Re: 'US Soldiers Abused PoWs During The Korean War'

["swan" <swan@haysco.net>]

I wonder what kind of bullshit (if you will pardon the expression) will be
coming out.

Bob Dove
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Davino" <mdavino@yahoo.com>
To: <KOREAN-WAR-L@raven.cc.ku.edu>
Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 2:11 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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