Picture of the bridge at No Gun Ri.
In my prior posting I posted in full the Associated Press’ entire uncut article about their version of what happened at No Gun Ri for everyone to review before posting a rebuttal to it. Unlike the AP writers I don’t mind people reading both sides of the story and judging the facts for themselves. In the rebuttal I have posted paragraphs from the original AP article in bold print and then offered my comments below them.
My rebuttal to the AP article begins below the fold:
It was a story no one wanted to hear: Early in the Korean War, villagers said, American soldiers machined-gunned hundreds of helpless civilians, under a railroad bridge in the South Korean countryside.
Well actually everyone has heard the story before of South Korean civilians being killed during the Korean War. I can remember in my high school history class when my teacher explained how civilians were killed during the Korean War due to the infiltration of North Korean soldiers dressed as civilians. The killing of civilians during the Korean War is well documented today in multiple Korean War history books and was also well documented by the media during the Korean War.
The AP writers are relying on the ignorance of today’s American public about the Korean War in order to promote the killing of civilians during the Korean War as some kind of new revelation they have uncovered through their research. Even the No Gun Ri incident has been well covered in the Korean media with the founder of the Korean internet news site Oh My News, Oh Yeon-ho covering the story since 1994 and other Korean media outlets picking up on the story as well.[i] How come Oh Yeon-ho’s work was never mentioned by the AP writers? This is probably because the writers want to maintain the illusion they uncovered something new. The killing of civilians during the Korean War is nothing new, but starting from they very first sentence in the AP article they want the reader to think it is.
When the families spoke out seeking redress, they met only rejection and denial, from the US 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.
As you will see later on in this article what this great “rejection and denial” from the US military really was. As you can expect it is not what the AP tries to make it out to be. However, it is early in the article so in order to give the article legs the AP writers need to create an air of scandal in order to keep the reader’s attention. Military cover-ups are always a great way to keep a reader’s attention.
Additionally, start preparing an AP scorecard to keep track of ex-GI witnesses because the article claims that “a dozen ex-GIs” support the story given by the Korean claimants. As we go through the article lets count how many of the dozen ex-GIs actually support the AP’s version of events. The results will surprise you.
These American veterans of the Korean War say that in late July 1950, in the conflict’s first desperate weeks, US 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.
I highly recommend that everyone read my prior posting on the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry that lays out in great detail the exact conditions the 7th Cavalry faced in July, 1950 that cannot possibly be summarized in one passage of “young, green, and scared” that the AP is willing to use to describe the conditions during the early days of the Korean War.
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.
Remember this passage about ex-GIs claming hundreds of dead civilians and then compare this claim to who actually said it. Also note the Korean claim of 400 dead bodies and then compare that to the source that verifies it. Like I said before the results may surprise you.
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 or Greer, South Carolina, told the AP.
Mr. Herman Patterson is the first ex-GI that the AP quotes in the article so get you AP scorecard out and mark Mr. Patterson as the first of the dozen GIs the AP uses to verify their story. Notice that this quote makes no reference to if Patterson was referring to the events that allegedly happened at No Gun Ri or not. In fact it was later revealed by one of the AP writers Charles Hanley that this passage did in fact not relate to the events that happened at No Gun Ri and was in fact added as a “red herring”.[ii]
Additionally, you will see later on in this article that when Patterson was interviewed by the Pentagon Review team, he claimed the AP misquoted him. So take out your AP scorecard and mark one of the dozen GIs used by the AP as being misquoted.
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.
This is one of the greatest examples of stretching the truth by the AP writers in the entire article. There justification to claim they have documented evidence of an order shoot refugees comes from a phone call made from a 8th Cavalry Regiment major working as a liaison officer at the 1st Cavalry Division Headquarters.
For those who are not familiar with the military let me clarify the structure of the 1st Cavalry Division. Regiments fall underneath a division and the 1st Cavalry Division during the Korean War had three combat regiments, the 8th Cavalry, the 5th Cavalry, and the 7th Cavalry. The 7th Cavalry is the unit that was located in the vicinity of No Gun Ri, the 8th and 5th Cavalry were not.
Regiments send liaison officers to work at the division headquarters to help pass information between the division and the regiment. The major working as the liaison officer for the 8th Cavalry phoned his regiment’s headquarters to relay this message:
“No refugees to cross front line. Fire everyone trying to cross line. Use discretion in case of women and children.”
This message was written down in the 8th Cavalry logbook on July 24, 1950. Even today the military operates what is known as a CQ (charge of quarters) desk that has a logbook that writes down important information received over the telephone. When you go to the field you have someone that maintains a log as well of important information and events. When a unit goes to combat it is the same process, there will be a soldier who will man the unit’s radio and phone and log important information. The person manning the phone that day for the 8th Cavalry wrote in his logbook a summary of what he heard on the telephone from the division liaison officer.
An entry in a logbook is not an order. Furthermore a regiment is commanded by a colonel and a colonel does not take orders from a major calling over the telephone and leaving a note in a logbook with the guy manning the phone. A regimental commander takes orders from the division commander who is a major general or a two star general for you non-military types who might be reading this.
Military orders are issued in what are known as Operations Orders that are approved and signed by the higher commander, which in the case of the 8th Cavalry their higher was Major General Hobart Gay, the commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. There was an order issued by General Gay, but it is an order that does not support what the AP writers are claiming.[iii]
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 other said they witnessed the mass killings. More said they know or heard about it.
Update your AP scorecards because the AP says that six veterans fired at the refugees while six saw what happened. You should already be tracking Mr. Patterson as misquoted. Now notice how the AP writers slipped into the article a sentence about additional GIs having heard about the killings. Who did they hear about the killings from? You will find out later in the article.
“We just annihilated them,” said ex-machine gunner Norman Tinkler of Glasco, Kansas
We now have the name of another GI witness Norman Tinkler. So add Norman Tinkler to your AP Scorecard as well. Tinkler is not only quoted in this AP article he is also one of the most widely quoted ex-GIs in all the various media articles that came out after the AP released this report. To say Mr. Tinkler’s testimony in the various news reports is less than consistent is putting it mildly.
Army documents prove that Tinkler was at No Gun Ri so that is not in dispute. However, what is in dispute is the accuracy of his testimony. Tinkler had told the AP writers that he was one of the GIs that had manned a machine gun that fired into the tunnel at the refugees.
When he told his story to a U.S. News & World Report journalist this is what he had to say:[iv]
“Refugees came through our positions the day before and pulled pins and threw three hand grenades at our guys. I wasn’t going to let them get near me.”
Mr. Tinkler’s claim here is unsupported by documentary evidence from July 25, 1950 because the unit log reports no casualties that day from a refugee grenade attack. No other GI witnesses have confirmed this account either.
Mr. Tinkler goes on in the U.S. News article:
“I was on a .30-caliber Browning water-cooled machine gun that fires 700 rounds a minute. I was located on the right side of the railroad tracks facing the bridge, between a quarter and a half-mile away. And yes, I fired at them. Nobody gave me orders. Nobody was there to give me orders. There was just me and one other guy on this gun. Nobody else was around. I saw maybe 150 refugees go in that bridge tunnel. I fired one belt, 250 rounds. I could see maybe a couple of feet of one edge of the tunnel and I aimed at that and moved the elevation knob up and down, ricocheting bullets into the tunnel.”
Take note of the distances in this quote “between a quarter and a half-mile away” that Tinkler gives. This distance comes out to in feet approximately 1320 – 2640 feet. This is a big discrepancy in distance. Additionally, note that he says he fire “one belt, 250 rounds” under the bridge. Now if this statement is true it would be impossible to kill 300 people underneath the bridge with 250 bullets especially if the only way he can fire underneath the bridge was through ricochets.
