South
Koreans said. Ex-sergeant George Preece remembered the way was
being cleared for U.S. Army vehicles.
What then happened under the concrete bridge cannot be
reconstructed in full detail five decades later. Some ex-GIs poured
out chilling memories of the scene, but others offered only
fragments, or abruptly ended their interviews. Over the three days,
no one saw everything: Koreans were cowering under fire, and
Americans were dug into positions over hundreds of yards of hilly
terrain.
But old soldiers in their late 60s or 70s identified the No Gun Ri
bridge from photographs, remembered the approximate dates, and
corroborated the core of the Koreans' account: that American troops
kept the refugees pinned under the bridge in late July 1950, and
killed almost all of them.
"It was just wholesale slaughter," Patterson said.
Both Koreans and several ex-GIs said the killing began when
American planes suddenly swooped in and strafed an area where the
white-clad refugees were resting.
Bodies fell everywhere, and terrified parents dragged children into
a narrow culvert beneath the tracks, the Koreans told the AP.
Declassified U.S. Air Force mission reports from mid-1950 show that
pilots sometimes attacked "people in white," apparently because of
suspicions North Korean soldiers were disguised among them. The
report for one mission of four F-80 jets, for example, said the
airborne controller "said to fire on people in white clothes. Were
about 50 in group."
Forward controllers in light planes directed pilots to such
unplanned targets in midflight. The Korean claimants say a light
plane circled their area immediately before the strafing.
But ex-GIs said the strafing may have been a mistake. A company
commander had called for an airstrike, but against enemy artillery
miles up the road, they said.
Veteran Delos Flint remembers being caught with other soldiers in
the strafing and piling into a culvert with refugees. Then
"somebody, maybe our guys, was shooting in at us," he said. He and
his comrades eventually slipped out.
Retired Col. Robert M. Carroll, then a 25-year-old first
lieutenant, remembers battalion riflemen opening fire on the
refugees from their foxholes.
"This is right after we get orders that nobody comes through,
civilian, military, nobody," said Carroll, of Lansdowne, Va.
That morning, the U.S. 8th Army had radioed orders throughout the
Korean front that began, "No repeat no refugees will be permitted
to cross battle lines at any time," according to declassified
documents located at the National Archives in Washington.
Two days earlier, 1st Cavalry Division headquarters issued a more
explicit order: "No refugees to cross the front line. Fire everyone
trying to cross lines. Use discretion in case of women and
children."
In the neighboring 25th Infantry Division, the commander, Maj. Gen.
William B. Kean, told his troops that since South Koreans were to
have been evacuated from the battle zone, "all civilians seen in
this area are to be considered as enemy and action taken
accordingly." His staff relayed this as "considered as unfriendly
and shot."
Military experts in the law of war told the AP they had never heard
of such blanket "kill" orders in the U.S. military.
"An order to fire on civilians is patently an illegal order," said
retired Col. Scott Silliman of Duke University, an Air Force lawyer
for 25 years.
Carroll said he "wasn't convinced this was enemy," and he got the
rifle companies to cease firing on the refugees. The lieutenant
then shepherded a boy to safety under a double-arched concrete
railroad bridge nearby, where shaken and wounded Koreans were
gathered. He said he saw no threat.
"There weren't any North Koreans in there the first day, I'll tell
you that. It was mainly women and kids and old men," recalled
Carroll, who said he then left the area and knows nothing about
what followed.
The Americans directed the refugees into the bridge underpasses --
each 80 feet long, 23 feet wide, 30 feet high -- and after dark
opened fire on them from nearby machine-gun positions, the Koreans
said.
Veterans said Capt. Melbourne C. Chandler, after speaking with
superior officers by radio, had ordered machine-gunners from his
heavy-weapons company to set up near the tunnel mouths and open
fire.
