What Happened at Nogun-ri?

Many people know the mythology of what happened at Nogun-ri 55 years ago. According to the mythology American soldiers killed 400 Korean civilians under orders from their higher headquarters so the US Army wouldn’t have to deal with the refugee crisis. After the slaughter the US Army then proceeded to cover it all up. However, what really happened at Nogun-ri no one will ever really know. It was a long time ago and the testimony of many of these so called eyewitnesses has proven to be false. The South Korean relatives of victims of the tragedy who are making claims against the US government, have continually raised their demands for compensation to now an astronomical $400 million US dollars. It just makes me wonder if they are more concerned about the money or the truth? So can their claims be trusted?

What is clear is that a tragedy did happen at Nogun-ri, many civilians were killed and no one disputes this. What is being disputed is the number of civilians killed and the motivations of the soldiers that killed them. Some want the public to believe that the killing of civilians was a standard policy of the US Army back then so they didn’t have to deal with the refugee crisis and that the Army in coordination with the ROK government has been covering it up for all these years. That is what the anti-military types want you to believe and what the common mythology around Nogun-ri is built around. However, the truth of what happened at Nogun-ri is more complicated than what the mythology suggests. To find the truth one needs to rely more on established facts than hear say from veterans who have since been proven to be liars and South Korean claimants who may be motivated more by money than the truth. So let’s look at the facts.

Bullet scarred walls of the culvert leading towards the bridge.

FACT #1: There was never an order to kill refugees.

Here is the key passage from an order from the 1st Cavalry Division Headquarters that is often quoted as proof that the division ordered the killing of refugees:

The 1st Cavalry Division Headquarters at 10.00am of July 26 ordered all units that “no, repeat, no refugees will be permitted to cross battle lines at any time.”

This passage is taken from a much larger order that dictates how to deal with refugees. The order created a system where the Korean police would consolidate care for and move the refugees through friendly lines at set times every day and forbid any movement of civilians at night. Leaflets were dropped to spread this information to include the Korean police going in and evacuating villages. No where in this order was there ever any orders to kill refugees as some people would like you to believe.  The order was to not permit civilians to cross battle lines who were not following the established procedures.

FACT #2: Many of the eyewitness soldiers at Nogun-ri were never even there.

The main witness of the AP report Edward Daily was discovered to be a mechanic in Japan at the time of the Nogun-ri incident and never received a battlefield commission, escaped from North Korean captors, or received the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second highest honor, along with a host of other medals as he had claimed. Daily was just one in a long line of eyewitnesses the AP reporters used to back up there story that were later proven to not be there by both Stars and Stripes reports and US News and World Report. If you read Robert Bateman’s book, Nogun-ri, Charles Hanley the head AP reporter of the original article even admitted to Bateman that he knew Daily and some of the other witnesses may have been frauds but used their testimony anyway. Here is a link from Newsmax that talks about Daily’s and the other veteran’s lies and the media’s willingness to believe them. Here is one of Daily’s quotes from the original AP article:

“On summer nights when the breeze is blowing, I can still hear their cries, the little kids screaming.” He added: “The command looked at it as getting rid of the problem in the easiest way. That was to shoot them in a group. Today,” Daily concluded, “we all share a guilt feeling, something that remains with everyone.”

Just sickening that somebody would lie about something like this and even more sickening that people will continue to use Daily and the other liars as a source to back up their own anti-American agendas.

FACT #3: The soldiers of 2-7CAV did not order an air strike on the Korean refugees.

Some of the claimants demanding $400 million dollars from the US government say that that the soldiers ordered an air strike on the refugees because allegedly someone saw a soldier talking on a radio and then a plane swoop in and begin strafing them. They claim that 100-150 people died from the strafing. US Air Force planes operate on an AM frequency compared to the FM frequencies used by the grunts on the ground. 2-7CAV did not own any AM radios to talk to the US Air Force planes. Plus they had no combat air controllers with them either to call in air strikes. Even today soldiers cannot call in air strikes without a US Air Force trained combat air controller calling them in. It was no different during the Korean War.

