59 years ago this week the tragic events that unfolded under a railway bridge outside the village of No Gun Ri during the Korean War occurred.  The incident under the bridge that day no longer resonates as much as it did when the story first broke nearly 10 years ago by Associated Press writers that went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.  Their reporting went on the be greatly criticized and large parts of it debunked.

I highly recommend your read my prior postings on this subject:

• Responding to the Bridge at No Gun Ri
• The Forensics of No Gun Ri
• Revisiting No Gun Ri
• Transcript of Briefing to Seoul Rotary Club

The defenders of a massacre of Korean civilians by uncaring racist US soldiers often cite documents that allegedly supports their version of events.  Of course the defenders of this prevailing view that are the best at citing these documents are the Associated Press writers of the original No Gun Ri reporting. These Associated Press writers often claim that only after months of tireless research were they able to uncover the documents that confirmed that civilians were deliberately killed at No Gun Ri by the US military.  The claims of tireless research to uncover these documents is quite interesting considering the fact that the documents never had to be discovered in the first place by the AP since they have been sitting unclassified in military archives since the 1970s for anyone to look at.

Once the AP writers “discovered” these documents, they then skillfully crafted an article that quoted a line from some of the documents, with no context, that allegedly supported their version of events at No Gun Ri.  This writing technique is so skillful that often people who support the AP’s version of events will completely deflect the criticism of the fraudulent GI witness testimony by saying the GI witnesses do not matter because the declassified documents prove the killing of civilians at No Gun Ri anyway.  However, how can quoting one line from a sometimes multi-page document, accurately portray the necessary context of what is contained in it?

That is why it is important to go back and review the documents the AP cites and see if they really do “prove”, as they say, that the US military deliberately killed refugees at No Gun Ri.  The AP writers have already demonstrated that they are willing to take testimony from witnesses that they knew were not at No Gun Ri as absolute fact along with intentionally misquoting others that were there in order to support their thesis of what happened at No Gun Ri.  Is it possible that the AP writers would intentionally misquote and use out of context documents they say proves their version of events that day at No Gun Ri?  The only way to find out is by analyzing the documents themselves.

The 8^th Cavalry Logbook Entry

In the original AP article the first piece of documentation, which to this day the AP writers cite as being proof the soldiers of the 7^th Cavalry were given orders by senior military leaders to shoot civilians at No Gun Ri, is a lone logbook entry from the 8^th Cavalry Regiment war diary:

American commanders had ordered units retreating through South Korea to shoot civilians as a defense against disguised enemy soldiers, according to once-classified documents found by the AP in months of researching U.S. military archives and interviewing veterans across the United States.  […]

Two days earlier, 1^st Cavalry Division headquarters issued a more explicit order:  No refugees to cross the front line.  Fire everyone trying to cross lines.  Use discretion in case of women and children.”

There justification to claim they have documented evidence of an order to shoot refugees comes from a phone call made from a 8^th Cavalry Regiment major working as a liaison officer at the 1^st Cavalry Division Headquarters.  For those who are not familiar with the military let me clarify the structure of the 1^st Cavalry Division.   Regiments fall underneath a division and the 1^st Cavalry Division during the Korean War had three combat regiments, the 8^th Cavalry, the 5^th Cavalry, and the 7^th Cavalry.  The 7^th Cavalry is the unit that was located in the vicinity of No Gun Ri, the 8^th and 5^th Cavalry were not.

Regiments send liaison officers to work at the division headquarters to help pass information between the division and the regiment.  The major working as the liaison officer for the 8^th Cavalry phoned his regiment’s headquarters to relay this message:

“No refugees to cross front line.  Fire everyone trying to cross line.  Use discretion in case of women and children.”

This message was written down in the 8^th Cavalry logbook on July 24, 1950[1].