Let’s look at what Mr. Tinkler had to tell The Wichita Eagle just a couple of months later. Tinkler claimed to have:[v]
“looked down the barrel of his tripod-mounted machine gun toward a throng of Korean women and children – perhaps a hundred of them – a thousand yards away. For a minute or two, he pulled the trigger, firing hundreds of rounds.”
Notice the change in distance. This time he is exact in his distance from the bridge as 3,000 feet. So in two different interviews we have distances that range from 1320 feet to 3000 feet in distance. If you go to the site of the bridge at No Gun Ri you will see that Tinkler’s distances are not correct. I could not see into the tunnels much less even shoot a ricochet into the tunnels from 1320 feet much less from 3000 feet. This is what the Pentagon Review team concluded as well that after conducting a terrain analysis based off the distances and angles given by Mr. Tinkler that he could not have caused the “hundreds” of casualties alleged by the Korean witnesses.[vi]
Here is additional testimony from Mr. Tinkler who wasn’t shy by giving many interviews to members of the media including CNN:[vii]
“Among the Army veterans CNN spoke to was Norman Tinkler of Glasco, Kansas who was 19 on that in 1950. Tinkler says he fired on the refugees with his 30-caliber machine gun as the refugees attempted to cross a bridge heading south, because of orders not to allow anyone, including civilians, to cross south of his position.
He estimated that 100 to 125 were killed on the railroad tracks leading up to the bridge.
“There were no survivors,” he told CNN in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Tinkler said he never questioned whether it was right to shoot civilians. “It was war,” he said. “It was either that or die.”
Tinkler told CNN that in his mind the attack was justified because on the day before several U.S. soldiers were killed while trying to search a group of refugees, as North Korean troops hiding among the refugees attacked with guns and grenades.
First of all, notice how the attack by North Koreans intermingled with South Korean civilians was explained now as being a gun and grenade attack when in his interview with US News he clearly states only three hand grenades were thrown at them.
Secondly, Tinkler states that the refugees “attempted to cross a bridge”, not huddle underneath the bridge as the AP report describes and also what Tinkler told other media outlets when interviewed. The CNN report however, did notice this and reported it:
“Tinkler said he was manning a machine gun overlooking one end of the bridge, and another gunner was at the other end, when the refugees began to move across the bridge.
The details of that account to CNN differ with the picture pieced together by the AP. The wire service investigation, which included interviews with South Korean survivors, said the refugees were gunned down as they were huddled under the bridge, trapped because the U.S. troops would not let them pass.”
So what is Mr. Tinkler’s real story? Unfortunately we may never know because he may not be shy with talking to the media, but he was shy about talking to the Pentagon review team. The review team contacted Mr. Tinkler on multiple occasions in order to clarify his statements, but he refused all requests to be interviewed by the Pentagon team.
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.
As you will see later in the article misquotes and fraudulent witnesses are what created such a distorted picture of what happened at No Gun Ri to begin with.
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.
This is the first quote from a Korean witness to what happened at No Gun Ri. Notice how they quote a sentence that will have a great emotional appeal to the reader. Also notice how the AP writers have yet to add any balance to their story and present any information about the other side to this story. All the reader has heard so far are accounts from GIs supposedly confirming the AP’s version of events along with distorted historical documentation. Now a Korean witness is quoted in order to add an emotional element and create disgust at what happened at the bridge with the reader.
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.
Which GIs confirmed these accounts? As you will see only two GIs fully confirmed the Korean witnesses’ version of events and both of them were not at No Gun Ri.
“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.
Does anyone know what their demands are? The AP for some reason didn’t feel it was necessary to list what those demands are. The demands from the Korean claimants were originally a $170 million dollar compensation package[viii] that was later raised to $400 million dollars after all the publicity over the No Gun Ri incident.[ix] This financial angle seems just a tad bit important, but for some reason the AP has never mentioned it in this article or even in any follow up articles.
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 the 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.
You knew it was only a matter of time before the AP writers brought up the My Lai massacre in Vietnam because that was the goal that the AP writers had with this story from the very beginning. Co-writer of the AP article Choe Sang-hun who is the person who initially began the AP reporting into No Gun Ri admitted that before he even interviewed one witness or even went to the scene he wrote a 150-word story pitch to submit to his AP editor. In the story pitch he used the advice of one of his colleagues to “hype” the story by likening No Gun Ri to a “Korean My Lai”.[x]
Choe found out about the story by reading about it in a Korean newspaper about No Gun Ri claimants protesting in front of the US Embassy in Seoul demanding that the US embassy investigate a US massacre at No Gun Ri. This links back to what I said before, there was nothing new about No Gun Ri until the AP decided to turn it into the “Korean My Lai”.
Choe Sang-hun
The AP writers knew that just reporting a story of civilians killed during the Korean War is not something that would grab anyone’s attention. They had to make No Gun Ri bigger than what is was, they had to make it like My Lai because that is what Pulitzer Prizes are made of. Thus anything that discredited their version of events was ignored while anything that supported it was sensationalized such as the logbook entry in the 8th Cavalry Regiment journal.
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.
“Sketchy news reports”? How about front page of the nation’s largest newspaper the New York Times:
“Fear of infiltrators led to the slaughter of hundreds of South Korean civilians, women as well as men, by some U.S. troops….”[xi]
Front Page of The New York Times
September 30, 1950 referring to events in July of 1950.
Facts like this front page news report in the New York Times didn’t stop the AP writers for advocating that their story was something new:
“Some research was just a subway ride away: 1950 magazines and obscure books on the Korean War at the New York Public Library . . . . All in all, Herschaft made more than fifty trips to the public and university libraries. He checked U.S. and European newspapers from those days and consulted every available bibliography and index to periodical literature to confirm such a massacre was never reported.”[xii]
AP Reporter Marth Mendoza
January 2000 making the claim that their story was brand new.
That is interesting because as I pointed out earlier the Korean media had already reported about the claimants demands for an investigation and AP writer in Seoul, Cho Sang-hun used this newspaper article in order to begin his own investigation into No Gun Ri. Even more interesting is that Cho even admits that stories of civilian killings during the Korean War was not something new:
“… news media didn’t report these stories all that much, old South Koreans had been talking about them all along. I grew up hearing those tales, not during history class but from villagers and friends’ parents – stories about civilians killed by South Korean and U.S. troops, as well as all those people massacred by “commies”.[xiii]
As you can see the Korean media has reported before about civilian killings along with an article about the No Gun Ri claimants outside the US embassy in Seoul as well. The AP did not report any big revelation, but sensationalized something that was common knowledge with the Korean War generation in Korea as well as being widely known by historians in America.
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 August 3, 1950, when retreating U.S. commanders blew up two bridges as refugees streamed across, according to ex-GIs, Korean eyewitnesses and declassified 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.
I could have saved the AP research team a whole lot of time from conducting all these eyewitness interviews, going through all their piles of declassified documents, and all the subway fares for their fifty trips to the library by simply pulling out a simple history book about the Korean War that explains this bridge blowing in great detail:
“Thousands upon thousands of Korean civilian refugees were pressing upon these men, clamoring to be let across the bridge. Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans, frightened of the Inmun Gun (North Korean Army), were fleeing south ahead of, with, and behind the fighting forces, complicating their job enormously.
As the rear guard came across the bridge to the east side, throngs of Koreans followed them, filling the bridge with jostling bodies. General Hobart Gay, who had ordered the bridge to be sent up only as his express command, instructed them to go back to the far side, and clear the bridge.
