July 2009

Accounting for former POWs and other missing men can become an adventure, because there are always new discoveries. So now, a story that you probably haven’t heard before. We begin with Tiger Group, which contained the fi rst U.S. POWs and quite a few civilians. It is very well known. Most of the men in Tiger Group were captured between 6 and 22 July 1950. Others joined later, but this is how Tiger Group (TG) came to be. A second group followed, of some early POWs left behind and others from after the fall of Taejon, in all over 300 men. Most were captured between 25 July and 10 August 1950. Sadly, men from this group died in the Sunchon Tunnel Massacre and at the Kujang Massacre and elsewhere along the way. We know of this group only from those who survived: quite a few escaped here and there, and three men finally reached Tiger Group at Manpo, just before it began its own death march to the Apex Camps. For lack of a better name, this second group has become “TG+1.”

There were other gatherings of early-war POWs, as well. In September 1950, some died at Taejon and some were found alive at Namwon. But yet another group gradually began to take shape. Deep in South Korea, the Naktong Perimeter held from mid-August to mid-September. Good men were captured, and most died in the local area, for this is where their bodies were found after the breakout. But others marched north, directly from the upper Naktong toward Chunchon. Around 4 September 1950, eight members of D Company, 8th Combat Engineers, were captured near the north end of the Naktong Perimeter, and they began to move north. In the days that followed, they were joined by several men from the 8th Cavalry, and even by a few men from the 15th Field Artillery who had been captured in August.

A logic of its own begins to develop. The North Koreans could no longer move men to the west as freely as before. Many POWs were still being killed, but some, by blessed chance, lived long enough to be collected into this ad hoc group as it continued north. There may have been as many as 20 to 30 men, and perhaps more. Five were left behind at a North Korean aid station southwest of Chechon, we know of this from survivors still walking north. Their bodies were later discovered and identified. This site was well above the Naktong Perimeter, affirming these men as POWs.

And one, remembered by name, had been among the original eight from D/8th Engineers. If only for clarity, we need a name to call them by: first TG, then TG+1, so for now, let us say, “TG+2.” We know that they were in a small, controlled group and that they were moving north. We know that a few others joined them along the way and that a few also fell by the wayside. This group, our TG+2, arrived in Chunchon about 1 October 1950. Farther west, the Inchon landing had already occurred, and likewise the great Naktong breakout, south, behind them. An air strike at Chunchon followed, guards panicked, and most of this group was hastily prodded up the road. Our TG+2, small and very thinly reported, passes from sight. But in the confusion, four men slipped off the track and waited, not so much an organized escape as events simply unfolding. Sick and injured, but still alert and able, they saw the opportunity and took the best chance that they could.

All four men survived. They later met a pursuing ROK Army patrol, which brought them to KMAG advisors, and from there they made their way home. These men were in shock, and the information we have from them is very limited, but it is enough to establish that this small group, our TG+2, really did exist. Almost to a moral certainty, the other men continuing north soon died: at the time and in these circumstances, that was all too frequently the norm. Even so, this is not the end of their story. There are memories to honor, of those who survived and of those who did not.

Obviously, this extends from names we know to names we do not.

A practical issue also follows. We never really exclude, but now we’re taking a closer look at some of the unidentified human remains currently in possession. Of the historical Unknowns from the 1950s and 1960s buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, 11 have been exhumed and six have been successfully identified. We do not exhume, except for good cause, because these men are properly at rest. But there are other, more recent recoveries from Joint Field Activities, North and South, and from North Korean turnovers in 1990-94 and 2007. These men are under examination and are respectfully kept above ground at the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command. It’s all a process of relating names to remains and to “plausible situations.” Now, the existence of a small TG+2 which reached the upper end of today’s South Korea, and likely North Korea as well, widens that window, just a little.