| No Gun Ri Massacre | |
|---|---|
| Hangul | 노근리 양민학살사건[1] |
| Hanja | 老斤里良民虐殺事件 |
| Revised Romanization | Nogeun-ri yangmin halsal sageon |
| McCune–Reischauer | Nogŭn-ri yangmin halsal sagŏn |
No Gun Ri Massacre was an incident during the Korean War in which an undetermined number of South Korean civilians were killed[1] by soldiers of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment between July 26 and July 29, 1950 near the village of No Gun Ri. This incident gained widespread attention when the Associated Press published a series of articles in 1999 that subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.[2] The village is located in Hwanggan-myeon, Yeongdong County, Chungcheongbuk-do, in central South Korea.
In the chaotic early days of the Korean War, groups of refugees fleeing a North Korean advance attempted to cross American lines. U.S. soldiers, who suspected that such groups were infiltrated by North Korean soldiers, killed an undetermined number of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri, according to a contemporary report published in the New York Times.[3] The 1999 Associated Press articles alleged that refugees at No Gun Ri were strafed from the air and machined gunned at close range by U.S. soldiers under direction of military policy. The AP reporting was partially based on a falsified firsthand account by Edward Daily.[2] Army records suggest that Daily was never a machine gunner and was not present at No Gun Ri.[4] The AP later corrected the false Daily claim and other details of the No Gun Ri articles.
In 2001, the U.S. military responded to the AP account with a report that included detailed aerial photographs taken on August 6 and September 19, 1950.[5] According to analysis of the aerial imagery, the Army concluded there was no indication of bodies or of a mass grave, though there was evidence of strafing from airstrikes on an undetermined date.[3][5] Because a large number of bodies would have been difficult to dispose of quickly, the Army report estimates that no more than 50 refugees could have been killed at No Gun Ri. The AP responded that the bodies may have been put under a bridge. A North Korean newspaper article published three weeks after the incident gave the number killed as 400.[3] A report by the South Korean military estimates that 150 refugees were killed.[6]
Contents |
The following books contain competing versions of the incident:
The Bridge at No Gun Ri[7] asserted that U.S. military policy permitted firing on unarmed, peaceful civilians who posed no threat to U.S. forces.
The second work by Major Robert Bateman, which won the Colby Award in April 2004, calls the AP assertion a twisting of the truth on the grounds that the U.S. military policy was both indistinct and, in any event, unknown to soldiers on the ground at the time of the events at No Gun Ri. The reporters, in turn, accused Bateman of "a tiresome campaign to try to discredit the solid journalism that first brought to light the 7th Cavalry's mass killing of South Korean refugees at No Gun Ri." Bateman's account preceded the April 2007 Army release of a document establishing the formal policy of shooting refugees who advanced on U.S. soldiers.
Five key questions of works on No Gun Ri are:
The story was described in detail by the Associated Press in 1999[2] in a series of articles which reported the results of an investigation by AP reporters Charles J. Hanley, Sang-Hun Choe, and Martha Mendoza and AP researcher Randy Herschaft, later expanded into the book, The Bridge at No Gun Ri. The AP reported numerous, previously classified documents the AP had obtained as a result of its Freedom of Information Act requests. The AP reporters interviewed many witnesses, including Korean survivors and members of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment.
A memo, dated July 25, 1950, from the U.S. Fifth Air Force regarding "Policy on Strafing Civilian Targets", written by USAF Colonel Turner C. Rogers recalls that, "[t]he army has requested that we strafe all civilian refugee parties that are noted approaching our positions," and that, "to date, we have complied with the army request in this respect." The memo says that bands of civilians had either been infiltrated by or were under the control of North Korean soldiers, but recommends that official policy be discriminate in targeting civilians only when "they are definitely known to contain North Korean soldiers or commit hostile acts." Though a similar naval document was located, the first official U.S. Army inquiry, in 2001, did not report turning up such a document. In April 2007, a letter from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea to the US State Department acknowledging the policy order to shoot civilians was revealed by the team of Associated Press reporters.[8]
The book by the AP reporters describes the soldiers as, "green recruits of the U.S. occupation army in Japan thrown unprepared into the frontlines of war, teenagers who viewed unarmed farmers as enemies, led by officers who had never commanded men in battle." The soldiers were wary of civilians as being potential (North) Korean People's Army (NKPA) fighters; there were reports of captured enemy fighters as well as of Russian and Japanese weapons.