This they did, as dusk approached. Then, with the refugees pushed back onto the west shore, the rear guard turned and pelted across to the friendly bank – but the second they turned, the Koreans dashed madly for the bridge and soon filled it, even before the cavalrymen were across.
Three times, at Gay’s order, they repeated the maneuver, without success. Short of shooting them there was no way to keep the Koreans from using the bridge. Even telling them it would be blown did no good.
Now it was growing dark, and the Inmun Gun was closing. As the rear guard recrossed to the east side for the third time, with the mass of Koreans close behind them, Hobart Gay, his face pale, said, “Blow it.” He had no other choice.
Several hundred Koreans went into the river with the bridge.”[xiv]
T.R. Fehrenbach
This Kind of War
Fehrenbach’s book is not some obscure history of the Korean War and is in fact one of the most well known books about the Korean War.
To further show the disingenuous nature of the AP reporting, the declassified document they are referring to in the article is actually the letter the 1st Cavalry Division Commander General Hobart Gay sent to the Army historian writing the official history of the Korean War.[xv]
The incident at the Naktong River Bridge is included in the book South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu, written by historian Roy E Appleman that serves as the official Army history of the Korean War.[xvi] This incident that the AP is describing as having discovered through Korean eyewitnesses and declassified documents was readily available in the official US Army history of the war.
Some how with the AP’s fifty trips to the library they failed to pick up and read a copy of Fehrenbach’s book much less even pick up and read a copy of the official military history of the Korean War. As you will see the AP writers failed to read a lot of things; either that or they did read these books and intentionally did not mention them in order to keep the illusion that only through their tireless research they uncovered a hidden tragedy of the Korean War that the US government was trying to cover up.
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 statute of limitations for civilians to file claims during the Korean War had long run out. The claimants claim they missed the prior deadline because of fears of retribution for prior authoritarian governments that ruled Korea.
The claimants in fact filed a claim in 1960 that was denied by the Korean government because the statute of limitations ran out in 1958. The fact is they did not receive compensation because they waited to long to file for it. The claimants probably brought up the compensation claims again beginning in 1994 because of the election of Kim Young-sam to the presidency of South Korea made the possibility of compensation for what happened a No Gun Ri more likely.
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.
That sure didn’t stop the AP from making one up and offering plenty of conspiracy theories to bolster their storyline.
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 a press conference in Washington later Thursday, Army Secretary Louis Caldera promised a “complete and thorough review” of the allegations.
The reaction from the Pentagon sure doesn’t sound like “The U.S. military has said repeatedly it found no basis for the allegations,” that was just uttered by the AP reporters just three paragraphs before. All these statements indicate that the Pentagon is taking the matter seriously and will investigate it. I see no denials of what happened at No Gun Ri in either statement by Secretary Cohen or Caldera.
However, the AP writers have spun every statement issued by the Pentagon to create an aurora of scandal and denial when no such thing exists. The Pentagon at the time had no information to either support or deny the allegations and thus a review of the incident was agreed to be done.
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 Chan Chul-kyun said. “Any further action will be decided after those efforts are finished.”
Ultimately the South Korean government conducted the review in coordination with the Pentagon review team.
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?
As I have already shown their claim of a chain of officers giving orders to fire is based off a logbook entry from a liaison officer not even in the 7th Cavalry Regiment.
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 who 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 guerilla fighting and be wary of the tens of thousands of South Korean civilians pouring south with retreating Americans.
Wow can you believe it! After already spending half the article condemning the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry Regiment as murdering war criminals the AP writers have finally decided to add a little historical context. However, only two paragraphs worth of historical context comes no where near being enough to fully explain the conditions the men of the 7th Cavalry found themselves in.
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.
This statement here is just another example of the sloppy reporting of the AP team. The 7th Cavalry Regiment was nowhere near the front lines on July 24th. The 7th Cavalry on July 24th were in the process of moving from the port in Pohang on the peninsula’s east coast to the vicinity of the 1st Cavalry Division’s headquarters located near Hwanggan.[xvii] The 7th Cavalry would not reach the frontlines until the late afternoon of July 25th.
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.
At least the AP team got this one right. The 7th Cavalry was located near No Gun Ri on July 26th however, the AP writers make no mention of what state the 7th Cavalry found themselves in on July 26th. On the night between the 25th and 26th of July the 7th Cavalry found themselves in contact with what they perceived to be enemy tanks. Some of the veterans recalled firing at the tanks and the tanks firing back at them. Historical records show that is was very unlikely that the tanks were North Korean tanks, but most likely American tanks that had gotten lost earlier in the day and found the highway the cavalrymen were defending and proceeded to drive up it.
The cavalrymen in the darkness probably confused the friendly tanks with enemy tanks and proceeded to fire on them. Some of the GI witnesses have confirmed that they saw 7th Cavalry soldiers firing on friendly tanks. The tanks blasted through the cavalrymen’s lines and proceeded down the road. The US soldiers thought they were being routed by the North Korean Army and many simply dropped their weapons and equipment and ran. The next morning CPT Melbourne Chandler was herding men he found walking down the road and the railroad tracks to take up positions near the railway bridge at No Gun Ri. That day groups in trucks were sent forward to recover equipment and weapons that were left behind. The night of July 25th was an absolute disaster and embarrassment for the 7th Cavalry and is a perfect example of the chaotic environment the soldiers found themselves in on July 26, 1950.
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 the 1st Cavalry Division soldiers did move through that village area the previous three days.
If soldiers herded refugees from these villages is definitely debatable. Retreating soldiers from either the 8th or 5th Cavalry may have stopped at the villages. The soldiers had just got done fighting for their lives against the North Koreans and were retreating down the only road in the area plus they were very wary of North Korean infiltrators disguised as “civilians” because they had already had a number of engagements with these “civilians” during the last battle. After all of this does it make sense that these soldiers would then stop to evacuate two villages and clog up the road even more than it already was and allow even more refugees for infiltrators to hide among?
Not likely, but what is likely is that retreating American soldiers stopped at the two villages and warned the villagers that the North Koreans were coming, but through translation problems the villagers might have thought they were being evacuated or the villagers simply left on their own and were under the mistaken impression they were being escorted on the road because of all the soldiers retreating on the road.
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 into positions over hundreds of yards of hilly terrain.
But old soldiers in their late 60s and 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.
When Mr. Herman Patterson was interviewed by the Pentagon review team he told them he was misquoted by the AP. His statement, “It was wholesale slaughter”, actually referred to his unit at the Naktong River when they were overrun.[xviii] Get used to the misquotes from the AP because there are more to come.
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 track, 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.”
The AP in a follow up article dated December 29, 1999 used witness testimony from six US Air Force pilots in order to bolster their claims of an airstrike on the South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri. All the pilots except for one agreed to be interviewed by the Pentagon review team. When the five pilots were interviewed by the Pentagon team they had a much different story to tell than what the AP claimed.
All five pilots claimed the AP sensationalized the information they provided. One pilot, retired LTC Dewald told the Pentagon team that “no people were ever attacked unless they were observed firing on – or were part of a group that was firing on – friendly forces or aircraft.” Retired Major Kroman flat out said the AP misquoted him. The AP quoted MAJ Kroman as saying that he “was sure civilians were killed” but Kroman says that what he really told the AP was, “couldn’t say for a fact civilians were not killed in the war.” As you can see the misquoting by the AP is quite common and did not end here.[xix]
Additionally when you actually review the documents of the AP cites as proof the refugees were strafed you will see that the strafing did not occur at No Gun Ri the times on the reports do not correspond to when the refugees say they were strafed and the strafing against “people in white” were only initiated after the Army confirmed to the pilots that the targets were North Korean infiltrators. All these important details are some how missing from the AP report.
