Isolating the Prisoners

It was long known that villagers outside of the Goje POW camp were helping the prisoners inside the camp with supplies and the sending of messages back to their masters in North Korea and in turn influencing the on going negotiations at Panmunjom. Many of the villagers on Goje were actually North Korean civilians relocated from Wonsan and Hangnum in North Korea. Among the evacuated civilians were many North Korean agents that were aiding the prisoners in the camp. General Boatner knew he had to stop this rat line running from Goje to Panmunjom and the only way to do that would be by forcibly moving thousands of villagers away from the camp.

The problem with doing that was that with the Red Cross and media hanging around would condemn such an act. However, the problem with the civilians supporting the prisoners got so bad that Boatner had to do something about them before he could move on fully ending the uprising in the prison. Boatner sent trucks to the village to move the villagers. The military in two days was able to move the entire village and burn the huts down. It brought some bad headlines in the short term, but in long term it totally isolated the North Korean leadership within the prison.

Ending the Revolt

It took 30 days for the engineers to complete the expansion of the prison and during this time General Boatner was able to restore discipline among his own troops, divide loyalties within the prison, and end the rat line of communications from and to the prison. The last thing that had to be done was to end the revolt and restore order.

With the new camp constructed the time was now here to begin moving prisoners into the new and more secure compound. There was tens of thousands of prisoners total on Goje divided in separate camps of 6,500 prisoners. General Boatner chose the most violent camp with the head communist leadership, including Colonel Lee Hak-ku in Camp 76 to begin the movement of the prisoners from. Boatner felt that by crushing opposition here first, it would set an example to the rest of the prisoners. Using crack paratroopers from the 187th Airborne Brigade, Boatner had his men completely surround Camp 76. The men were under very explicit orders to use non-lethal means to move the prisoners and could only shoot to kill with the permission of the commanding officer only. It was imperative that the operation didn’t turn into a blood bath for the world’s media to report. The paratroopers had trained for weeks for this operation and were ready to put down the uprising by chopping off it’s head at Camp 76.

All at once on June 10th, 1952, the soldiers cut down the wire around the camp and moved in. The paratroopers moved in slowly and deliberately subduing prisoners. As they moved further into the camp the prisoners set fire to the buildings creating a smoke screen to fight the paratroopers in. The paratroopers began throwing concussion grenades into the smoke which had the effect of breaking up the frontlines of the resistance. As prisoners fled the impact of the grenades they were quickly captured by the paratroopers. The last 150 holdouts made one last ditch effort to fight off the paratroopers by hunkering down in trenches they had dug. As the paratroopers closed in on the trenches some of the prisoners panicked and ran towards the paratroopers to give themselves up. However, as they ran from the trenches the hard core communist cadre chased after them and killed some of the defectors. The paratroopers quickly moved in to stop the slaughter and a melee ensued.

Once the operation was over 43 POWs had been killed and 135 wounded with half these casualties coming from the communists attacking their own people. Only one paratrooper who had been speared to death was killed in the operation. The paratroopers searched through the compound and found corpses hanging from inside the buildings to serve as an example to anyone that did not resist the Americans. They also found detailed plans by the communist to conduct a mass prison break on June 20th and slaughter anyone in there path in order to make maximum headlines against the Americans.

Weapons Found in the Prison

Outside the paratroopers found Colonel Lee hiding in a ditch and dragged him to his new compound. The leader of the communist uprising had gone down without a fight. The 6,500 prisoners in the notorious Camp 76 had been broken down and moved to the new compound and divided into more secure compounds of 500 prisoners per camp. The smaller number of prisoners per camp made it harder for them to organize and easier for the guards to manage. After this operation the rest of Goje’s prisoners voluntarily moved without confrontation to the new camp. By June 12th all the prisoners had been moved and General Boatner was firmly in charge of Goje Island. Colonel Lee and the rest of the prisoners of the Goje POW camp would never give General Boatner and his successors anymore problems for the rest of the war.

Next Posting: Lessons Learned from the Goje Incident

Prior Posting: Expanding the Camp

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