December 2006

One of the strangest stories to come out of the Korean War concerns a large group of POWs who simply disappeared. Sadly, we know exactly what happened to them, even though we do not know, by name, who they all were. Doesn’t seem possible, but it is all too true.

Our story begins with the fall of Taejon, South Korea, 20-22 July 1950. Men were gathered up and began to march north. Some POWs had already gone north, from the first actions of the Korean War. This extended group joined up at Seoul early in August and continued on to Pyongyang in September. Today, it is very well known as the Tiger Group. Many good men died, but there were many survivors as well.

Now comes the surprise: a second group followed Tiger Group north. It contained men late in leaving Taejon, and others from Hadong, Anui, and Chinju, and others from Yongdong and from the early battles along Naktong Front. This group of POWs also made its way to Seoul, where most arrived at the end of August 1950. There were almost 350 men in this group. Many of these POWs wrote their names on black boards in the school house where they were held. Some were already dying, and the North Korean guards were in a hurry. The nearby landing at Inchon took place on 15 September, and Seoul was back in allied hands on 26 September. But this second POW group had already slipped north, arriving in Pyongyang around 12 October. More and more men died, some were accidentally killed by strafing aircraft. And the North Koreans were even more desperate, for allied forces were marching north, in close pursuit.

This second group of POWs, still with about 300 men, left a rail station at the north side of Pyongyang on 18 October. Two days later, exactly 100 men were taken off the train at Sunchon Tunnel. The train left, and instead of feeding their prisoners, the guards opened fire then fled north themselves. Elements of the 187th Airborne and the 1st Cavalry Division found the survivors: 8 men had already died before the guards opened fire, 67 were killed, but amazingly, 25 men, most wounded, lived to tell. And they tried to provide names of others, who had already died or who were still on the northbound train.

Later that day, the train stopped again at the Kujang Tunnel. It could go no farther. About 125 men who could still march were prodded on, but 33 others could go no farther. Guards showed them no mercy, but again, amazingly, 3 men survived to tell their stories. The 125 men who continued north disappeared from the face of the earth, or nearly so. You see, there were 3 more survivors. These 3 men reached Manpo at the end of October, just in time to join Tiger Group as it began its long march toward the “Apex Camps” far up the south bank of the Yalu River. We now know that the 125 men of the second group had died along the way, most by violence. Of the 3 men who reached Tiger Group, 2 survived the war. They helped to fill in the details, but so many names were now lost. They could not remember.

In very rough numbers, almost 350 men in this second group left Seoul, 20 escaped and 30 died en route to Pyongyang. Another 10 men escaped there, and about 20 died. At Sunchon, 75 died and 25 were recovered alive. At Kujang, 30 died and 3 were recovered. The final 125 marched north, of whom 3 finally reached Tiger Group. One of our problems is to reconstruct the names of those lost. Some were remembered by name, and some names were recorded on black boards at Seoul and Pyongyang. All of the men who died at Sunchon are known by name, but only about 5 of those who died at Kujang. (Those at Kujang were buried near the rail line, and their bodies were lost again when the Chinese entered the war. We simply don’t know who most of them were.)

But we keep trying. We have looked very closely at all of the human remains returned during 1954, after the Armistice, and at all of the human remains returned separately by the North Koreans in 1990-94, and at all of the remains that we have recovered in North Korea during 1996-2005. You see, even when we are working in the far north, we know that we could be dealing with the last remains of a man lost much farther south, well down in South Korea.

Amazingly, a few survivors from this group of men got together at Branson, MO, for Memorial Day 2006: present were William W. Henninger, Sr. [Sunchon], Valdor William John [Sunchon], Sherman Lee Jones [Kujang], Robert Lee Sharpe [Sunchon], Edward Norman Slater [Kujang], Walter R. Whitcomb [Kujang], and James W. Yeager [Sunchon]. Our very best wishes go to all of them!