Even today the military operates what is known as a CQ (charge of quarters) desk that has a logbook that writes down important information received over the telephone.  When you go to the field you have someone that maintains a log as well as important information and events as they happen.  When a unit goes to combat it is the same process, there will be a soldier who will man the unit’s radio and phone and log important information.  The person manning the phone that day for the 8^th Cavalry wrote in his logbook a summary of what he heard on the telephone from the division liaison officer.

Despite the way the AP is portraying this logbook entry as being an order, an entry in a logbook is not an order.  Furthermore, a regiment is commanded by a colonel and a colonel does not take orders from a major calling over the telephone and leaving a note in a logbook with the guy manning the phone.  A regimental commander takes orders from the division commander who is a two star general.  Military orders are issued in what is known as an Operations Order that are approved and signed by the higher commander, which in the case of the 8^th Cavalry their higher was Major General Hobart Gay, the commander of the 1^st Cavalry Division.  As you will see later on in this posting there was an order issued by General Gay in regards to the handling of refugees, but it is an order that does not support what the AP writers are claiming.

Not only was this so-called “order” only a logbook entry, but the logbook entry was placed with the 8^th Cavalry Regiment which was not at No Gun Ri.  There has never been documented evidence from the 7^th Cavalry Regiment that proves there was an order to shoot refugees at No Gun Ri.  No operations orders exist that show any order to shoot refugees and additionally the logbook entry in the 8^th Cavalry Regiment logbook that the AP writers are using as evidence of an “order” to kill refugees cannot be found in any other logbook in the entire 1^st Cavalry Division from the Division level all the way down to the individual company level.

The most likely explanation for the phone call placed by the 8^th Cavalry Regiment liaison officer is that he probably over heard discussions or more likely rumors from within the division headquarters about how the division planned to handle the refugee problem.  The division planning staff eventually published their order on how to handle the refugee situation, but the 8^th Cavalry liaison officer who overheard either talk or rumors earlier called back to his regiment to let them know an order was coming out from division on refugees and added details he thought was going to be in the order, which ultimately were not in the order.  This would explain why not one other unit from the division level all the way down to all the individual companies in the entire division did not record anything even remotely similar to what the 8^th Cavalry recorded.  That is why the military uses operations orders signed by commanders in order to relay orders so leaders are not led by rumors spread by liaison officers at the division.

Eighth United States Army Refugee Policy

To further build on the claim that senior leaders ordered the killing of civilians under the bridge at No Gun Ri, the AP reporters also selectively quoted from a Eighth United States Army order in regards to the handling of refugees on the front lines:

That morning, the U.S. 8^th Army had radioed orders throughout the Korean front that began, “No repeat no refugees will be permitted to cross battle lines at any time,” according to declassified documents located at the National Archives in Washington.

This lone sentence is taken from a much larger order issued theatre wide by the Eighth United States Army headquarters that dictates how subordinate units should handle the massive refugee crisis that was plaguing front line combat operations.[2] This is what the opening portion of the order states:

Effective immediately, the following procedures will be adhered to by all commands relative to the flow of refugees in battle areas and rear areas.  No refugees will be permitted to cross battle lines at any time.  Movement of all Koreans in groups will cease immediately.  No areas will be evacuated by Koreans without a direct order from commanding general EUSAK or upon orders of division commanders.  Each division will be assigned three national police liaison officers to assist in clearing any area of the civilian poplulace that will interfere with the successful accomplishment of his mission.

This order effectively created a system refugees were stopped at the frontlines and Korean National Police (KNP) were assigned by orders from the division commanders to clear a designated area of civilian refugees.  Nowhere in this order does it state that the soldiers are to shoot refugees as the AP writers try to skillfully suggest with their misleading writing.  In fact it quite obviously states that soldiers are supposed to stop refugees and then have the KNPs search them before advancing through the front lines.

The next portion of the order outlines quite clearly what procedures the KNPs will follow in order to clear an area of refugees:

Procedure for clearing areas.  Division commanders will inform national police officers of the area or sector to be evacuated, the route, and the time the area will be cleared.  National police will immediately clear the area.  Food, water, and comfort items for these refugees will be provided by the Vice Minister of Social Affairs through the national police.  All refugees will move along their predetermined route to selected concentration areas from sun-up to sun-down.  This will be a controlled movement under the direction and supervision of the national police and representation from the office of Korean Welfare Affairs.

