News Digest
Thursday, September 30,1999 Page 2
-“It was just wholesale slaughter”
U.S. killed refugees, ex-GIs say
Military says no basis found for Korean War incident
By Sang-Hun Choe,
Charles J. Hanley
and Martha Mendoza
Associated Press Writers
It was a story no one wanted to
hear: Early in the Korean War, vil
lagers said, American soldiers
machine-gunned hundreds of help
less civilians under a railroad bridge
in the South Korean countryside.
When the families spoke out,
seeking redress, they met only rejec
tion and denial from the U.S. military
and their own government in Seoul.
Now a dozen ex-GIs have spoken,
too, and support their story with
haunting memories from a “forgot
ten” war.
Twelve American veterans of the
Korean War say that in late July 1950,
in the conflict’s first desperate weeks,
U.S. troops killed a large number of
South Korean refugees, many of them
women and children, trapped beneath
a bridge at a hamlet called No Gun
Ri.
In interviews with The Associated
Press, ex-GIs speak of 100 or 200 or
“hundreds” dead. The Koreans,
whose claim for compensation was
rejected last year, say 300 were killed
at the bridge and 100 in a preceding
air attack.
American soldiers, in their third
day at the warfront, feared North
Korean infiltration among the fleeing
South Korean peasants, veterans told
the AP.
The ex-GIs described other
refugee killings as well in the war’s
first weeks, when U.S. commanders
ordered their troops to shoot civil
ians, citizens of an allied nation, as a
defense against disguised enemy sol
diers, according to once-classified
documents found by the AP in U.S.
military archives.
Six veterans of the 1st Cavalry
Division said they fired on the civil
ians at No Gun Ri, and six others said
they witnessed the mass killing.
“We just annihilated them,” said
ex-machine gunner Norman Tinkler
of Glasco, Kan.
After five decades, none gave a
complete, detailed account. But the
ex-GIs agreed on such elements as
I
time and place, and on the preponder
ance of women, children and old men
among the victims.
Some said they were fired on
from among the refugees beneath the
bridge. But others said they don’t
remember hostile fire. One said they
later found a few disguised North
Korean soldiers among the dead. But
others disputed this.
Some soldiers refused to shoot
what one described as “civilians just
trying to hide.”
The 30 Korean claimants - sur
vivors and victims’ relatives - said
what happened July 26-29,1950, was
an unprovoked, three-day carnage.
“The American soldiers played
with our lives like boys playing with
flies,” said Chun Choon-ja, a 12-year
old girl at the time.
The reported death toll would
make No Gun Ri one of only two
known cases of large-scale killings of
noncombatants by U.S. ground troops
in this century’s major wars, military
law experts note. The other was
Vietnam’s My Lai massacre, in 1968,
in which more than 500 Vietnamese
may have died.
From the start of the 1950-53 con
flict, North Korean atrocities were
widely reported - the killing of civil
ians and summary executions of pris
oners. But the story of No Gun Ri has
remained undisclosed for a half-cen
tury.
The U.S. military has said repeat
edly it found no basis for the allega
tions. On Wednesday, after the AP
report was released, Pentagon
spokesman P.J. Crowley said, “We
just have no information in historical
files to lend any clarity to what might
have happened in July 1950.”
The AP’s research also found no
official Army account of the events.
The troops who dug in at No Gun
Ri, 100 miles southeast of Seoul,
South Korea’s capital, were members
of the 7th Cavalry, a regiment of the
1st Cavalry Division.
It was the fifth week of the
Korean War. Word was circulating
among U.S. troops that northern sol
diers disguised in white peasant garb
might try to penetrate American lines
via refugee groups.
“It was assumed there were
--i
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u
People pulled dead bodies around them for
protection. Mothers wrapped their children
with blankets and hugged them with their
backs toward the entrances .. .My mother
died on the second day of shooting.”
Chung Koo-ho
No Gun Ri massacre survivor
enemy in these people,” ex-rifleman
Herman W. Patterson of Greer, S.C.,
said of the civilian throng.
As they neared No Gun Ri, lead
ing ox carts and with children on their
backs, the hundreds of refugees were
ordered off the dirt road by American
soldiers and onto parallel railroad
tracks, the Koreans said.
What then happened under the
concrete bridge cannot be recon
structed in full detail. Although some
ex-GIs poured out chilling memories,
others offered only fragments or
abruptly ended their interviews.
But the veterans corroborated the
core of the Koreans’ account: that
American troops kept the large group
of refugees pinned under the No Gun
Ri railroad bridge and killed almost
all of them.
“It was just wholesale slaughter,”
Patterson said.
Both the Koreans and several ex
GIs said the killing began when
American planes suddenly swooped
in and fired on an area where the
white-clad refugees were resting.
Bodies fell everywhere, and terrified
parents dragged their children into a
narrow culvert beneath the tracks, the
Koreans said.
Some ex-GIs believe the air
attack was a mistake, that the pilots
were supposed to strike enemy
artillery miles up the road. But
declassified U.S. Air Force reports
from mid-1950, found by the AP,
show that pilots also sometimes
deliberately attacked “people in
wnite, apparently suspecting dis
guised North Korean soldiers were
among them.
