User:Dunutubble/Sunchon tunnel massacre

Material copied from Sunchon tunnel massacre

The Sunchon tunnel massacre occurred in the October of 1950, when the Korean People's Army shot dead hundreds of American prisoners of war during the UN offensive into North Korea.

After the airdrop, a new task force, formed around the 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, and a company of tanks, 70th Tank Battalion, started from Pyongyang to make junction with the airborne troops at Sunchon. Lieutenant Colonel William M. Rodgers of the tank battalion commanded the task force. It arrived at Sunchon at 09:00 on 21 October, picking up five escaped American prisoners. At the bridge just south of Sunchon, a few KPA troops hiding in holes under it opened fire as Task Force Rodgers came up and killed two men of the 8th Cavalry. The KPA had remained unobserved even though some airborne troops were on the bridge. General Gay and Brigadier General Frank A. Allen, Jr., from an L-5 Sentinel had watched Task Force Rodgers successfully establish contact with the airborne troops. Upon returning to Pyongyang, General Allen climbed into his jeep and accompanied by his aide, his driver, and two war correspondents from the Associated Press and Baltimore Sun, started for Sunchon, arriving there about noon.

Allen had been in the command post of the 2nd Battalion, 187th RCT, only a short time when a Korean civilian came in and excitedly told a story of KPA troops murdering about 200 Americans the night before at a railroad tunnel northwest of the town. Allen determined to run down this story at once. His group set out with the Korean civilian and, on the way, stopped at the ROK 6th Division command post in Sunchon. A ROK colonel, an interpreter, and a driver in a second jeep joined Allen and drove with him to a railroad tunnel just beyond the village of Myonguch'am, 5 mi northwest of Sunchon. They arrived there at 15:00. The railroad ran along a hillside cut and entered the tunnel some distance above the dirt road the men had followed. While the rest waited on the road, the ROK colonel climbed the hillside and entered the tunnel. He came back and said he had found seven dead Americans inside. Allen and the others now climbed to the tunnel. Inside it near the far end they found the seven emaciated bodies on straw mats beside the rail track. These men had either starved to death or died from disease. Some had old wounds, apparently battle wounds. The colonel had walked on through the tunnel. He reappeared at the end and called out that he could see five Americans on the ridge top. Everyone hurried outside and started down the track. A little distance beyond the tunnel, a thin, wounded American soldier staggered from the brush. He was PFC Valdor John, who pointed into the brush. Seventeen dead Americans, all shot, lay there in a gully. John had escaped by feigning death. Allen started climbing the ridge to the Americans who could be seen on top. Whitehead walked off alone across the railroad track into a cornfield on the other side. There he accidentally stumbled upon a semi-circle of fifteen more dead Americans. They had been shot as they sat on the ground with rice bowls in hand expecting to receive food. Whitehead turned back to report to Allen; on his way back three American survivors came from among some bushes to him. Allen brought six more Americans who had escaped down off the ridge.

The survivors told the story of what had happened. Two trains, each carrying about 150 American prisoners of war, had left Pyongyang on the night of 17 October, making frequent stops to repair the tracks, and crawling north at a snail's pace. Each day five or six men died of dysentery, starvation, or exposure. Their bodies were removed from the train. A few men escaped as the train traveled north. On the afternoon of 20 October, while the parachute jump was in progress, the second of the two trains stayed in the tunnel northwest of Sunchon to escape the air activity in the vicinity. The group of 100 prisoners of this train, crowded into open coal gondolas and boxcars, was the remnant of 370 whom the KPA had marched north from Seoul more than a month earlier. That evening, the prisoners had been taken from the train in three groups to receive their evening meal. They were shot as they waited for it. The train and the KPA guards left that night. From this story it appeared that there was another group of murdered men yet to be found. A search revealed a fresh burial place, and, upon removal of a thin covering of earth, the men discovered 34 more bodies. Altogether there were 66 dead (exclusive of the seven found in the tunnel) and 23 survivors, some of the latter critically wounded. Two of these died during the night, leaving only 21 who survived. A ROK detachment safely conveyed the rescued Americans and the dead to Pyongyang, where C-54 Skymasters flew them to Japan.