Forward controllers in light planes directed pilots to such planned targets in mid-flight. 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.
There is only one problem with this, the 7th Cavalry did not have the necessary radios to even call in an air strike. In fact the only air strike in the No Gun Ri area occurred on July 27th, which was one day after the refugees say they were strafed. However, this air strike on the 27th was when the 7th Cavalry headquarters was strafed. This strafing of the 7th Cavalry caused their commander to request an Air Force Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) to the regiment who had the necessary radios to talk to the pilots in order to avoid any further strafings of the 7th Cavalry.
Air mission chart from July 26, 1950 shows no air strike took place at No Gun Ri that day.
The Korean claimants also claim they were bombed. During an interview with a Korean reporter No Gun Ri witness Chung Gu-shik said the refugee column was bombed by a fighter jet, approximately 100 people and many animals were blown to pieces, and that the railway was bent like “steel chopsticks”. He goes on to say the bombing lasted for a total of 20 minutes.[xx] American and Korean imagery analysts that reviewed aerial footage of No Gun Ri taken one week after the incident found no signs of rails bent like “steel chopsticks”, no bomb craters, no left over refugee items, no dead animals, and most importantly no dead bodies.
Veteran Delos Flint remembers being caught with other soldiers in the strafing and piling into a culvert with refugees. The “somebody, maybe our guys, was shooting in at us,” he said. He and his comrades eventually slipped out.
Remember Flint’s name because we will talk more about him later.
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 come through, civilian, military, nobody,” said Carroll, of Lansdowne, Va.
Add Robert Carroll to your AP scorecard as another witness who was there at No Gun Ri. However, add him as another misquoted veteran by the AP because here is what Carroll said happened at No Gun Ri during an interview with CNN:[xxi]
However, retired Colonel Robert Carroll, who was a lieutenant on the scene at No Gun Ri tell CNN he is convinced no slaughter of civilians took place. He called the allegation, “selective and imaginative memory on the part of a lot of people.”
Carroll said the orders he received, while ordering troops to fire on anyone trying to cross the front lines, also urged discretion in the case of women and children.
“Use discretion was part of that order,” he said. “We used discretion. We did not fire automatic weapons. There was a few riflemen fired at them when they came around the bend. I stopped that. I personally stopped all the firing.”
“If there was any firing at those (people), it had to be later in the day, after I left. And somebody would have countermanded that order,” he said.
“We were not using our machine guns except when we were under attack because we were short on ammunition,” Carroll said. “We had not been resupplied; we had been moving, retreating, falling back for about a week. So that guy is dreaming.”
Very clearly you can see how the AP reporters twisted what Carroll had to say happened at No Gun Ri. The AP writers do not mention anywhere in the article that Carroll was adamant no massacre happened and that no machine gun was used to fire at the refugees. Like I said before add one more misquote to your AP scorecard.
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.
Here is another example of selective reporting. The passage is taken from a much larger order issued theater wide by the Eighth United States Army headquarters that dictates how subordinate units handle the massive refugee problem that was plaguing combat operations in Korea.[xxii] The order created a system where the Korean police would consolidate care for and move the refugees through friendly lines at set times every day and forbid any movement of civilians at night. Leaflets were dropped to spread this information to include the Korean police going in and evacuating villages.
Nowhere in this order was there ever any orders to kill refugees as the AP writers would lead you to believe. The order was to not permit civilians to cross battle lines who were not following the established procedures.
Additionally this refugee handling order was not something that was taken lightly according to a letter written by John Muccio who was the U.S. Ambassador to Korea during the early days of the Korean War. Ambassador Muccio wrote the letter to inform his boss U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk about the new refugee control order. The order was only implemented after a meeting at Eighth Army headquarters that included officials from the Korean government, US Embassy officials, and the Director of the Korean National Police.
All these elements agreed to the refugee control order and it was not something that was created by the U.S. military on a whim so they did not have to deal with the refugees. It was in fact a very thoroughly thought out policy that was only issued after close consultation with elements of the Korean government. Some how the AP writers have always failed to mention any of this.
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.”
Remember the order to shoot refugees that I mentioned earlier in this article that was in fact nothing more than a logbook entry from a telephone call placed by a 8th Cavalry Regiment liaison officer at division headquarters? Well, once again the AP is referring back to this logbook entry as evidence of an order to shoot refugees.
This is the logbook entry that the AP claims is an order the 7th Cavalry had to shoot civilians.
Not only was this so-called “order” only a logbook entry, but the logbook entry was placed with the 8th Cavalry Regiment which was not at No Gun Ri. There has never been documented evidence from the 7th Cavalry Regiment that proves there was an order to shoot refugees at No Gun Ri. In fact the logbook entry in the 8th Cavalry Regiment that the AP writers are using as evidence of an “order” to kill refugees cannot be found in any other logbook in the entire 1st Cavalry Division from the Division level all the way down to the individual company level.
The most likely explanation for the phone call placed by the liaison officer is that he probably over heard discussions within the division headquarters about how the division planned to handle the refugee problem. The division planning staff eventually published their order on how to handle the refugee situation, but the 8th Cavalry liaison officer who overheard the discussions earlier may have called back to his regiment to let them know an order was coming out from division on refugees and added details he thought was going to be in the order, which ultimately were not in the order. This would explain why not one other unit from the division level all the way down to all the individual companies in the entire division did not record anything even remotely similar to what the 8th Cavalry recorded.
That is why the military uses operations orders signed by commanders in order to relay orders so leaders are not led by rumors spread by liaison officers at the division.
So let’s suspend reality here for minute and suppose that the 7th Cavalry Regiment commander decided to take orders from a lower ranking officer at division to shoot refugees and implemented this order without it being recorded anywhere. This alternate reality couldn’t even had happened because the 7th Cavalry didn’t even have a liaison officer at the division when this so called “order” was put out. The 7th Cavalry was still in the process of moving from the port in Pohang towards the location of the rest of the 1st Cavalry Division near Hwanggan. The 7th Cavalry was no where near the division headquarters in Hwanggan to have a liaison officer present at the division headquarters much less receive any order to shoot refugees[xxiii].
As you can see the AP writers cleverly took two separate documents, quoted them out of context in these last two paragraphs of their article, in order to create an illusion that an order to shoot refugees was issued by the senior leadership. There is plenty of more deception to come.
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 unfriendly and shot.”
First of all, the AP is using a quote from the 25th Infantry Division that was not even at No Gun Ri to support their version of events that happened at No Gun Ri. This appears to be just another red herring added to the storyline to support the AP’s version of events.
Of course once you actually view the 25th Infantry Division records that the AP quoted the story is actually much different than what the AP is suggesting. This is what the order from General Kean actually says:[xxiv]
“Korean police have been directed to remove all civilians from the area between the blue lines shown on the attached overlay and report the evacuation has been accomplished. All civilians seen in this area are to be considered as enemy and action taken accordingly”
If you read the whole the whole document you gain the context of why the order by General Kean was given. The Korean National Police were evacuating an area of civilians and had to report to General Kean when complete. Once complete, anyone left in the area was to be considered hostile due to the mass infiltration of enemy fighters in the area. Additionally you also have to look at the historical context as well. The 25th Infantry was in a desperate fight to the north of the 1st Cavalry Division. If the 25th Infantry collapsed the North Koreans would have high-speed access into the rear of the 1st Cavalry Division who had just arrived in Korea and was trying to get combat operations established. A collapse of the 25th Infantry would have led to the collapse of the entire allied front.
