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Mike,
The British officer spoke the truth. I know
because I was at Koje POW camps as an interpreter for the US CIC.
American racism was not limited to the POWs but also, it applied to us - the
'good gooks' - as well.
ysk
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 12:11
PM
Subject: 'US Soldiers Abused PoWs During
The Korean War'
I think the UK has a fifty-year "Official
Secrets"
law. I wonder what other Korean War "secrets" like
this
one will be coming out in the next couple of
years.
Mike Davino
War London Times
January 3, 2003
'US Soldiers Abused PoWs
During The Korean War'
By Richard Ford and Richard Beeston
A
young British army officer ordered to take over a
prisoner of war camp
during the Korean War wrote a
scathing report about the treatment of North
Korean
prisoners held by American troops.
The attack was brought to
the attention of ministers
but kept secret until yesterday. It accused
the
Americans of incompetence, ill-discipline, abuse and
breaking the
Geneva Conventions on treatment of
prisoners. The document was written in
August 1952 by
Major Dawney Bancroft of the King's Shropshire
Light
Infantry, who commanded a Commonwealth unit sent to
the island of
Koje-do to take over the running of a
prison camp where 3,200 North Korean
officers were
held. Although British troops were fighting alongside
the
Americans against the Chinese-backed North
Koreans, co-operation between
the allies appeared to
break down away from the front.
The British
reported that American soldiers on sentry
duty often fell asleep, or
abandoned their posts to
spend the night in local brothels. They
rarely
searched the prisoners' quarters and mail was
distributed
erratically. He said that prisoners were
usually addressed by their
American captors as
"slant-eyed, yellow bastards".
Early on in his
command, Major Bancroft intervened to
protect a sick prisoner who was being
mistreated by an
American soldier assigned to take him to
hospital.
"This was the first of many occasions I witnessed
US
troops openly violating the Geneva Conventions," he
wrote.
He
was in no doubt of the fanaticism of the North
Korean commissars who
effectively ran prison life. On
one occasion he watched as 100 prisoners
were killed
in clashes with American troops trying to clear
a
camp.
"It was during this phase of reorganisation that
it
became more evident that the US officers and soldiers
responsible for
the operation of enclosure thought the
Chinese and Korean PW (prisoners of
war) were Oriental
cattle who were to be given quite different
treatment
to a European," he wrote.
Major Bancroft went on to become
a brigadier-general
and died in
1995.
__________________________________________________
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