[KOREAN-WAR-L:11380] Partisan Operations and Tan-Do/T'an-Do

[Jack Hwang <jackchwang@comcast.net>]

Ed,

I was reading your Darkmoon the other day and found a little bit confused
about the names of the islands the Donkeys operated from off the Yalu
mouth.

In the chapter "Enemy Strikes Back" in Ed's book (pp. 124-134), Donkey
13 and 15 took Tan-Do and T'an-Do, respectively, on Oct. 8, 1951.  The
same incident was listed in the "Unconventional Warfare Campaign" at
korean-war.com (http://www.korean-war.com/warfarecampaign.html).
However, I could not find Tan-Do on the map at all.  From the maps I
have, the bigger islands at the tip of the Cholsan Peninsula are (from
north to south):

Ka-Do
        T'an-Do (Charcoal Island)
Hoe-Do (Ash Island)
Sohwa-Do
Taehwa-Do

One of the maps are available  here:
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu:8085/korea/250k/NJ51_4.jpg

Your book also mentioned that Chinese took Tan-do back on Nov. 6th and
T'an-do on Nov. 8th.  Chinese records showed differently.  They landed on
Ka-Do on Nov. 6th and did not take T'an-Do till Nov. 24th (the latter
unconfirmed).  However, the USN Korean War  Naval Chronology has an
entry about Chinese took Ka-Do and Tan-Do on Nov. 6th.
http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/korea/chron51b.htm

Since Tan and T'an sound similar, could it be possible that they
actually refer to the same island?  T'an-do is larger than Taehwa-Do.
I suspected that Donkey 13 and 15 hit the different parts of T'an-Do
on the same day, but it became garbled when the report was sent
back up the channels.  BTW, I don't think it is the mix-up between
Ka-Do and Tan-Do.  Ka-Do is about 3 times the size of T'an-Do.
Donkey 13 could not take it and hold it alone.

What do you think?

Jack Hwang