No Army documents were found suggesting that an order was given to the regiment at No Gun Ri to shoot civilians, though the AP contends in The Bridge At No Gun Ri that a communications log book which would have evidence of such an order was missing from the National Archives at the time of their investigation. The AP therefore relied on the testimony of witnesses. AP reporter Martha Mendoza states:
The AP editor of the story, J. Robert Port, said he was demoted after championing the story for more than a year within the AP hierarchy. The AP special assignment division, which Port headed, was dissolved. Port resigned in June 1999. In September 1999, seventeen months after reporting on the story began, the AP published the series of stories. It earned the AP's only Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.[9]
An article in U.S. News & World Report by military reporter Joseph L. Galloway questioned the credibility of a witness in the AP report.[4] Using the same Army records as those used by the AP, Galloway demonstrated fraudulent claims by Edward Daily, who had said he both saw the killings at No Gun Ri and heard an order to carry them out. Based on military records, Galloway reported that Daily misrepresented his role to the AP: that he was not a machine gunner and was neither part of the unit at No Gun Ri nor anywhere near the village during the period in question. The AP initially stuck by Daily, who had reaffirmed his statements to numerous media outlets, including an appearance on a Dateline NBC interview with then NBC anchor Tom Brokaw:
The AP then re-interviewed Daily who, when confronted with army records that conflicted with his statements, admitted he could not have been present during the incident, and instead had heard of it second hand. Daily had been a mechanic during the war and did not join the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry until 1951. In January 2002, he pleaded guilty to defrauding the government by collecting over $400,000 in benefits over 15 years for combat-related trauma from combat he never saw. Daily served a 21-month prison sentence.[10]
In follow-up stories, the AP reporters interviewed other servicemen including Lawrence Levine and James Crume, who worked at the headquarters of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Both said they believed that orders to shoot civilian refugees came from headquarters, though neither said he'd seen or heard such orders. In interviews, some of the American soldiers at No Gun Ri said they had been ordered to fire on the refugees because their commanders believed that North Korean troops, wearing white so as to look like peasants, had infiltrated the refugee column and were shooting at Americans. Others quoted by the AP referred repeatedly to receiving fire from among the refugees.[4]
The New York Times reporter Felicity Barringer reported that Herman Patterson, a rifleman in the 2nd Battalion, said: "Unfortunately, the incident took place. Numbers are not known exactly." She also reviewed the conflicting news accounts of the events that transpired at No Gun Ri, concluding that at that point (spring, 2000) "in the end, the crucial centerpiece of The A.P. report, the American soldiers killed at least 100 Korean civilians — possibly under direct orders — has been chipped but hardly shattered by the latest revelations."[11] Mr. Hanley also says that arguments about on-the-scene orders overlook two general orders from top commanders. The First Cavalry Division headquarters on July 24 had issued an order saying: "No refugees to cross the front line. Fire everyone trying to cross lines. Use discretion in case of women and children." in fact, the "General Order" was nor an order, just a radio log entry by a Major in a different regiment, unconnected to the 7th Cavalry, and not at No Gun Ri.[12]