This order created a system to consolidate, care for, and move the refugees to consolidated holding areas before evacuating them from the front lines.  Due to the refugee crisis that was be exploited by advancing North Korean troops disguised as civilians, the Eighth Army leadership knew a system of managing these refugees needed to be quickly established before the US forces fell back to their final defensive positions along the Naktong River line.  A refugee control policy that provides “food, water, and comfort items” hardly sounds like the mindless killing order from the higher command that the AP has lead everyone to believe.

The final portion of the order concerns the movement and notification of refugees to be evacuated:

Movement of Koreans during hours of darkness.  There will be absolutely no movement of Korean civilians, as individuals or groups in battle areas or rear areas, after the hours of darkness.  Uniformed Korean police will rigidly enforce this directive.  To accomplish this procedure, as outlined in this directive, leaflets will be prepared and dropped in all areas forward and rear of the battle line to effectively disseminate this information.  National police will further disseminate this information to all Korean civilians by means of radio, messenger, and the press.

For the refugees own safety a movement control order was established where the KNPs could move refugees through friendly lines at set times every day and forbid any movement of civilians at night.  Forbidding the movement of civilians at night is a wise decision considering the fact the American soldiers were often shooting each other at night, much less trying to identify potential refugees from North Koreans.

To notify civilians of this refugee control order, leaflets were dropped and radio announcements were made to spread this information as widely as possible to include the KNPs notifying villages.  There is a lot of interesting information in this Eighth Army order, but one thing it does not have is an order to kill refugees as the AP writers suggest.

Here is a memorandum that shows that the 8th Army was dropping leaflets to notify villagers:

Something else that is important to remember is that the Eighth Army policy was first released on July 26, 1950.  This is significant because the 7^th Cavalry soldiers were already at No Gun Ri.  It was not possible that every soldier of the 7^th Cavalry had received this order the day of the events at No Gun Ri supposedly began.  It is also unlikely that the 7^th Cavalry leadership took the Eighth Army order as a blank check to machine gun refugees underneath the bridge at No Gun Ri anyway.

The order was published at 10AM the day the events at No Gun Ri occurred.  The 2^nd Battalion of the 7^th Cavalry had completely disintegrated on the night of July 25^th due to perceived enemy contact, which caused the soldiers to leave behind much of their equipment including radios.  During the time of day of July 26^th when this order was published the 2^nd Battalion was in the midst of reconsolidating their men that were spread out around the countryside and recovering their equipment from the disintegration the night before.  The likelihood of everyone in the 2^nd Battalion receiving this order before the events of No Gun Ri transpired is very low considering the circumstances.

The fact that the majority of the 2^nd Battalion 7^th Cavalry soldiers probably did not receive the Eighth Army order doesn’t mean that they were not operating under some kind of refugee control order.  When the 7^th Cavalry arrived in the Hwanggan area on July 25^th after their movement across the country from the port at Pohang, the regiment according to the 7^th Cavalry war diary received the following orders on the handling of refugees from the 1^st Cavalry Division headquarters[3]:

• No school, shops, or industries will be operated except those essential to the war effort

• Movement will be permitted daily from 1000 to 1200 hours.

• No ox-carts, trucks or civilian cars will be allowed to operate on the highways.

• No fields will be worked.

• Municipal authorities, local police, and national police will enforce this directive.

• Armbands will be worn by essential personnel such as municipal authorities, police, doctors, midwives, railroad, and telephone personnel.

This is an order that can be proven that the soldiers of the 7^th Cavalry did receive.  So why didn’t the AP writers feel this was important information to disclose in their article?  It is probably because there are no sentences in this article that they can misquote to support their thesis of senior leaders ordering the killing of civilians under the bridge at No Gun Ri.