The AP writers, I think for obvious reasons, failed to provide such necessary context of this order. I think it has become clear by now that the AP writers are masters at playing a document shell game. They use short quotes from longer documents in order to back their storyline without providing any context of the complete documentation. The AP even to this day continues to play a document shell game by uncovering hidden documents they say proves No Gun Ri happened and yet when you review them it is not the case.
Additionally military experts in the law of war told the AP they had never heard of such blanket “kill” order in the US 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.
Yes, that would be an illegal order and that is why the 1st Cavalry Division order on the handling of refugees made no mention of authorizing soldiers to shoot refugees. That doesn’t stop the AP reporters from suggesting that it does by taking quotes from separate documents and quoting them out of context.
Additionally the assistant staff judge advocate of the 1st Cavalry Division when interviewed by the Pentagon review team stated that he does not believe a massacre in the vicinity of No Gun Ri could have taken place without the Staff Judge Advocate’s Office learning about it. He and another 1st Cavalry Division Judge Advocate Officers regularly visited the front line units. He does not recall hearing of an incident like the one alleged to have occurred in the vicinity of No Gun Ri.[xxv]
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.
As I pointed out earlier, Carroll saw no massacre either.
“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 were there only a couple of days and we didn’t know them from a load of coal.”
There is only one problem with Mr. Hesselman’s story, he wasn’t there to be able to hear any such order from CPT Chandler. According to 7th Cavalry records in the national archives Mr. Hesselman was wounded either on the night of the 25th or morning of the 26th and evacuated from the front lines.[xxvi]
When the Pentagon investigators requested to speak to Mr. Hesselman in order to clarify his testimony he refused to be interviewed.
So now on your AP scorecard you can now add Mr. Hesselman as another fraudulent witness.
Ex-GIs believe the order was cleared at battalion headquarter, 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.
Notice how quickly the AP writers throw in a sentence right after someone is quoted saying something that does not support their storyline. It is very unlikely that in a time of war the battalion commander would just sit back and not command his unit like the AP is suggesting. Also who are the veterans making the claims that battalion operations were being commanded by subordinates? Are they the same guys that were later proven not to be at No Gun Ri?
I think it is pretty clear the AP writers intentionally presented Heyer’s quotes in a way that would portray him as having something to hide in order to substantiate the AP storyline of a Pentagon conspiracy.
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.”
Here is the first mention of Edward Daily. You can now add Edward Daily to your AP scorecard.
Edward Daily
What is not mentioned in this article is that Daily was the first ex-GI to confirm the AP’s version of events when contacted by AP writer Charles Hanley.[xxvii] The AP had contacted 34 veterans before Daily and all denied the AP’s claims about what happened at No Gun Ri. Daily than went on to give Hanley contact information of other veterans in the 7th Cavalry. After doing this Daily contacted these veterans himself and discussed the events of No Gun Ri with them. By the time the AP writers contacted these veterans their memories had already been polluted by Daily.
After the AP’s original No Gun Ri story was released, Daily became the face of the No Gun Ri incident by conducting interviews for newspapers across the country as well as appearing on TV news programs. His most notable appearance on TV news was when NBC flew Daily back to Korea to be interviewed by Tom Brokaw. In all of these media interviews Daily told his tail of what happened at No Gun Ri as well as battlefield heroism during the Korean War which included winning multiple Silver Stars, being awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, as well earning a battlefield commission to lieutenant.
However, there was only one problem with Ed Daily’s tale, he was not at No Gun Ri that day. In fact he wasn’t even in the 7th Cavalry Regiment or even in Korea. Due to a US News & World Report investigation they found through documents in the National Archives that Edward Daily was in fact stationed in with 27th Ordinance Maintenance Group in Japan. Ed Daily was not a decorated combat hero who was involved in the incident at No Gun Ri, he was in fact a mechanic in Japan of no significance.[xxviii]
How the media allowed themselves to be fooled by some one like Ed Daily is a story all in itself, but what is important to realize is that Charles Hanley found out Daily was a fraud on December 7, 1999 when he received documents from the National Archives proving that Daily was not who he said he was. Hanley received this information months before Daily appeared on NBC and a whole month before Hanley submitted the AP story to the Pulitzer committee for consideration.[xxix] Knowing full well Daily was a fraud Hanley kept quiet about Daily and allowed him to become the face of No Gun Ri in the international media and slime an entire generation of Korean War veterans simply because he wanted to protect his chances at winning a Pulitzer Prize.
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 fire power, not hostile fire. “I don’t remember shooting coming out,” said ex-rifleman Louis Allen of Bristol, Tenn.
You can add two more names to your AP scorecard, James Kerns and Louis Allen.
This statement from Kerns is actually accurate, but as you will see later others are misquotes.
Annotate on your scorecard Mr. Allan as another phantom witness. When Allen was interviewed by the Pentagon review team he told them that he was on re-enlistment leave when the 7th Cavalry deployed to Korea and did not link up with his unit until August of 1950, long after the events that transpired at No Gun Ri.[xxx] How the AP got his quote about being at No Gun Ri is anybody’s guess. Get used to it because there are plenty more quotes in the article from soldiers who were not there.
The Koreans said the Americans may have been seeing their own comrade’s fire, ricocheting through 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.
This is what retired SFC George Preece had to say to the Pentagon review team when he was interviewed:
“I’ve got a feeling it was a blast. A muzzle blast coming out of that tunnel. Again, now, it could have been (referring to a ricochet). I’m not putting that out of possibility, but I don’t see how. I mean it could have been. I mean ricochets from this guy shooting from this tunnel. I’ve had that told to me before too, but it’s – I don’t believe that.” He also said, “I saw flashes coming out from under the bridge and you saw where the shells were hitting. And it’s close to that machine gun over there. You could see where it was hitting the dust, hitting the rocks, and things…And when they (soldiers) shot into it, there wasn’t that many rounds shot into it.”[xxxi]
So the quote from one of the soldiers there the AP tried to use to advance their claim that the veterans saw ricochets and not fire coming from the tunnel is actually a misquote. Preece clearly states that he saw bullets shot from the tunnel impacting near the US machine gunner. Than he also says that few rounds from the machine gun were fired back into the tunnel in response.
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.”
As you can see above, more false, but emotional testimony from Daily in the above paragraphs. There is also another name to add to your AP scorecard, Mr. Flint. Of course Mr. Flint wouldn’t have fired at any refugees at No Gun Ri because Flint wasn’t even there. Records show that he was wounded some time on July 25th and evacuated from the area before the events that transpired at No Gun Ri happened. Add another phantom witness to your AP scorecard.
Kerns, a machine gunner, said he fired over the refugees heads. “I would not fire into a bunch of women.”
Kerns a witness that was proven to be at No Gun Ri, earlier said he saw fire coming from the refugees and in response he only fired over their heads. Hardly a war crime or something that could cause 400 dead bodies to pile up.
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.
When interviewed by the Pentagon review team Mr. Kerns said he never said such a thing to the AP about finding seven dead North Korean bodies in the underpass. He told the review team that he saw between four to nine bodies lying in the culverts of the bridge, but was not sure if they were dead. Mr. Kerns also told the AP he saw some grenades and a burp gun (a North Korean machine gun) in the tunnel.[xxxii] Since Kerns never said he saw dead North Koreans under the bridge, that would explain why Preece claims to have never seen any North Korean soldiers in the tunnel as well.
Hesselman as I demonstrated earlier couldn’t have possibly seen any weapons because he wasn’t even there to begin with.