Plus the vast majority of the soldiers there recall no air strike on the civilians at Nogun-ri. They saw planes flying 4 miles away in the distance but not over Nogun-ri. Plus the US aerial recon photos taken days later showed two strafing marks in the area though it can not be determined which day the marks came from. Though the vast majority of soldiers proven to be at the scene do not remember a strafing run, let’s assume there was a strafing that day. The photos show that the strafing marks could not have possibly killed 100-150 people due to the length of the strafing. However, strafing of civilians did occur during the war along with strafing of friendly units including the Tactical Operations Center of the 1-7CAV the very next day. The cav had actually been strafed more heavily than the strafing marks found near Nogun-ri and they suffered much fewer casualties than what the refugee advocates claim.

It wasn’t just civilians getting strafed by the Air Force. Task Force Smith the first US Army unit to fight in the war was strafed by their own planes as well. The cause of this strafing was poor communications due to the lack of radios and combat air controllers and a lack of training in close combat air support. Plus the general confusion of the uncontemporary operating environment that the Korean War was only contributed more to the strafing problem. Then you add in the fact that pilot training in those days was focused more on air to air dogfights than close ground support and this was just a disaster waiting to happen. So strafing of civilians did happen in the Korean War along with strafings of US soldiers and other coalition troops, no one denies that, it more than likely didn’t happen that day at Nogun-ri though.

What may explain the stafing stories by the refugees is that they are confusing dates. They may have been injured by a strafing run by US aircraft on a different date than July 26th at Nogun-ri. Maybe they got strafed on the 24th at an area 5 miles from the Nogun-ri area and are confusing their experience with the Nogun-ri incident. I highly recommend everyone read the US Army report on this because the report definitely makes a strong case against a strafing on 26JUL as the refugees claim.

Secretary of Defense, William Cohen briefs reporters on the findings of the Nogun-ri Investigation.

FACT #4: There was not 400 people killed at Nogun-ri that day.

Here is an interesting excerpt from the official US Army report about how part of the total number of victims from the Nogun-ri tragedy was determined by the claimants:

In August 1950, an Im Gae Ri village official reported the number of dead as 120. He made this report to the North Korean People’s Army on August 7- 8, 1950 at their request. He arrived at that estimate by subtracting the number of villagers who returned to the village from the number of villagers who left.

So naturally the people who didn’t return to the village must of have been killed by those Americans at Nogun-ri. They couldn’t have resettled some where else, or been forced to join the ROK or North Korean Armies, killed by advancing North Koreans, or were killed some where else in Korea. No they must of been killed by the soldiers at Nogun-ri. This just leads me to believe that anyone who didn’t have a relative return from the war at this time near this area just assumes they must have been killed by the Americans and keeps jumping on the bandwagon that keeps causing the casualty estimates to rise.

Why not when there is $400 million dollars involved. What is even more stunning is that the original AP story relies on a North Korean news report to back up their story. Yes, you heard me right a North Korean news report. We all know how fair and balanced and reliable they are (sarcasm). Here is the quote from the original AP article:

Early on July 29, the 7th Cavalry pulled back. North Korean troops who moved in found “about 400 bodies of old, and young people and children,” the North Korean newspaper Cho Sun In Min Bo reported three weeks later.

Folks this is how the body count mythology started. You keep saying the same thing over and over again that 400 people were killed and back it up with scrupulous sources and soon people consider it to be a fact. So where are all these bodies?

This is what the official US report on the incident states:

Based on the available evidence, the U.S. Review Team cannot determine the numbers killed or injured in the vicinity of No Gun Ri. However, the U.S. Review Team concluded that it is unlikely that hundreds of dead bodies were present in the vicinity of No Gun Ri during the last week of July 1950, based on the testimony of U.S. veterans and the examination of the August 6, 1950 aerial photography.

This is what the ROK investigators think:

According to the ROK Review Team, only a small number of bodies or identified graves can be accounted for because: • Many bodies were not buried in marked graves. Korean burial customs at that time were that children and unmarried minors were buried in unmarked graves. Many of the refugees were reported to have been children and unmarried minors. Some gravesites have not been maintained because all descendants of the family have died. The bodies of strangers and the bodies of refugees whose entire family died were left untouched until August 10, 1950. After that date, they were buried in a mass grave, which has been disturbed in the intervening years by family members searching for bodies and farming activity in the area. When farmers uncovered bones, they removed and disposed of bones.