The Muccio Letter

The fact that the Eighth Army and the 1^st Cavalry Division refugee policies do not support the AP’s assertions did not stop them from trying to continue to perpetuate their mythology.  In 2006 the AP team released an article about the discovery of the Muccio Letter that supposedly confirmed their reporting about what happened at No Gun Ri[4].  As usual with this set of AP writers, once you actually read through the document and wade through all the red herrings in their article the fact of the matter is quite different.

Here is how the article opens:

– More than a half-century after hostilities ended in Korea, a document from the war’s chaotic early days has come to light _ a letter from the U.S. ambassador to Seoul, informing the State Department that American soldiers would shoot refugees approaching their lines.

The letter _ dated the day of the Army’s mass killing of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri in 1950 _ is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all U.S. forces in Korea, and the first evidence that that policy was known to upper ranks of the U.S. government.

“If refugees do appear from north of US lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot,” wrote Ambassador John J. Muccio, in his message to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

Once again the AP writers are using their typical writing style of selectively taking quotes from a document that appears to support their thesis without providing any context of why the letter was written or information in the document that disputes the AP’s version of events.  That is why it is important to read the entire letter verbatim before passing judgment on what it really means.

John Muccio

PERSONAL-CONFIDENTIAL

The Foreign Service of the United States of America

American Embassy

July 26, 1950

Dear Dean: The refugee problem has developed aspects of a serious and even critical military nature, aside from the welfare aspects. Necessarily, decisions are being made by the military in regard to it, and in view of the possibility of repercussions in the United States from the effectuation of these decisions, I have thought it desirable to inform you of them.

The enemy has used the refugees to his advantage in many ways: by forcing them south and so clogging the roads as to interfere with military movements; by using them as a channel for infiltration of agents; and most dangerous of all by disguising their own troops as refugees, who after passing through our lines proceed, after dark, to produce hidden weapons, and then attack our units from the rear. Too often such attacks have been devastatingly successful. Such infiltrations had a considerable part in the defeat of the 24th Division at Taejon.

Naturally, the Army is determined to end this threat. Yesterday evening a meeting was arranged, by 8th Army HQ request, at the office of the Home Minister at the temporary Capitol. G-1, G-2, Provost Marshall, CIC, the Embassy, the Home and Social Affairs Ministries, and the Director National Police. The following decisions were made:

1. Leaflet drops will be made north of US lines banning the people not to proceed south, that they risk being fired upon if they do so. If refugees do appear from north of US lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot.

2. Leaflet drops and oral warning by police within US combat zone will be made to the effect that no one can move south unless ordered, and then only under police control, that all movement of Korean civilians must end at sunset or those moving will risk being shot when dark comes.

3. Should the local tactical commander consider it essential to evacuate a given sector he will notify the police liaison officers attached to his HQ, who through the area Korean National Police will notify the inhabitants, and start them southward under police control on specified minor roads. No one will be permitted to move unless police notify them, and those further south not notified will be required to stay put.

4. Refugee groups must stop at sunset, and not move again until daylight. Police will establish check points to catch enemy agents; subsequently Social Ministry will be prepared to care for, and direct refugees to camps or other areas.

5. No mass movements unless police controlled will be permitted. Individual movements will be subject to police checks at numerous points.

6. In all cities, towns curfew will be at 9 p.m., with effective enforcement at 10 p.m. Any unauthorized person on streets after 10 p.m. is to be arrested, and carefully examined. The last item is already in effect.

Sincerely,

John J. Muccio

Nowhere in the Muccio Letter are there any concerns about war crimes, Geneva Convention, or anything else the AP writers want their readers to believe.  Ambassador Muccio was simply doing his job by notifying the State Department about the Eighth Army refugee policy that had already been disseminated that day across the theater.