"Chandler said, 'The hell with all those people. Let's get rid of
all of them'," said Eugene Hesselman of Fort Mitchell, Ky. " ... We
didn't know if they were North or South Koreans. ... We were there
only a couple of days and we didn't know them from a load of
coal."
Ex-GIs believe the order was cleared at battalion headquarters, a
half-mile to the rear, or at a higher level. Chandler and other key
officers are now dead, but the AP was able to locate the colonel
who commanded the battalion, Herbert B. Heyer, 88.
Heyer, of Sandy Springs, Ga., denied knowing anything about the
shootings and said, "I know I didn't give such an order." Veterans
said the colonel apparently was leaving battalion operations to
subordinates at the time.
The bursts of gunfire killed those near the tunnel entrances first,
the Korean claimants said.
"People pulled dead bodies around them for protection," said Chung
Koo-ho, 61. "Mothers wrapped their children with blankets and
hugged them with their backs toward the entrances. ... My mother
died on the second day of shooting."
Recalled machine-gunner Edward L. Daily: "Some may have been trying
to crawl deeper for protection. When you see something like that
and you're frightened, you start to claw."
During three nights under fire, some trapped refugees managed to
slip away, but others were shot as they tried to escape or crawled
out to find clean water to drink, the Koreans said.
Veterans disagreed on whether gunfire came from the
underpasses.
Some, like ex-sergeant James T. Kerns of Piedmont, S.C., said the
Americans were answering fire from among the refugees. Hesselman
said, "Every now and then you'd hear a shot, like a rifle shot."
But others recalled only heavy barrages of American firepower, not
hostile fire. "I don't remember shooting coming out," said
ex-rifleman Louis Allen of Bristol, Tenn.
The Koreans said the Americans may have been seeing their own
comrades' fire, ricocheting through from the tunnels' opposite
ends. That's possible, said Preece.
"It could actually have happened, that they were seeing our own
fire. ... We were scared to death," said Preece, a career soldier
who later fought in Vietnam.
On July 28, the 7th Cavalry was told to prepare to pull back again
early the next morning. The final barrage still echoes in the
memories of old soldiers.
"On summer nights when the breeze is blowing, I can still hear
their cries, the little kids screaming," said Daily, of
Clarksville, Tenn., who went on to earn a battlefield commission in
Korea.
Sounds of slaughter haunt Park Hee-sook's memory, too.
"I can still hear the moans of women dying in a pool of blood,"
said Park, then a girl of 16. "Children cried and clung to their
dead mothers."
Not everyone fired, veterans said.
"Some of us did and some of us didn't," said Flint, of Clio, Mich.,
the soldier who had been briefly caught in the culvert with the
refugees. "... I wouldn't fire at anybody in the tunnel like that.
It was civilians just trying to hide."
Kerns, a machine gunner, said he fired over the refugees' heads. "I
would not fire into a bunch of women."
Once the fury subsided, Kerns said, he, Preece and another GI found
at least seven dead North Korean soldiers in the underpasses,
wearing uniforms under peasant white.
But Preece, of Dunville, Ky., said he doesn't remember making such
a search or even hearing that North Koreans were found. None of the
other veterans, when asked, remembered seeing North Koreans.
Kerns also said weapons were recovered. Hesselman said someone
later displayed a submachine gun. Preece recalled only "hearsay"
about weapons.
All 24 South Korean survivors interviewed individually by the AP
said they remembered no North Koreans or gunfire directed at the
Americans.
Secret U.S. military intelligence reports from those days, since
declassified, place the North Korean front line four miles from No
Gun Ri on July 26, when the refugees entered the underpasses.
Early on July 29, the 7th Cavalry pulled back. North Korean troops
who moved in found "about 400 bodies of old and young people and
children," the North Korean newspaper Cho Sun In Min Bo reported
three weeks later.
Some ex-GIs today estimate 100 or fewer were killed. But those
close to the bridge, from Chandler's H Company, generally put the
total at about 200. "A lot" also were killed in the strafing, they
say.