The most contested estimates concern the body count. A report of the Yeongdong County Office in South Korea, based upon self-reporting by present-day inhabitants, stated the total number of civilian casualties (injured, missing, or killed) to be 248. Some Korean victims have stated numbers in the hundreds. It's not clear what happened to the remains of those who were killed. Bateman speculates that between eight and 35 Koreans were killed at No Gun Ri, with two to three times that number wounded, due to mortar rounds and then a short bursts (30–90 seconds) of gunfire from the troops which occurred when the troops panicked and believed they were under fire themselves. Bateman wrote that declassified reconnaissance photos revealed no mass of bodies nor graves. Bateman, however, used only U.S. military reconnaissance and did not examine the village or interview any Koreans for his book. AP reporter Hanley has suggested that the dead were not in the open because they were stacked by local villagers beneath soil under parts of the bridge. Bateman contends that the soil required for burying hundreds of corpses even at a shallow level would have meant an excavation of soil so large (the remains alone for 300 small humans would be, roughly, 20 tons) that it would be visible in the photos. The AP contends that Korean witnesses testified to stacking bodies, but Bateman contends that the number of victims are conflated with other incidents in the vicinity during the war, and in the same timeframe. Citing the psychiatric studies, he speculates that none of the Koreans may believe they are lying, and he believes many if not most were fired upon by U.S. troops (he cites at least nine incidents that he found, and suspects dozens of other times where U.S. troops fired upon civilians in that period), just not all at the same time, and in the same place, at No Gun Ri.
As mentioned above, Edward Daily falsely corroborated the AP story and provided colorful descriptions of the incident, although he was not mentioned in the AP report until the 56th paragraph. During their defense of their Pulitzer story, the AP argued Daily was not central to their story, and merely was one witness among sixty they had interviewed. Bateman's book includes e-mails from Hanley which demonstrate that not only did the AP reporters refuse to recognize the flaws in Daily's testimony, but that Daily was more important than the AP suggested. Bateman believes that Daily, as a prominent member of the 7th Cavalry regimental association, had strong influence over other witnesses and that by virtue of his statements, the retired mechanic "contaminated" the views and recollections of other veterans. Additionally, it appears that Daily was central to guiding the AP to the American sources that the AP used, providing them with names, phone numbers, and addresses. Leaning upon the works of academic psychiatrist Elizabeth Loftus, Bateman described what he said was "the plasticity of memory" and susceptibility of some "memories" to outside suggestions from influential figures such as Daily, who had written two books on the history of the unit. Another AP witness inadvertently demonstrated Bateman's point in a front-page article in The New York Times. Veteran Eugene Hesselman denied the charge that Daily was not at No Gun Ri. He said, "I know that Daily was there. I know that. I know that." Bateman is skeptical of the recollections of Hesselman and Private First Class Delos Flint. Bateman claimed they were not present at No Gun Ri after he found records that they had been medically evacuated from the area on July 24, one day before the events in question. Bateman said the AP did not quote any military men at No Gun Ri who heard an order to fire at civilians, the closest being those who "believed" that there "must have" been an order (Levine and Crume).
Bateman says compelling refugees to halt their advance by firing on them is "the dumbest possible action that could have been taken." Some Korean witnesses describe being strafed and bombed as they walked along the railway. Pictures taken on August 6, 1950, reveal strafing damage. Hanley, the AP reporter, argues that the U.S. forces called in strikes. Bateman argues that this was impossible because of the incompatibility between army and air force radios (AM vs. FM) and the fact that the same unit could not stop a U.S. Air Force strafing of their own position the very next day due to the lack of such radios. Bateman speculates that witnesses may have confused the mortars for bombs, and that the strafing shown in the photographs could have been from that period, or could have been from a later period.
