'Kill 'em All': American Military Conduct in the Korean War

In September 1999 an investigative team from the Associated Press broke a story that shocked America. Fifty years before, they claimed, refugees caught up in the Korean War were shot and strafed by US forces. Jeremy Williams explores the repercussions of a brutal episode in Cold War history.

The Forgotten War
The Korean War was a bloody conflict. It left Korea, North and South, with several million dead and the UN forces involved in the fighting with over 100,000 casualties. But despite fighting as intense and as violent as any other conflict since World War Two, Korea has always been history's 'Forgotten War'.

'...US commanders repeatedly, and without ambiguity, ordered forces under their control to target and kill Korean refugees caught on the battlefield.'
While atrocities conducted both by North and South Korean forces have already been documented, recently a much darker side to the US involvement in the Korean War has begun to emerge. It casts a shadow over the conduct of US forces during the conflict, particularly of officers and generals in command. Declassified military documents recently found in the US National Archives show clearly how US commanders repeatedly, and without ambiguity, ordered forces under their control to target and kill Korean refugees caught on the battlefield. More disturbing still have been the published testimonies of Korean survivors who recall such killings, and the frank accounts of those American veterans brave enough to admit involvement.

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US and S Korea accused of war atrocities: Inquiry uncovers secret of series of attacks by South on North
By John Gittings in Hong Kong and Martin Kettle in Washington, The Guardian (UK), Tuesday 18 January 2000
The AP report: 'Bridge at No Gun Ri'

South Korean troops attacked the North a year before the Korean war broke out, researchers have claimed in the latest disturbing revelation about the conflict which almost led to global war.

More than 250 guerrillas from the South are said to have launched an attack on North Korean villages along the east coast in June 1949. Some reached the town of Wonsan, although all but 50 were killed in two weeks. The incident has been confirmed by a South Korean army official.

It was only one of numerous small-scale conflicts instigated by the South as well as by the North, according to a new book by Professor Kim Kwi-ok of Seoul National university.

The story supports the argument of some historians that the North's invasion of the South in June 1950 must be seen in the context of a steady build-up of hostilities from both sides.

It will add to public concern in Seoul after a string of recent revelations about war atrocities committed by South Korean and US forces in the south early in the Korean war.

Last week, the South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung, urged the US to conduct a thorough inquiry into the alleged mass killing of Korean civilian refugees by US soldiers. He told the US army secretary, Louis Caldera, who was visiting Seoul, that the "truth should be clearly brought out so that South Korea-US relations should not be damaged and will instead be enhanced".

Mr Caldera's visit to South Korea follows a recent investigation by the Associated Press news agency into a number of horrifying incidents. Its reports have shattered the conventional picture that all the atrocities in the Korean war were committed by the North Koreans or their Chinese allies.

US veterans interviewed by AP said they machine-gunned hundreds of helpless civilians under a railway bridge at No Gun Ri on July 26, 1950.

A week later, according to other veterans, a US general ordered the destruction of two strategic bridges across the Naktong River killing hundreds of civilians.

"It was a tough decision," wrote Hobart Gay, the 1st Cavalry Division commander, in a now-declassified document, "because up in the air with the bridge went hundreds of refugees."

The AP investigation documents other incidents in 1950-51 when US jets repeatedly attacked groups of Koreans in civilian clothes on the suspicion that they harboured enemy infiltrators.

In one strike, US firebombs are said to have killed 300 civilians trapped in a cave. Some pilots expressed concern that they were machinegunning innocent people.

Korean newspapers have called for a full investigation of all allegations. The defence ministry in Seoul is reported to have heard of nearly 40 similar cases of alleged civilian killings by US forces.

Korean commentators say that the incidents have long been known. But while South Korea was under military dictatorship the victims and their family members had to keep silent, fearing punishment if they spoke out.

Allegations occasionally surfaced in the US but the Pentagon always denied that there were grounds for inquiry. The situation only changed when an AP reporter, Charles Hanley began to investigate the No Gun Ri story in 1997.

US veterans who had lived with their secret for nearly half a century started to come forward. One of the most convincing witnesses was Ed Daily, now living in rural Tennessee, who was a 19-year-old volunteer with the 1st Cavalry division at the start of the Korean war.