Now with all these dead bodies everywhere wouldn’t somebody have found these mass graves by now? It shouldn’t be to hard to find. They have to be buried near by because aerial reconnaissance photos taken just days later showed no signs of 400 dead bodies much less mass graves. Plus if the bodies of strangers were left untouched until 10AUG1950 then why didn’t the recon photos show the bodies? So these people criticizing the US Army, if they are serious about their claims they should start excavating around the area. Look for these bodies. They must be there somewhere if the 400 bodies ever existed at all.

FACT #5: There were people with weapons intermingled with the civilians.

Once the civilians began moving forward towards the American lines, mortars were fired as warning shots towards the civilians to get them to disperse and move away from the front lines since they were moving at a restricted time without a Korean police escort. The mortars landed in front of the civilians they took cover and then continued forward. More mortars were fired and some of these mortars ended up hitting some of the civilians.

This may explain the air strike stories as being in fact mortars but according to witnesses that have since been proven to be at the scene that day the mortars killed only a handful of people, not 100-150 claimed to be killed by aircraft strafing by the victims groups. Why somebody would use mortars which are not exactly an extremely accurate weapon for a warning shot is something I can see people fairly criticizing because that was definitely a poor decision. But if they focus on that then that debuncts the aircraft story which could of caused in theory 100-150 casualties compared to a mortar strike which couldn’t cause that many casualties because there are to many witnesses who were there that verify it. So best to stick with the aircraft story. After all there is $400 million dollars on the line.

If you wonder why I keep bringing up the $400 million dollar remark it is because the AP didn’t in their original article. It just seems like a pertinent piece of information that should have been included in the original article. Anyway, after the mortar strike the civilians got up and continued moving forward towards the front lines. Then another order was given to fire over the heads of the civilians to get them to turn around. Once again this is verified by witnesses that were there. However, some of the soldiers down the line saw the firing of the other soldiers at the refugees not realizing that they were firing over there heads because they never had the order relayed to them. Better trained soldiers would not have fired without orders from a superior, but there was no superiors to keep the edgy enlisted men in check.

When this happened two gun men in the group of the civilians began firing back at the soldiers. According to witnesses that were there people just started yelling to shoot them they have weapons and everyone on the line then began firing at the group of refugees which caused the killing of the civilians. One veteran even admitted to shooting a young girl. He said that everyone else started to fire so he did to hitting the little girl. This was probably a chain reaction down the line of people just joining in and firing after the first batch of soldiers shot at the enemy with weapons.

Witnesses that were proven to be at the scene that day say they took fire from the refugees plus two weapons were recovered from the scene that were documented on unit supply and S4 logs as having been recovered. Then to top it off a South Korean forensics team discovered shell casings from the two enemy weapons at the scene along with rounds from the Americans weapons. No other battle took place at the bridge during the Korean War leaving the Nogun-ri incident as the likely time that the shell casings were discharged at the site. If you discount all the veteran’s testimony and judge the forensic evidence, it is highly likely that there wer gunmen in the group of refugees.

Now who were the gunmen in the group? They probably were not North Korean soldiers. A likely scenario according to Bateman is that they were South Korean communist guerrilla fighters. Nogun-ri and the surrounding area just a month before the war started was the scene of guerrilla warfare between communist loyalists and the ROK military. No one in the Cav realized this at the time so many of the reports of enemy infiltrators with the civilians may be inaccurate because they may have confused them with actual South Korean guerrilla fighters.

The fact that there was South Korean communist guerrillas is a source of embarrassment for Korea and is not widely publicized. In fact for years after the Korean War the ROK military had to conduct operations in the southern portion of the peninsula to eliminate the last communist hideouts. There are more facts to this case but this is just a sampling of the most pertinent ones. Robert Bateman’s book Nogun-ri provides many hard facts about the incident that cannot be disputed and compares them to the AP journalists’ book The Bridge at Nogun-ri. Read both books and compare the facts before you believe the myths.

Tomorrow: Aftermath of Nogun-ri