All 24 South Korean survivors interviewed individually by the AP said they remembered no North Koreans or gunfire directed at the Americans.
North Korean soldiers probably were not in the refugee column and Mr. Kerns in his testimony to the Pentagon team already confirmed that he saw no North Korean soldiers though that didn’t stop the AP writers from misquoting him. However, what isn’t addressed in this article is the possibility that South Korean communist guerrillas that were active in the area could have been hiding within the refugee column. Newspaper articles from the Korean War period are filled with stories of guerrilla attacks in the Yongdong area.
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.
Notice how the AP team sneaks in another mention of them using “secret U.S. military intelligence reports” in order to confirm something that was supposedly hidden and no one knew about. In fact they didn’t need to look at any secret documents at all, they could just open up the book that chronicles the U.S. military’s official history of the Korean War. In the military’s official history there is an entire chapter called the 1st Cavalry Division Loses Yongdong. Where is Yongdong? About eight miles from No Gun Ri. In fact the book lists that by the night of July 25th the North Koreans had suffered approximately 2,000 casualties in battle against the 1st Cavalry Division at Yongdong.[xxxiii] The book goes on to list the retreat of the 7th Cavalry down the highway leading from Yongdong to Hwanggan. This highway runs right through No Gun Ri.
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.
I almost giggled when I first read this because the AP writers are using a known North Korean propaganda organ to verify their belief that 400 people died at No Gun Ri. I have to wonder if this is the first time in U.S. journalism that a North Korean newspaper has been sourced to confirm a reporter’s storyline?
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.
This is the paragraph the reporter use as CYA. If it proven later that less then 100 people were killed at No Gun Ri they can point to this line and say they reported that. However, you can clearly see throughout the whole article they are promoting “hundreds” as being killed. So who are these GIs making the claims that “hundreds” were killed? The Pentagon review team determined that GIs that weren’t at No Gun Ri were the ones that made this claim. The review team discovered that after interviewing all the GI witnesses that were proven to actually be at No Gun Ri, not one GI witness said they saw “hundreds” of dead bodies under the bridge.[xxxiv]
As it turns out the AP writers are relying on testimony from people who were not at No Gun Ri and a North Korean newspaper to support their claim that 400 people died at No Gun Ri; unfortunately this is the researching that Pulitzer Prizes are made of.
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.
This is one of the most curious facts about the whole No Gun Ri incident. Where are the 400 bodies? 400 dead people is a lot of bodies not to mention that the Korean witnesses claim that cows and other animals were slaughtered as well. Reconnaissance photographs taken a week after the events at No Gun Ri show absolutely no evidence of a massacre of 400 people. So where did the bodies go? Additionally just think of the forensic evidence 400 bodies would leave not to mention the bones from the animals the refugees say were shot as well. There should be buttons, cans, coins, pieces of the wagons, animal bones, etc. littering the area. Korean forensic science teams continue to uncover the bodies and personal effects from soldiers killed during the Korean War yet at No Gun Ri little of this evidence is found. No one has been able to adequately explain the lack of forensic evidence.
Personal effects recovered from Korean War Battlefield.[xxxv]
Having been to No Gun Ri myself I have found a few unkept graves on the side of the hill. Are these graves from people killed at No Gun Ri? Who knows, but this is actually more physical evidence to support a theory of a smaller amount of people killed at No Gun Ri than what the supporters who claim 400 people were killed at No Gun Ri can produce. To this day no one has been able to provide any forensic evidence to justify the claim that 400 people died at No Gun Ri.
One of a few graves near the No Gun Ri bridge.
Despite the lack of evidence 400 dead people is still the commonly used number for the amount of people who died at No Gun Ri by the mass media and the claimants even though both the Korean and US investigators concluded such a number is incorrect. The only evidence to support such a number comes from Korean claimants who were children and teenagers at the time and have been demanding $400 million dollars in compensation, along with a North Korean propaganda newspaper verifying this number, and a handful of ex-GIs who were proven to not have been at No Gun Ri. Folks, this is called mythology, not fact seeking.
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.
Steward is actually not even a ex-colonel he is actually a retired Lieutenant Colonel so the fact the AP couldn’t even get his rank right should be an indication that they wouldn’t get his witness testimony correct either. However, make sure you add Steward to your AP scorecard as another one of the dozen ex-GIs supporting the AP’s version of events.
LTC Steward testified to the Pentagon review team that he was in fact, misquoted by the AP. He told the Pentagon interviewers that he told the AP that there were confirmed reports of civilians killed in crossfire throughout the entire 8th Army sector. There was no information specifying where the incidents took place and he never told the AP that civilians were killed at No Gun Ri.[xxxvi]
Relevant unit documents say nothing about a crossfire, about North Korean soldiers killed under a bridge, or anything else about No Gun Ri.
As I already pointed out Kerns said before that he never saw any North Koreans under the bridge though the AP misquoted him by saying he did. The fact that no one else saw any North Koreans would explain why no 7th Cavalry documentation exists that says there was North Koreans present at 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.”
Notice how quickly the AP writers quickly dismiss anyone that says anything contrary to the storyline they are promoting. Lippincott says something that does not back the AP’s storyline this in the next sentence they find a way to try to discredit what he said.
It is important for the AP writers to discredit him because when retired Colonel John Lippincott was interviewed by the Pentagon review team he had this to say:
“Because honestly before this – this occurred and I read all the events I would have sworn to you it never happened, because I was right there all the time. I never heard a word of it mentioned till I saw it in the paper. And I want you to know that as long as I was there I had never received an order as a Platoon Leader that – to kill all civilian refugees coming through the lines because some ‘em may be North Korean soldiers. Now, we did receive word and warning, and warnings and admonishments that the North Koreans are trying to infiltrate our lines and they’re dressed like refugees. So they may be among the refugees. You gotta be extremely, extremely careful. Well, I imagine a soldier could interpret that many ways. You know, by saying well if that occurs we don’t let any of them through. But those were the kind of warnings and admonishments we received. Never – I was never told to kill all civilians that attempted to come through the lines.”[xxxvii]
As you can see Colonel Lippincott’s testimony is highly convincing and runs contrary to the storyline being promoted by the AP. Most importantly he was actually there at No Gun Ri unlike many of the other ex-GIs quoted by the AP. Very little of what he had to say was in the AP article and what was quoted the AP writers found a way to try and discredit him with. It should be becoming quite clear to everyone that the AP was more concerned about promoting a storyline than finding out the truth of what happened at No Gun Ri.
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.
Earlier in the article the AP writers mentioned a compensation claim filed by the Koreans in 1997 that was thrown out due to a technicality. Only way towards the end of the article does the AP mention what that technicality was, which was they had already filed a claim in 1960 that wasn’t awarded due to a statute of limitations on claims from the Korean War.
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 US 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 limitation 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.
This is the portion of the article that AP tries to use to create the angle of a government cover up. A low-level government lawyer contracted to work for the Eighth Army claims office is suddenly created into being the mastermind behind this government conspiracy to hide No Gun Ri.
The AP writers are trying to project a storyline that only through their heroic efforts of working tirelessly for months on end, taking their fifty subway rides to the library, and conducting countless interviews were they able to uncover the fact that the 1st Cavalry Division was in the area of No Gun Ri. This revelation thus in turn exposed the government cover up being directed by a low-level Eighth Army claims lawyer.
It really does sound ridiculous when you think about it, that a misinformed claims lawyer is suddenly behind a government conspiracy to hide whatever happened at No Gun Ri.