The newsworthiness of this letter is that it shines a light on why the Eighth Army refugee policy was created in the first place.  The letter clearly states that the policy was established in response to the North Korean violations of the laws of war by using soldiers dressed as civilians to infiltrate into the rear areas of the 24^th Infantry Division.  Muccio says himself that the North Korean tactics played a “considerable part in the defeat of the 24th Division at Taejon”.  This destruction of the 24^th Infantry Division at Taejon is what led to the collapse of the US war effort in the early days of the Korean War.  Interestingly enough nowhere in the AP article is the destruction of the 24^th Division even mentioned however No Gun Ri is mentioned over and over again.

What else Muccio provides insight into is that the refugee handling order was not something that was taken lightly.  The order was only implemented after a meeting at Eighth Army headquarters that included officials from the Korean government, US Embassy officials, and the Director of the Korean National Police.  All these elements agreed to the refugee control order and it was not something that was created by the U.S. military on a whim so they did not have to deal with the refugees.  It was in fact a very thoroughly thought out policy that was only issued after close consultation with elements of the Korean government.  Despite the fact that the Korean government played a key role in this refugee order, the AP writers have continued to down play this fact while the claimants continue to demand compensation from the US government while their own government was in agreement with this policy.

The AP writers may have left out plenty of context and information from their article, but one thing they did not leave out was to suggest a Pentagon conspiracy to cover up what happened at No Gun Ri:

“With this additional piece of evidence, the Pentagon report’s interpretation (of No Gun Ri) becomes difficult to sustain,” Conway-Lanz argues in his book, “Collateral Damage,” published this spring by Routledge.

The Army report’s own list of sources for the 1999-2001 investigation shows its researchers reviewed the microfilm containing the Muccio letter. But the 300-page report did not mention it.

The then Army Secretary Louis Caldera responded to the article by saying, “Millions of pages of files were reviewed and it is certainly possible they may have simply missed it.”  This is quite possible considering the amount of documentation the Pentagon researchers had to go through.  If anything the Pentagon researchers would have wanted to include the Muccio Letter in the final report because it only further establishes the rational behind why the Eighth Army issued their refugee control order in the first place; because of the massive infiltration of North Korean soldiers disguised as refugees.  The letter also makes it quite clear that this policy was methodically thought out in complete consultation with the South Korean government and military, which agreed fully to the recommendations.  Some how the AP writers did not find this fact newsworthy?

The Order from General Kean

The 25^th Infantry Division was conducting combat operations north of the 1^st Cavalry Division’s area of operations in the Yongdong sector.  The 25^th Division was commanded by Major General William Kean who the AP cited in their original article as issuing an order to shoot refugees:

In the neighboring 25^th Infantry Division, the commander, Maj Gen. William B. Kean, told his troops that since South Koreans were to have been evacuated from the battle zone, “all civilians seen in this area are to be considered as enemy and action taken accordingly.”  His staff relayed this as “considered unfriendly and shot.”

This is a perfect example of why readers need to view the documents themselves.  This is what the order from General Kean actually says:[5]

Korean police have been directed to remove all civilians from the area between the blue lines shown on the attached overlay and report the evacuation has been accomplished.  All civilians seen in this area are to be considered as enemy and action taken accordingly.

By reading the whole document you gain the context of why the order by General Kean was given in the first place.  Actions against refugees was only going to be taken after the Korean National Police had cleared the area and reported back to General Kean that the area had been evacuated.  Only after that were people found in the area declared hostile.  The order does not say shoot refugees, but leaves the action that needs to be taken to stop the infiltration of refugees to the commanders on the ground.  General Kean’s order was completely in line with the refugee policy issued by Eighth Army that in turn was approved by both the Korean and American governments.

Another important aspect of this document is that this order was issued on July 27^th.  This is significant because the order was issued one full day after the events of No Gun Ri transpired.  The fact the order was issued on July 27^th by the 25^th Division only makes it more likely that the soldiers at No Gun Ri did not receive the Eighth Army order before the events that transpired at No Gun Ri as the AP writers suggest.