Following the release of the AP account of No Gun Ri, the U.S. and the R.O.K. began independent parallel investigations. At the direction of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Army instructed the Inspector General of the Army to research and report on the No Gun Ri incident. In January 2001, the Inspector General released Report on the No Gun Ri Review.[5] The primary judgments of the review were:
The following is a detailed list of the review's findings:
The summary concludes:
In 1999 the New York Times reported that 30 South Korean survivors and relatives of victims had filed a lawsuit in 1997 that "described a three-day period of killing, saying that American planes had strafed hundreds of refugees who were fleeing from North Korean troops, leaving about 100 people dead. The survivors fled under the bridge, where they said they were pinned by American troops who shot and killed almost all the refugees." Their suit was rejected on a technicality.[13]
President Bill Clinton expressed U.S. regret over Korean civilian deaths.[14] The U.S. and South Korea issued a joint "statement of mutual understanding" in January 2001, which stated that there were no orders to fire on civilians. It concluded the following:
| “ | Because of the passage of 50 years and the effects of the conflict, the statements of Korean witnesses and U.S. veterans about the number of refugees killed, injured or missing as the result of the events in the vicinity of No Gun Ri vary widely. The Koreans have reported to the Office of Yong Dong County an unverified number of 248 Korean civilians killed, injured or missing while the testimony of U.S. veterans supports lower numbers.
Bearing in mind the enduring suffering of the victims, the Korean and American Review Teams mutually understand that: In the desperate opening weeks of defensive combat in the Korean War, U.S. soldiers killed or injured an unconfirmed number of Korean refugees in the last week of July 1950 during a withdrawal under pressure in the vicinity of No Gun Ri. The diligent and conscientious bilateral efforts of both countries in this review represent a significant contribution to the maintenance of the vital and long-standing ROK-U.S. alliance. Bearing in mind the long-lasting sorrow of victims as well as the sacrifice of U.S. soldiers during the Korean War, the ROK and U.S. teams firmly believe that this investigation on an incident that occurred during the Korean War will not only help maintain a more stable ROK-U.S. alliance but also is an example of two nations working together to realize the value of democracy and recognize the importance of human rights. |
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On February 23, 2004, the History News Network hosted an online debate between Robert Bateman and the AP reporters who wrote the series of investigative articles in 1999.
According to historian Sahr Conway-Lanz, the position taken by the Pentagon after its 1999–2001 investigation — that the U.S. military did not order the refugees shot — is untenable.[15] In an April 2006 book, Conway-Lanz published a letter from then U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, John J. Muccio,[16] informing the State Department that U.S. troops were authorized to shoot at refugees. The letter referred to policy set down on July 25, 1950.[17]
On May 29, 2006, the Associated Press reported in a story that was printed in The Washington Post that the letter, cited by Conway-Lenz, which had not previously been known, "is the strongest indication yet that such a policy existed for all U.S. forces in Korea, and (is) the first evidence that that policy was known to upper ranks of the U.S. government."[18]
The Associated Press reported on April 12, 2007, that the Army has acknowledged it found — but did not divulge in 2001 when it issued its official inquiry — that a high-level document revealed the U.S. military had a policy of shooting approaching civilians in South Korea. The article said the document was one of numerous omissions of documents and testimony pointing to a policy of firing on refugee groups in the army's investigation.[8]
| “ | The document, a letter from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea to the State Department in Washington, is dated the day in 1950 when U.S. troops began the No Gun Ri shootings, in which survivors say hundreds, mostly women and children, were killed.[8] | ” |
Bateman's 2002 book, however, reproduced the entire military order which came out of that same high-level US-ROK meeting, and did so verbatim. These were the instructions that went from that highest level down to the divisions, and from there to the regiments, and from there to the battalions, over the next days. The letter, from the U.S. Ambassador to Korea to the State Department, describing the meeting out of which the orders flowed does not matter to military events on the ground at No Gun Ri. The AP articles on the topic try to suggest conspiracy on the part of the historians working on President Clinton's investigation. The State Department, however, did not command military troops in the field in Korea, and so the letter serves only as evidence impugning the credibility of any other government statement saying that orders had not been given. The Ambassador's letter may be irrelevant to the investigation of events that occurred the next day at No Gun Ri beyond establishing the mere existence of discussion of general orders at a high level regarding shooting refugees feared to contain hostile forces.