When the AP was told this why didn’t they go and ask somebody in the senior leadership of Eighth Army if the military’s official position was that the 1st Cavalry Division was not in the area of No Gun Ri? Heck they could have come and asked me and I would have simply pulled out my copy of the official US Army history of the Korean War and point out the entire chapter entitled 1st Cavalry Division Loses Yongdong to them which proves the 1st Cavalry Division was in the area of No Gun Ri.
The AP writers didn’t do any of this because keeping the myth alive that an Eighth Army claims lawyer is behind a massive government conspiracy supports their storyline of a Pentagon cover up of what happened at No Gun Ri.
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.
There is a reason this U.S. law is in place to protect the military from sensationalist journalists like the crew at the Associated Press. Additionally, the claim that the 7th Cavalry soldiers were not in combat is totally ridiculous. What were they doing at No Gun Ri in the first place, on a scouting trip to try out some of the local kimchi? They were at No Gun Ri because they were fleeing the advancing North Korean Army, which had just defeated the frontline elements of the 1st Cavalry Division at Yongdong. Additionally, the night before the incident, the 7th Cavalry regiment suffered wounded that were evacuated including some of the ex-GI witnesses that supposedly supported the AP’s version of events that were in fact not there because they were wounded. Sounds like combat to me. Plus a number of veteran witnesses that were at No Gun Ri, testified that they were being shot at by some of the refugees.
“We want the truth, justice and due respect for our human rights,” they wrote in a 1997 petition to President Clinton.
They also want $400 million dollars as well. I want truth and justice too and that is why I have researched the tragedy at No Gun Ri so closely because so many of the people involved in this issue are not interested in truth in justice, but promoting a mythology.
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.”
We have another quote from Tinkler that as I have shown earlier has some creditability issues to begin with.
But the 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.
Here we have quotes from someone who was not at No Gun Ri and from someone else who claims the AP misquoted him.
“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.”
Here the AP uses some powerful testimony to lay blame for what happened at No Gun Ri on the higher commanders from someone who wasn’t even there.
The late Col. Gilmon A. Huff, who took over the 2nd Battalion from Heyer three days after the pull back 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.
If you read closely Huff says he “knew nothing of what happened at the bridge.” However, in the next line the AP cleverly quotes him as saying that he “heard” about refugee killings to give the reader the impression that he heard about killings at No Gun Ri when he really meant he “heard” about refugee killings during the Korean War in general. Just a final example in this article of the AP writers using quotes out of context in order to support their own pre-conceived storyline of creating a Korean My Lai.
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.
Most of the bullets marks can still be seen quite easily today because the railroad workers only put concrete on some sections of the bridge supposedly as normal maintenance which happened before the AP story was even published. However, the concrete they put over the bullet holes is more like plaster because much of it is cracking off the sides of the tunnel. The areas that cracked off you can see if there are any bullet holes or not. The concrete can be taken off the sides of tunnels at any time.
You can see the concrete cracking off the tunnel.
This is just another stretching of the truth by the AP writers because they wanted to end their article by giving the reader the impression that the bullet holes were being covered by concrete as part of the great US government conspiracy headed by the low-level Eighth Army claims lawyer in Seoul. Some how she was even able to get the Korean Railways workers involved in the plot to cover up No Gun Ri. Her cover up powers if you are to believe the AP is quite extraordinary.
Finally let’s review our AP scorecards. The AP said they had 6 witnesses that participated and 6 witnessed the events. Here is what I have listed:
1. Patterson: misquoted
2. Kerns: misquoted
3. Tinkler: suspect testimony
4. Hesselman: not there
5. Carroll: says no massacre occurred
6. Daily: not there
7. Flint: not there
8. Louis: not there
9. Steward: misquote
10. Lippincott: says no massacre occurred
11. Huff: heard civilians killed during the war not at NGR
12. George Preece: misquoted
As can be seen the 12 witnesses that allegedly supported the AP’s version of the events in the article did not hold up under scrutiny.
Note that the Pentagon review did find a veteran witness that claimed that hundreds of people were gunned down at No Gun Ri. However, when asked to identify terrain feature in the No Gun Ri area he could not do it and his description of events was totally inconsistent with other veteran’s testimony who were there. Plus he identified another veteran as being with him who saw it, but when this veteran was also interviewed by the Pentagon review team he did not support the claims the prior veteran was making. He in fact saw no such thing.[xxxviii] At least the AP did not include him in the report.
However, here is another veteran the AP did not include in their report by the name of Buddy Wenzel. Wenzel was at the scene that day had this to say about the events that transpired at the bridge at No Gun Ri:
The civilians started coming down the railroad tracks, on paths on both sides of the tracks… The front ones, there were like maybe 15 or 20 of them, and they were getting thicker beyond that. Somebody said, “Fire over their heads for a warning.” … I got out of my hole with about 30 other guys; we all had M-1s. Now, we had one machine gun up on the railroad tracks and another air cooled machine gun on the right. Well when we fired over their heads they panicked. … That’s when some of them started to run towards us. We were firing over them all this time.
Then somebody yelled, “We’re being fired at,” then there was a bunch that started shooting into the refugees … This all happened in a minute, but it all came out when we panicked ‘cause we thought we were getting shot at.
There was a lieutenant that was running down to that group I was with. I saw this little girl that was sort of in front, she was maybe four or five years old and she was coming down the track I shot towards her and she fell. Well, this lieutenant ran out there and picked up this little girl. Why … I can’t tell you. That’s why the lieutenant was yelling, “Cease fire,” and he was running. She was out there in front, by herself, and flailing here arms and throwing her arms down.
After the cease-fire I stayed where I was, maybe 10-15 yards from the track, and maybe six or eight guys went down the tracks from the group that I was with, and a few went down from on top of the tracks. One of the guys went down there and searched a few of the bodies, he … found a body with a burp gun, and he yelled, “Here’s the goddamned gun,” and he held it straight up and slammed it down on the tracks.[xxxix]
So why was such a witness that was proven to be at No Gun Ri that offers vivid testimony to what actually happened there left out of the AP article? It is because his testimony doesn’t agree with the storyline the AP has been trying to promote of racist, war criminal GIs with orders from higher to kill the 400 civilians underneath the bridge that day. The AP reporters wanted their “Korean My Lai” and Wenzel didn’t fit their agenda.
The only GI witnesses that fully confirm the AP’s version of No Gun Ri was Daily, Flint, and Hesselman who all were not at No Gun Ri. The AP finally conceded that Daily was not at No Gun Ri, but to this day the AP claims Flint and Hesselman were there despite the documented evidence that shows they were medically evacuated before the events that transpired at No Gun Ri took place. Both Flint and Hesselman refused to be interviewed by the Pentagon review team and no GI witnesses who were at No Gun Ri can confirm the presence of either individual that day at the bridge.[xl]
Out of the twelve witnesses the AP cites in their article, four of them were not even there and the rest of them do not confirm the AP’s storyline. This fact is consistent with the rest of the 130 veteran interviews the AP conducted where the veterans told the reporters they saw no such massacre as the AP described it take place at No Gun Ri. Additionally, the Pentagon review team conducted hundreds more interviews where those veterans also said no such massacre happened. Some how all these veterans that dispute the AP’s version of events like Buddy Wenzel is discarded in the AP article in favor of dubious sources like Daily, Flint, and Hesselman.