The North Koreans buried some dead in unknown locations and
surviving relatives buried others, the villagers said. Because
families then scattered across South Korea, the claimants said,
they have the names of only 120 dead, primarily their own
relatives.
The war, in all, claimed an estimated 1 million South Korean
civilian casualties -- killed, wounded or missing. Almost 37,000
Americans died.
At 1st Cavalry headquarters, division commander Maj. Gen. Hobart R.
Gay was told South Korean refugees were killed by North Korean
troops in a crossfire at No Gun Ri, the division information
officer recalled. "I think that's what he believed," said Harold D.
Steward, an ex-colonel from San Diego.
Relevant unit documents say nothing about a crossfire, about North
Korean soldiers killed under a bridge, or anything else about No
Gun Ri.
One battalion lieutenant located by the AP said he was in the area
but knew nothing about the killing of civilians. "I have honestly
never, ever heard of this from either my soldiers or superiors or
my friends,'' said John C. Lippincott of Stone Mountain, Ga. He
said he could have missed it because "we were extremely spread
out.''
The villagers say they tried to file a compensation claim with a
U.S. claims office in Seoul in 1960, but were told they missed a
deadline. Later, they say, Korean police warned one man, survivor
Yang Hae-chan, to keep quiet about the 1950 events. But as
authoritarian South Korea liberalized in the 1990s, they revived
their case and sent petitions to Washington. None was acknowledged,
they say.
In August 1997, a claim signed by 30 petitioners was filed with
South Korea's Government Compensation Committee. Having researched
histories, they pointed a finger at the 1st Cavalry.
In response, the U.S. Armed Forces Claims Service said there was
"no evidence ... to show that the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division was in
the area." A lower-level South Korean compensation committee said
people were killed at No Gun Ri but it had no proof of U.S.
involvement. In April 1998, the national panel rejected the case,
saying a five-year statute of limitations expired long ago.
The AP subsequently reconstructed unit movements from map
coordinates in declassified war records. They showed that four 1st
Cavalry Division battalions were in the area at the time of the
alleged incident.
Months of tracing veterans -- some 130 interviews by telephone and
in person -- then pinpointed the companies involved. The AP also
pored through hundreds of boxes of once-secret documents at the
National Archives and other repositories to find pieces of the
story.
The laws and customs of war condemn indiscriminate killing of
civilians, even if a few enemy soldiers are among a large number of
noncombatants killed, military experts note. The Korean War record
shows Army courts-martial only for individual murders of Koreans,
nothing on a large scale.
As for civil liability, the U.S. government is largely protected by
U.S. law against foreign claims related to "combatant activities."
The Korean claimants say the killings were not combat-related --
the enemy was miles away.
"We want the truth, justice and due respect for our human rights,"
they wrote in a 1997 petition to President Clinton.
One ex-GI objects that ``a bunch of lawyers'' can't run a
war.
"War is not just,'' said Norman Tinkler. ``There's things that goes
on that we can't comprehend, but it has to be done. And it's the
individual that has to make the decision.''
But others who were there said No Gun Ri didn't have to happen. The
refugees could have been screened up on the road or checked out
under the bridge, Kerns and Hesselman said.
"The command looked at it as getting rid of the problem in the
easiest way. That was to shoot them in a group," said Daily. Today,
he said, "we all share a guilt feeling, something that remains with
everyone."
The late Col. Gilmon A. Huff, who took over the 2nd Battalion from
Heyer three days after the pullback from No Gun Ri, was interviewed
before his death earlier this year and said he knew nothing of what
happened at the bridge.
But he "heard" about refugee killings and told his men it was
wrong, Huff said at his Abbeville, S.C., home.
"You can't kill people just for being there," he told the AP.
The bridge at No Gun Ri still stands today. For 49 years its
concrete was deeply scarred by bullets -- until railroad workers
this month patched over the holes.
AP Investigative Researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this
report.
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