Two days earlier, 1st Cavalry
Division headquarters had issued an
order: “No refugees to cross the front
line. Fire everyone trying to cross
lines. Use discretion in case of
women and children.” A neighboring
U.S. Army division, in its order, said
civilians “are to be considered
enemy.”
Experts in the law of war told the
AP that such orders, to shoot civil
ians, are plainly illegal.
The Americans directed the
refugees into the 80-foot-long bridge
underpasses and after dark opened
fire on them from nearby machine
gun positions, the Koreans said.
Veterans said the heavy-weapons
company commander, Capt.
Melbourne C. Chandler, after speak
ing with superior officers by radio,
had ordered machine-gunners to set
up near the tunnel mouths and open
fire.
“Chandler said, ‘The hell with all
those people. Let’s get rid of all of
them,”’ said Eugene Hesselman of
Fort Mitchell, Ky.
“We didn’t know if they were
North or South Koreans. ... We were
there only a couple of days, and we
didn’t know them from a load of
coal.”
Chandler and other key officers
are dead. The colonel who command
ed the battalion, Herbert B. Heyer, 88,
of Sandy Springs, Ga., told the AP he
knew nothing about the shootings,
and “I know I didn’t give such an
order.” Veterans said the colonel
apparently was leaving operations to
subordinates at the time.
The Korean claimants said those
near the tunnel entrances died first.
“People pulled dead bodies
around them for protection,” said sur
vivor Chung Koo-ho, 61. “Mothers
wrapped their children with blankets
and hugged them with their backs
toward the entrances. ... My mother
died on the second day of shooting.”
All 24 South Korean survivors
interviewed individually by the AP
said they remembered no North
Koreans or gunfire directed at the
Americans. One suggested the
Americans were seeing their own
comrades’ gunfire ricocheting
through from the tunnels’ opposite
ends.
Relevant U.S. Army documents
say nothing about North Korean sol
diers killed under a bridge or any
thing else about No Gun Ri.
The precise death toll will never
be known. The survivors believe 300
were killed at the bridge and 100 in
the air attack. Ex-GIs close to the
bridge generally put the dead there at
about 200. “A lot” also were killed in
the air attack, they say.
One battalion lieutenant located
by the AP said he was in the area but
knew nothing about the killing of
civilians. “I have honestly never, ever
heard of this from either my soldiers
or superiors or my friends,” said John
C. Lippincott of Stone Mountain, Ga.
He said he could have missed it
because “we were extremely spread
out.”
The U.S. government’s civil lia
bility may be limited. It is largely pro
tected by U.S. law against foreign
lawsuits related to “combatant activi
ties,” although the claimants say the
killings were not directly combat
related.
War crimes prosecution appears
even less likely. The U.S. military
code condemns indiscriminate killing
of civilians, even if a few enemy sol
diers are among a large number of
noncombatants killed, legal experts
note. But prosecution so many years
later is a practical impossibility, they
say.
■ Washington
Reagan biographer
defends literary technique
WASHINGTON (AP) - Stung
by some of the criticism erupting
over his work, Ronald Reagan’s
biographer says he’s taking heart
from support expressed by several
members of the former president’s
family even as others close to
Reagan pile on him.
Edmund Morris said Wednesday
he welcomes the controversy over
the literary technique he uses in
“Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald
Reagan,” in which he makes himself
a fictional character in the presi
dent’s early life and invents a few
other people, too.
“We’re at the gateway of the 21 st
century now and it’s time for biogra
phy to explore new fields,” he said in
a phone interview from New York.
■ Washington
Clinton vows to forgive
certain nations’ debts
WASHINGTON (AP) -
President Clinton pledged
Wednesday to forgive all the debt
owed the United States by 36 of the
world’s poorest countries, lamenting
that nearly 40 million people die of
hunger each year and 1.3 billion peo
ple struggle on less than $ 1 a day.
“Simply put, unsustainable debt
is helping to keep too many poor
countries and poor people in pover
ty,” Clinton said. He said the United
States could not in good conscience
ask impoverished nations to choose
between making interest payments
on their debt or investing in their
children’s education.
■ Washington
Gore moves campaign
headquarters to Tennessee
WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice
President A1 Gore, shaken by the
unexpected strength of Bill
Bradley’s challenge for the
Democratic presidential nomina
tion, abruptly uprooted his inside
the-Beltway campaign Wednesday
for a move to Tennessee and “an
opportunity for transformation.”
“This is a hard, tough fight,” said
Gore, challenging Bradley to a series
of issue debates.
By relocating his headquarters
from Washington’s K Street, a corri
dor of lobbying and law firms, tp
Nashville’s Church Street, the for
mer Tennessee senator who grew up
in Washington said he hoped to “get
closer to the American people, closer
to the grassroots and out of the
Beltway and into the heartland.”
■ Belgrade
Police stop protest headed
for Milosevic’s residence
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP)
- Police armed with batons and
sticks broke up a demonstration of
more than 30,000protesters trying to
march to President Slobodan
Milosevic’s residence Wednesday
night.
The emotional crowd had
stormed through Belgrade’s down
town boulevards, waving their fists
and shouting “Slobo, you betrayed
Kosovo.
As the protesters reached a sec
ond police cordon, three water
canons drew up behind the line of
officers, apparently intimidating the
demonstrators, who were threaten
ing to march some two miles to
Milosevic’s neighborhood. &