Additionally when you solely look at the forensics and imagery analysis of the No Gun Ri area that was taken only one week after the incident and then compare it to the testimony of the people that were proven to be there, it is clear no massacre happened. Some civilians were gunned down at No Gun Ri, which is proven by witness testimony from people who were there that saw a handful of dead people in the tunnel after soldiers fired in response to rifle fire from the refugee column. Korean forensics investigators later found Russian shell casings and bandoliers in exactly the same spot GI witness said they took rifle fire.[xli]
The initial warning shots the US soldiers fired over the heads of the refugees is what probably caused the gun men within the refugee column to open fire and the US soldiers then directed their fire into the refugees before being stopped by their officers. A tragic story no doubt, but this is not a scenario that supports the current body count mythology. A storyline of strafings, bombings, and four days of rifle fire despite all the evidence saying otherwise, has to be promoted to support the body count mythology.
Can you spot the 400 dead bodies? Both US and Korean imagery analysts could not either.
This is just some of the pertinent information about No Gun Ri that I have presented and in fact there is a lot more information I could put into this posting especially in regards to Korean and American witness testimony, forensics, aerial imagery analysis, and historical documents that further sheds doubt on the AP’s version of events. I could literally write a book about this topic if I presented the nitty gritty details instead of trying to provide a broad overview of what happened.
I have also written this posting in an academic format by having pertinent information supported by footnotes that can be traced back to the source material. I did this because in the AP book they offered no footnotes to support their version of events and often make totally unsubstantiated claims. I am making claims in my above response to the original AP article that is supported with footnotes that can be traced to verifiable sources.
To this day the AP writers have not provided a complete archive of all their witness testimony and historical evidence. You will often see statements from them that say, “witnesses support their story”, but very rarely do they tell you who and when. This group of journalists simply want you to trust their reporting by not providing footnotes, but as I have already clearly showed these journalists are more interested in promoting a storyline instead of searching for the truth of what happened at No Gun Ri.
This is clearly the case because when you trace back the few sources they do provide, it turns out they were either misquoted or a fraudulent witness. One has to assume the reason they will not completely disclose their work is because of the numerous holes that critics have already uncovered in their reporting. These standards of journalism may be what Pulitzer Prizes are made of, but these standards would have given me a failing grade on my college history final exam.
Pulitzer Prizes and self-promotion was obviously the driving factor behind the AP’s work and not any search to create a accurate historical record of what happened. A tragedy did happen that day at No Gun Ri and the continuing tragedy of it is that the AP’s faulty reporting has created so much mythology around this issue that it has taken on a political context that has ultimately made the search for the truth of what really happened at No Gun Ri next to impossible. The victims of No Gun Ri and the Korean War generation in general deserve better than the shoddy journalism of the Associated Press.
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UPDATE: Make sure to read my latest posting, The Forensics of No Gun Ri along with the transcript of my briefing to the Seoul Rotary Club.
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Note: If you have any questions or would like to discuss even more specific details of what happened at No Gun Ri I will be happy to answer them in the comment section. Unlike how the AP writers who tried to silence Robert Bateman,[xlii] I don’t mind debate and don’t believe in trying to silence people with opposing viewpoints. I hope this posting offers some good food for thought for everyone and spurs you to look more into the No Gun Ri issue and judge the facts for yourself before believing the mythology.
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[i] Oh Yeon-ho, CEO and Founder of Oh My News, Oh My News International, 06 June 2007, http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=365749&rel_no=1
[ii] Robert Bateman, No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident, (Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 2002), Chapter 7 Making Up History Page 196
[iii] Robert Bateman, No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident, (Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 2002), Chapter 4 Erosion, Page 85
[iv] Joseph Galloway, “Doubts About A Korean Massacre”, U.S. News & World Report, 12 May 2000
[v] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 123
[vi] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 123
[vii] Jamie McIntyre, “All Encompassing Probe Ordered Into Alleged Korean War Massacre”, CNN, 01 October 1999, http://www.dpg.devry.edu/~akim/sck/nogunri1.html
[viii] “U.S. Called On to Conduct Open, Fair Probe Into No Gun Ri Killings”, Associated Press, 6 December 2000, http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ASIANNOW/east/12/05/skorea.nogunri.ap/index.html
[ix] Robert Bateman, No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident, (Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 2002), Chapter 7 Making Up History Page 202
[x] Donald Kirk & Cho Sang-hun, Korea Witness, (Seoul, South Korea, EunHaeng NaMu Books, 2006), The Story Behind the Story of No Gun Ri Pages 107-112
[xi] Charles Gruntzer, “Stranded Enemy Soldiers Merge with Refugee Crowds in Korea”, The New York Times, 30 September 1950, page A1
[xii] Martha Mendoza, “Digging Into History – AP Investigates U.S. Actions During the Korean War”, Investigative Reporters and Editors Journal, January – February 2000, page 6, Note: Bateman’s book on page 133 covers this quote as well.
[xiii] Donald Kirk & Cho Sang-hun, Korea Witness, (Seoul, South Korea, EunHaeng NaMu Books, 2006), The Story Behind the Story of No Gun Ri Page 108
[xiv] T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War, (Dulles, Virgina, Brassey’s, 1963) Chapter 2 Battle: Retreating pages 106-107)
[xv] The Bridge at No Gun Ri document archive, http://www.henryholt.com/nogunri/document09.htm, accessed 05 July 2007
[xvi] Roy E. Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu, (Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961), Chapter 15 Establishing the Pusan Perimeter Page 251
[xvii] Robert Bateman, No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident, (Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 2002), Chapter 4 Erosion Page 83-84
[xviii] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 125
[xix] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 126
[xx] Oh, Yeon-ho, “Do You Know Our Agony? Massacre of Villagers By the U.S. Soldiers During the Korean War”, On the Spot Investigation, 02 June 2000, http://www.peoplepower21.org/English/37768
[xxi] Jamie McIntyre, “All Encompassing Probe Ordered Into Alleged Korean War Massacre”, CNN, 01 October 1999, http://www.dpg.devry.edu/~akim/sck/nogunri1.html
[xxii] The Bridge at No Gun Ri document archive, http://www.henryholt.com/nogunri/document19.htm, accessed 05 July 2007
[xxiii] Robert Bateman, No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident, (Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 2002), Chapter 4 Erosion Page 83-84
[xxiv] The Bridge at No Gun Ri document archive, http://www.henryholt.com/nogunri/document06.htm, accessed 05 July 2007
[xxv] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 127
[xxvi] Brian Duffy, “Memory and Its Flaws”, U.S. News & World Report, 12 June 2000, Vol. 128, No. 23, page 22
[xxvii] Robert Bateman, No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident, (Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 2002), Chapter 7 Making Up History Page 219
[xxviii] Joseph Galloway, “Doubts About A Korean Massacre”, U.S. News & World Report, 12 May 2000
[xxix] Robert Bateman, No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident, (Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 2002), Chapter 6 The Strange Tale of Edward Daily, Page 160
[xxx] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 125
[xxxi] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 125
[xxxii] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 125
[xxxiii] Roy E. Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu, (Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961), Chapter 12 The Front Line Moves South: The 1st Cavalry Division Loses Yongdong Pages 195-200
[xxxiv] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 120
[xxxv] Author attended display of artifacts recovered from Korean War battlesites at the Korean War memorial in Seoul on June 25, 2007
[xxxvi] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 126
[xxxvii] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 124-125
[xxxviii] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 133
[xxxix] Robert Bateman, “No War Crime at No Gun Ri”, Arm Chair General, January 2007, page 37
[xl] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 4 Analysis of Interview Data, Page 123
[xli] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Appendix B Analysis of Forensic Evidence, page B-8
[xlii] Michael Taylor, “A War of Words On a Prize-Winning Story”, San Francisco Chronicle, 07 April 2002, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/04/07/IN89398.DTL