He described how his unit surrounded several hundred civilians and penned them under a railway arch. Sporadic fire then came from under the arch, and his unit was ordered to "shoot them all."

They fired for more than 30 minutes: Mr Daily says he saw women and children and old men in his sights. He claimed up to 200 people had been killed by the time it was over.

"It started to torment many of us," Mr Daily told a television interviewer last month. "By the 1980s we started contacting one another, and we were all having the same mental problems. Over the years I went hearing a baby cry, or a woman scream, [and] it triggers a flashback."

Historically, the US has opposed attempts to establish a permanent international war crimes investigation network, and remains opposed to any system which would make the US military answerable to any other jurisdiction.

But last October President Bill Clinton and the defence secretary, William Cohen, ordered a full scale investigation under the US army inspector-general, Lieutenant General Michael Ackerman and a seven-man advisory group. y Some US veterans admit the atrocities but argue that they were inevitable in the heat of war. Some claim they were partly justified because North Korean agents may have been concealed among genuine civilians. They also say that the US troops, who were in disorganised retreat at the time, were pitifully unprepared.

Others point out that many more Korean civilians were killed by US bombing later in the war, particularly during the saturation bombing of Pyongyang in 1952.

Official war histories record that 10,000 litres of napalm and 697 tons of bombs were dropped, resulting in the deaths of almost 8,000 people.

It is unclear how far the US government is willing to investigate beyond the No Gun Ri allegations. Last week Mr Caldera said that the US will not investigate every claim that there was a loss of innocent lives. "If you begin down that path you'll never end because all war by definition is extremely violent," he said.

But a US embassy spokesman said later that further investigation had not been ruled out.

North Korea, whose own atrocities during the war are well documented, last week seized on the issue to accuse the US of a cover up.

In a separate revelation, the newspaper Hankook Ilbo in Seoul has alleged that some 1,800 political prisoners held in Taejon, south of Seoul, on charges of being communist sympathisers were executed in July 1950 by South Korean military police.

It also noted that North Korean troops later massacred a large number of rightwing prisoners in revenge.

"Our government is now urged to ascertain the number of prisoners, irrespective of ideology, massacred during the war and to identify them," the Korean Times wrote in an editorial. "In addition, the government is called upon to reveal who was in a position to order the terrible massacres."

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Undertrained and underprepared
Things began to go wrong almost immediately for the American troops. Those who were rushed to the front line straight from occupation duty in Tokyo in July 1950 were undertrained and underprepared. They were also badly led and quickly defeated by superior North Korean forces. US commanders were outmanoeuvred by North Korean units using guerrilla methods to target US lines from the rear.

But there was another problem. The surprise attack from the North had generated a very real refugee crisis. Just weeks after the conflict had begun, up to two million refugees were streaming across the battlefield; they clogged the roads and the UN lines.

Under pressure and fearing North Korean infiltration, the US leadership panicked. Soon command saw all civilians as the enemy regardless. On 26 July the US 8th Army, the highest level of command in Korea, issued orders to stop all Korean civilians. 'No, repeat, no refugees will be permitted to cross battle lines at any time. Movement of all Koreans in group will cease immediately.' On the very same day the first major disaster involving civilians struck.

'...up to 400 South Korean civilians gathered by the bridge were killed by US forces from the 7th Cavalry Regiment.'
The stone bridge near the village of No Gun Ri spans a small stream. It is similar to a great many others that cross the landscape of South Korea, except that the walls of this bridge were, until very recently, pockmarked by hundreds of bullet holes. On the very day that the US 8th Army delivered its stop refugee order in July 1950, up to 400 South Korean civilians gathered by the bridge were killed by US forces from the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Some were shot above the bridge, on the railroad tracks. Others were strafed by US planes. More were killed under the arches in an ordeal that local survivors say lasted for three days.

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'The floor under the bridge was a mixture of gravel and sand. People clawed with their bare hands to make holes to hide in,' recalls survivor Yang Hae Chan. 'Other people piled up the dead like a barricade, and hid behind the bodies as a shield against the bullets.'

