The POW Experience
Thanks to a friend who attends our reunions and gathers recollections from the POWs. He then takes those recollections and combines them into a narrative which helps them with the recovery of those that still remain in Korea. Many of these reports are from him and give us some insight into what the POWs endured.
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...
read moreSeptember 2006
At Nashville, some of you had questions about Camp 5 on the south bank of the Yalu River at Old Pyoktong. (In recent years, the North Koreans have moved the “name” several miles west, to create New Pyoktong, so the site of Camp 5 is now known as Tongju-ri. Up to their usual tricks…). How many men died at Camp 5? We have a tradition, based on best memory and best estimation, of 1600. But we can come up with only about 1100 names. Here’s why: many of the men who died in February and March of 1951 took with them the names and...
read moreJune 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...
read moreMarch 2006
The really big item for all of us is the continuing effect of not having teams in North Korea. Later this year, maybe, we honestly don’t know. But for now, even with other unrelated work around the world, we have a few extra anthropologists at hand. That means more table work and more identification. Three categories: Of the 867 official Unknowns from the Korean War, one is at Arlington. Of the 866 from the Punchbowl, seven have now been exhumed, of whom 2 have been identified. Both are Marines who died in the Chosin Reservoir...
read moreDecember 2005
Questions of status: to be a KIA or a known POW death, or an NBD (non-battle death) someone had to see the death and report it; a lot of men were simply lost on the battlefield. Unless someone reliable reported them as KIA or something else, they became MIA instead. Most are likely KIA, with some short-term POWs (and early Camp 5 deaths) mixed in. After the Korean War, in September – November 1954, the Chinese/North Koreans returned 4175 caskets containing a total of 4219 bodies, from all over. Of these 2944 were Americans and all but 416...
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