[KOREAN-WAR-L:11399] Books

[<charlesjh@att.net>]

As a ``Bridge at No Gun Ri'' co-author, let me quickly answer the questions in Ed's and Mr. Wallis's latest postings:

The story of the disposition of bodies is explained in ``The Bridge at No Gun Ri,'' pp. 189-193 and p. 244.

To summarize: Many families (from the nearby villages of Chu Gok Ri and Im Ke Ri) retrieved bodies in the days immediately after the killings and buried them on the hillsides of the villages. (We've visited such graves with survivors.) Meantime, evacuated villagers of No Gun Ri, who were not affected by the killings, returned home, found human remains under the bridge and on their road and pathways. Several elderly women told us their men hastily stacked all bodies under the bridge, against a wall, and tossed dirt on them. Later (some remember it being fairly soon, at least one said after the spring thaw), the same villagers (drinking rice wine to fortify themselves, the women recall) buried the bodies in two general locations, up the nearest hillside and in the flat near the bridge. Park Chung-hee's reforestation later dispersed the hillside bones; a farmer later bought the flat acreage and plowed it up. One villager recalled he sold the bones, a folk remedy for leprosy. 

More generally, I caution against seizing on some single seeming ``discrepancy'' -- where's the mass grave; there MUST have been a mass grave -- in a complex, half-century-old event that is naturally difficult to reconstuct, and using that discrepancy to convince oneself that the event itself did not occur, despite the overwhelming and irrefutable evidence that it did.

Even the Army, after the inspector general's 14-month investigation, finally and reluctantly had to conclude it did occur. It said an ``unknown'' number were killed (by artillery and small arms fire, and aerial strafing, it specifically notes). We, too, do not know what that precise number was. Nobody does. But there's powerful evidence that it was in the hundreds, credible testimony from dozens of survivors, from ex-GIs, from uninvolved No Gun Ri villagers who saw and dealt with the bodies, from a North Korean reporter who reported within days an estimated 400 dead, from internal North Korean military documents captured by the U.S. Army. In addition, every July 26 for a half-century there have been scores of ``ancestor days,'' memorial days for the dead, in individual households in Chu Gok Ri and Im Ke Ri.

(By the way, Maj. Bateman's ignorance and dismissal of the Korean part of the story, the bulk of the story, his refusal in working on his book to speak to the Koreans, and his dismissal of them as probable liars and cheats, is absolutely shameful, to use just one adjective.)

We have recently spoken with a retired command sergeant major who went on patrol through one of the bridge underpasses. He said there were 200 to 300 people in there, stacked up, most of them probably dead. He testified in the Pentagon investigation. We have other new witnesses (since publishing our book, which was based on interviews with over 60 witnesses) who say it was a large number, including a Korean working for the Army CIC at the time who interviewed villagers some weeks after the event.

Regarding Mr. Wallis's points:

     --``Others have said they were there and they were not...''
Only ONE who said he was there was not. That was Mr. Daily. He's been irrelevant for three years, ever since we dug up the documents that got him to acknowledge he mustn't have been there. As an aside: We more recently collated documents showing that the unit Daily DID belong to, an ordnance maintenance company, had a detachment within a mile of No Gun Ri at the time. Something to think about.
	
     --``What do you suppose would have happened if, compassionately, you had opened a gap in the line and allowed the civilian refugees to pass through without vetting by the ROK security forces?''
There's much, much to be said on this point. But just briefly: Some 400,000 refugees did pass through American lines during this period. Despite the heavy rumors at the time, the documented incidence of NKPA infiltrators in two division areas was extremely low -- at most two incidents, and one did not involve an armed man, but a woman with a radio.

Besides, the villagers killed at No Gun Ri had been rousted and escorted by U.S. troops from their villages. For a period of a few hours, they were without escort, but the NKPA lines were several miles behind them, and as they approached No Gun Ri, 7th Cavalry soldiers were sent out to check them over. Those soldiers dispersed, leaving the refugees waiting on the railroad tracks, and soon after they were attacked from the air, and the bloodshed began. (The 5th Air Force had a standing policy of attacking refugee columns approaching U.S. lines. See our document collection at http://www.henryholt.com/nogunri/documents.htm ). Obviously, the 5th Air Force didn't strafe 400,000 refugees. Some used their heads and hearts, just as not every ground unit opened fire on crowds of women, children and old men, as the 7th Cav did. (And not every man at No Gun Ri fired.)
	 
You've raised good questions that get to the heart of things. Any others, please ask. There's so much misinformation -- and disinformation -- out there.

Hope I've helped. Thanks.

Charlie Hanley