Corroborating the Korean survivors' testimony are the accounts of 35 veterans of the 7th Cavalry Regiment who recall events at No Gun Ri. Perspectives differ, but the detailed memories of veterans recalling events burnt into their souls by their first days in combat are as painful as they are shocking.

'There was a lieutenant screaming like a madman, fire on everything, kill 'em all,' recalls 7th Cavalry veteran Joe Jackman. 'I didn't know if they were soldiers or what. Kids, there was kids out there, it didn't matter what it was, eight to 80, blind, crippled or crazy, they shot 'em all.'

Along with the My Lai atrocity 20 years later in Vietnam, the killings discovered at No Gun Ri mark one of the largest single massacres of civilians by American forces in the 20th century. When the news of the killings at No Gun Ri was first broken by a team of investigative journalists from the Associated Press in September 1999, the effects were to be as seismic as the allegations themselves.

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Darkness revealed
America was deeply shocked by the AP report. Previously, the US Army had dismissed the claims of South Korean survivors who, since 1960, had been trying to tell the truth about the killings at No Gun Ri. The Army said that US forces were not even in the area of No Gun Ri at the time of the killings. But not only did new evidence put No Gun Ri firmly within the US 7th Cavalry area of operations at the time, the discovery of US veterans willing to talk about events 50 years later made the massacre undeniable. The Clinton administration quickly directed that the Pentagon, specifically the Army, conduct an investigation into what actually happened at No Gun Ri.

'...as late as January 1951, the US 8th Army was detailing all units in Korea that refugees be attacked with all available fire including bombing.'
Since the original AP report, more documents detailing refugee 'kill' orders have been unearthed at the US national archives. They point to the widespread targeting of refugees by commanders well after No Gun Ri. In August 1950 there were orders detailing that refugees crossing the Naktong River be shot. Later in the same month, General Gay, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division (of which the 7th Cavalry Regiment involved at No Gun Ri was part), actually ordered artillery units to target civilians on the battlefield. And as late as January 1951, the US 8th Army was detailing all units in Korea that refugees be attacked with all available fire including bombing.

New allegations have also emerged of the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Korea. In August 1950, 80 civilians are reported to have been killed while seeking sanctuary in a shrine by the village of Kokaan-Ri, near Masan in South Korea. Other survivors recall 400 civilians killed by US naval artillery on the beaches near the port of Pohang in September 1950, and dozens of villages across southern South Korea report the repeated low-level strafing by US planes of 'people in white' during July and August 1950. A total of 61 separate incidents involving the killing of civilians by US forces are now logged with the South Korean authorities.

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Seeking the truth

A ceremony in Korea commemorating victims of the Korean War The inconsistencies that surround the Pentagon's investigation have even led those brought in as independent advisors to voice doubts. Pete McCloskey, a decorated Korean War veteran and former Congressman, was brought in to advise on the Pentagon report. He was disappointed with what was finally published. 'I think the American government, the Pentagon and most government agencies don't want to see the truth come out if it will embarrass the government.

'I think the American government, the Pentagon and most government agencies don't want to see the truth come out if it will embarrass the government.'
'I think it's almost a rule of political science. The government will always lie about embarrassing matters. And when you are up in the Pentagon a full Colonel and have a chance to make General, and General with the chance to become Chief of Staff, there's as much politics high in the Pentagon as there is in the halls of Congress. And I think that the Army just chose to try and down play the terrible character of Army leadership in 1950.'

It is now nearly 50 years since the end of the conflict in Korea. The only major American investigation into the killing of refugees focused exclusively on the activities of the US Army over a small geographic area during one month of a conflict that lasted three years. Contradicting testimony from veterans and Korean survivors, the report concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that orders to kill civilians were given at No Gun Ri. Clearly there are still many unanswered questions over American involvement in Korea, questions that were not answered by the narrow view of the US Army's investigation. Yet this burden now falls not on those responsible for giving the orders, but on the veterans and survivors alike.

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PiSigma said:

that's old news... i have been posting about how south korea started the korean war ages ago..
let's hope this doesn't turn into a country bashing thread. WE ARE WATCHING YOU

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