The Rogers Memorandum

One of the key elements of the AP’s version of events is that an air strike was called in on the refugee column just prior to reaching the railway bridge at No Gun Ri.  During the Pentagon investigation into the events of No Gun Ri a memorandum written by Colonel Turner Rogers who was a United States Air Force operations officer at the time of the Korean War was disclosed.[6] In the memorandum Colonel Rogers expresses his concern to his superior officer about the Army requesting to the Air Force to strafe civilians dressed in white who the front line soldiers believed were disguised as North Korean soldiers.  Colonel Rogers notes that the US Air Force has so far complied with Army requests to strafe specified refugee columns that were believed to be North Korean infiltrators.  However, Colonel Rogers felt that strafing these suspected North Korean infiltrators was not something the Air Force should be doing and suggested that the Army should just shoot suspected North Korean infiltrators themselves.  Interestingly enough the now retired Major General Turner Rogers does not remember this memorandum and could not provide any additional details about it.  Also of note is that the document is not signed by Colonel Rogers, it just has his signature block.  It may have drafted by a subordinate officer and for whatever reason never signed by the Colonel.

The Pentagon investigators also disclosed a memorandum written by the Navy that documented a strafing of Korean refuges by naval aircraft dispatched from the aircraft carrier the USS Valley Forge:

Several of fifteen to twenty people dressed in white were sighted.  The first group was strafed in accordance with information received from the Army that groups of more than eight to ten people were to be considered troops, and were to be attacked.  Since the first pass indicated that the people seemed to be civilians, other groups were investigated by non-firing runs.[7]

Both the Air Force and Naval memorandums were dated July 25, 1950.  The Naval and Air Force officers that coordinated air operations during the early days of the Korean War worked together in the same Joint Operations Center (JOC).  Obviously the requests from the Army to strafe civilians that were alleged to be North Korean infiltrators had sparked much debate with the JOC between the Air Force and Navy on July 25^th.  These concerns most likely got back to the Eighth Army headquarters where more pressure was mounted to come up with a suitable policy for the massive refugee crisis.  Eighth Army responded with the July 26^th refugee control order to all its subordinate units.   The Eighth Army policy either directly or indirectly took the advice of Colonel Rogers to have the US Army decide whether to shoot suspected North Korean infiltrators and not the Air Force.

Air Force After-Action Reports

Before the release of the Eighth Army order, the Air Force as Colonel Rogers pointed out, was complying with the request of the Army to strafe suspected North Korean infiltrators dressed in civilian clothes as directed by air controllers.  Air Force documents[8] prove this, but this did not stop the AP from once again taking quotes from the Air Force documents without providing any context.  In a follow up article to their original No Gun Ri reporting the AP writers wrote about the strafing of civilians during the Korean War.[9]

In the article the AP writers highlighted small snippets of information in the documents such as “some people in white clothes were strafed” without providing the context that the pilots were being directed by air controllers to the targets at the request of the Army.  Just because the targets wore white clothes doesn’t mean they were not a legitimate military target to the person on the ground that was requesting the strafing.  Nowhere in these documents did the pilots deliberately target anybody in “white clothes” without being directed by an air controller at the request of the Army.  These air after-action reports do not provide enough information to draw any conclusions in regards to the deliberate killing of refugees.  The vagueness of the after-action reports was actually noted by the Far East Command who wanted the Air Force and Navy to better identify targets in their reports.

The AP writers in their book use three Air Force after-action reports to support the claim that the refugee column at No Gun Ri was strafed.[10] Two of the reports are from July 26, 1950 and the third report is from July 27, 1950.  The two Air Force reports the AP cites as proof of the strafing of civilians at No Gun Ri cannot be correct simply because of the time of the strafings.  The first after-action report details strafing attacks made against targets between the times of 18:55-20:01 in the evening.  The second after-action report states that the attacks occurred between 18:40-20:50.  The Korean witnesses claimed that the strafing attack happened earlier in the day not in the evening.  By the time these two planes flew their two missions the refugees were already under the bridge.

