June 2006

Last time, we talked about numbers, this time I’d like to focus on methods. I’ll concentrate on one area, the holding camps at Suan that were used throughout 1951 and, for small numbers, afterwards. The Chinese and North Koreans did not return any remains from these camps during Operation Glory in 1954, and, in recent years, we have not been allowed to work in the area. But something very important happened when the North Koreans returned additional remains in 1990 through 1994. Of the 208 caskets, we believe that 97 of them came from at or near the Suan camps.

Men captured in January and February 1951 went to the Suan Bean Camp. It was hit by an air raid late in April 1951, and the Chinese evacuated it quickly. But some men were not able to march out. They stayed at Bean Camp until overtaken by April 1951 POWs, who arrived in May, and helped to move them up to the Suan Mining Camp, about seven miles away. Some of these men left the Mining Camp in June. Like the men who left the Bean Camp in April, they were headed north for camp 1. Then in July 1951, more POWs arrived at the Mining Camp, these were mainly men who had been captured in May. The big movement north from Suan was in September, again to Camp 1. And others, still arriving or left behind, were trucked to Camp 5 in December.

Oh, by the way, don’t worry about camp names. There were other Bean Camps and Mining Camps, and at Suan, some men knew one as the other. After the war, we tried to set things down as clearly as we could.

The reason for telling this story about the Suan Camps is that we probably have remains in hand, right now, from the Bean Camp and Mining Camp, as well as the Peacefully Valley site where men stayed before reaching Suan. Within the 97 boxes, we probably have 200 men present, and that is about half of the men who died at the Suan Camps. Every day, anthropologists at the lab at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, are working to piece together these skeletal remains. The quality of the work done by the North Koreans was not very good and we sometimes find portions of the same man in several different boxes. We know this because we can work with DNA samples as well as with the bones themselves. It just takes a great deal of time, man by man as we go.

Last newsletter, I mentioned that 16 men have now been identified from the 208 caskets. Five of these are POWs from the Suan Camps; Cpl Leslie Ray Heath, SFC Walter Leroy Hood, PFC Ross William Katzman, Cpl Arthur Leo Seaton and PFC John Morrise Washington. The effort continues.

This is one reason I’ve asked so many questions at the reunions about this site. Several other men are being worked right now… I can’t say who until the families are notified and “release” the names. But I can tell you this: even with difficult burials, like those of the men who were killed in the air raid at the Bean Camp and those who washed down the hillside in the storm at the Mining Camp, we are able to “build” the remains for identification. I’ll have a different story next time.

Please just remember this, we haven’t written off any of the sites. If we can go, we will go. If the North Koreans have already worked there, we will do everything we can to press ahead with IDs. And until we can go “boots on ground,” we’ll keep on preparing.