GI Flashbacks: The True Story of How Camp Red Cloud, South Korea Got Its Name

As I was conducting research of old books about Korea I came upon the memoirs of Lieutenant General Arthur Trudeau who in the 1957 was the I Corps Commanding General in South Korea.

While reading through his memoirs about his time in Korea he provides an extensive and very interesting history of how the naming of Camp Red Cloud in Uijongbu came to be:

Did I tell you the story about the naming of Camp Red Cloud? Well, I think this is worth telling.  My compound there, the corps headquarters, had always been called Jackson Six, which was our telephone exchange.  That seemed to me a rather inadequate name.  I told somebody — my G-1, I guess, or PR officer, whoever it was — to start digging and find some people in this corps who got a Congressional Medal of Honor during combat and let’s name our compound here, our headquarters, for the most worthy.  They came up with several names, and they had a couple of lieutenants.  One of them was the Lieutenant Shea that I mentioned, who had just reported to my division and was killed on Pork Chop Hill.  She was sort of a favorite of mine, because he held the two-mile record at West Point, about 30 seconds faster than I had held it 30 years before.  I had a great feeling for Shea and when I went back home had a review and presented the decoration to his mother.  Shea was one of the names, and there were two or three other lieutenants.  I finally looked this list over and spotted the name of Corporal Mitchell Red Cloud.  I thought that was interesting; what did he do. I got the citation, and Mitchell Red Cloud had done about everything a soldier could do; he charged a bunker and knocked off about 20 of the enemy and finally — even after he was badly wounded, tossed a grenade in a bunker before he died.  So what about Mitchell Red Cloud?  Well, Mitchell Red Cloud’s mother was the daughter of a chief of the Winnebago Indian Tribe.  I said, “Now let’s get hold of all the records we can, and we’ll put in and get this camp named Camp Red Cloud.”  I was thinking of the relationship between a native American and a native Asian.  We did this, and I had a brass plaque made.  I put the brass plaque on a tremendous rock on the more or less flat sloping side in front of I Corps (Group) headquarters, where it is today.  We put it in front, right at our flagpole. On Armed Forces Day, 1957, I decided that we had the authority to redesignate and announce it at the Armed Forces Day meeting.

It was a lovely May day; I had all the Diplomatic Corps, President Rhee and his wife, Ambassador Dowling and his wife, General Decker, I believe, or White — all the Americans.  We had about 150 people that were there for the ceremony and then for lunch at my club, which I had built or greatly extended across the street.  They were sitting there.  General Lemnitzer came over; he was always great because my wife had remained in Tokyo, so he brought her over.  She was sitting in the front row of seats next to Mrs. Rhee.  The President was standing there on one side of this curtain.  I was going to say something about Camp Red Cloud, draw the curtain, and expose this plaque, and then the President was to make some remarks.  This all happened; we pulled the cord and it worked, fortunately, and the brass was there, so I read what the brass plaque said.  Then I said, “How wonderful it is that an American, a native American, an Indian whose ancestors lost their country to us, came over here to fight for the freedom of the native men of Asia.”  I went on and built this one up for a little bit, and emphasized that he gave his life for the freedom of Asian people.  I then turned it over to President Lee.  Well, he said excitedly what a great thing this was.  Mrs. Rhee was getting itchier by the moment because she knew that he frequently went of on tangents, and my wife was keeping her calm, saying, “Never mind everything is going to be alright.”

The President launched into this one.  He said, “Yes American Indians are exactly like Asian people.  I think American Indians came from Asia.”  But then he said, “Why is it that all the time you have American movies over here, you show soldiers and cowboys killing American Indians?  Asian people don’t like to see white men killing American Indians.”  The he said, “Never again will a motion picture be shown in Korea that has the American soldiers or cowboys killing American Indians.”  And they never have, but this doesn’t mean that our compound cannot.  There was quite a “to-do,” Mrs. Rhee was so upset.  I said, “This is nothing.  What he said is true, but this happened more than a hundred years ago.”  Of course to them this could be happening today.  The dates aren’t shown frequently, and they think this is still going on out in the West.  It is bad psychology.

Before I left there to come back to the United States at the end of that year, the end of 1957, I wrote back to G-2 and I said, “Listen, you have got to go out and get me tow of the finest pictures, portraits, grand portraits of American Indian chiefs that you can get for me to present to President Rhee.”  Mrs. Trudeau and I were invited there for dinner at Chung Mu Dae, now the Blue House, with President and Mrs. Rhee.  He presented me with another Korean decoration and then I said, “Your Excellency (or Mr. President), I have a presentation I would like to make to you.”  He said, “Certainly.”  So we went into the next room.  The portraits were on the wall.  I had this all planned with his people bringing him in and then we were going to flip the covers back.  I said, “Mr. President, you remember the day we named the I Corps Headquarters Camp Red Cloud for Mitchell Red Cloud, the American Indian who came to fight for your freedom in Asia?”  He said, “Oh, yes, I remember”.  “Well,” I said, “I want to show you, I want to present to you a pair of portraits of other famous American Indians who are high in our esteem in our country also.”  I’ve forgotten which ones they were, but I presented them to him; he thought it was tremendous.  Goddam it, they looked more like him than he did himself, if he had a headdress on.  It was terrific!

This was a very interesting read and I have to wonder what ever happened to those two portraits?  I wonder if they are still on display in Cheongwadae?

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