The AP reporters also highlight from the first after action report that 50 to 100 “troops” were killed or wounded during the mission.  The reporters than link the 100 civilians allegedly killed at No Gun Ri by a strafing to this report about “troops” being targeted by a strafing attack.  However, if you read the rest of the report you will see that that the aircraft not only strafed “troops” but also destroyed two enemy tanks and a truck.  The locations of all these targets were not in the location that the refugees claim they were strafed.  However, the location of three miles south Yongsan-ni in the report for the strafed troops shows that the troops were in fact located on high ground of what was templated as the enemy’s frontline position and not along a railroad track.

Some additional pertinent information left out of the AP article is the fact that the 7th Cavalry could not have possibly called in an air strike as the Korean witnesses claim because they did not have the necessary radios to do so.  The only air strike in the No Gun Ri area occurred on July 27th, which was one day after the refugees say they were strafed. This air strike on the 27th was when the 7th Cavalry headquarters was strafed. This strafing of the 7th Cavalry caused their commander to request an Air Force Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) to the regiment who had the necessary radios to talk to the pilots in order to avoid any further strafings of the 7th Cavalry.

This is all information from the actual report that the AP conveniently fails to mention in the article. These AP writers are notorious for claiming they used some declassified or secret report to uncover some new revelation but when you actually do the research yourself and look at the reports you see that the AP used reports declassified many years ago and they only took small excerpts from the reports and presented them in a way that supports their narrative.

Conclusion

A tragedy of some kind happened at No Gun Ri, but it is clearly not for the motivations and extent that the Associated Press claims.

The continuing tragedy of No Gun Ri is that the incident has taken on a political context by interested parties both in America and South Korea to bash the American military at the expense of the honor of hundreds of thousands of brave Korean War era veterans that went to fight for the freedom of a country most had never heard of.

The year 2000 was supposed to be the year that veterans of what has now been commonly called “The Forgotten War” were to get their due recognition of the sacrifices they made on behalf of preserving freedom in South Korea during the ceremonies across the US and South Korea commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Korean War. Instead of being commemorated these veterans were instead faced with accusations that they were a bunch of war criminals. These veterans deserve better then to be condemned by hear say and sensationalized media reports. An unbiased look at the evidence clearly shows that a massacre did not happen at No Gun Ri as claimed. Yet despite this, the claims of “hundreds” being massacred at No Gun Ri persists.

There is even plans to make a No Gun Ri theme park to further establish the No Gun Ri mythology into minds of Korean children. These ongoing attempts to slime an entire generation of veterans is what has made the Forgotten War now become what I like to call the Rewritten War, which is one of the continuing tragedies of the Korean conflict.

[2] The Bridge at No Gun Ri document archive, http://www.henryholt.com/nogunri/document19.htm, accessed 05 July 2007, or see Document 2

[3] Robert Bateman, No Gun Ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident, (Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 2002), Chapter 4 Erosion  Page 85

[4] Charles Hanley & Martha Mendoza, “U.S. Policy Was to Shoot Korean Refugees”, Washington Post, 29 May 2006, Full article available in Annex 1.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/29/AR2006052900485_pf.html

[5] The Bridge at No Gun Ri document archive, http://www.henryholt.com/nogunri/document06.htm, accessed 05 July 2007, or see Document 3

[6] The Bridge at No Gun Ri document archive, http://www.henryholt.com/nogunri/document31.htm, accessed 05 July 2007, or see Document 6

[7] No Gun Ri Review, (Department of the Army Inspector General, January 2001), Chapter 3 Combat Operations in July 1950, Page 98, or see Document 7

[8] The Bridge at No Gun Ri document archive, http://www.henryholt.com/nogunri/document15.htm, accessed 05 July 2007, or see Documents 8-10

[9] Choe Sang-hun, Charles Hanley, & Martha Mendoza, “Korean, US Witnesses, Back by Military Records, Say Refugees Were Strafed”, Associated Press, 28 December 1999

[10] The Bridge at No Gun Ri document archive, http://www.henryholt.com/nogunri/document14.htm, accessed 05 July 2007, or see Documents 11-13