Obama awards Kapaun Medal of Honor (it took 60 years)
Source: Washington Post
Krissah Thompson
It took 60 years for the men who served in the Korean War with Father Emil Kapaun to see his memory honored with the military’s highest award. Members of the heroic military chaplain’s family and a handful of Korean War veterans, most in their 80s, listened Wednesday as President Obama lauded Kapaun’s bravery and kindness before handing the Medal of Honor to his nephew, Ray Kapaun.
“In the chaos — dodging bullets and explosions — Father Kapaun raced between foxholes and into no-man’s lands, dragging the wounded to safety. When the enemy broke through and the combat was hand-to-hand, he carried on comforting the injured and the dying,” Obama said. Kapaun was “an American soldier who didn’t fire a gun, but who [carried] the mightiest weapon of all: the love for his brothers so powerful that he was willing to die so that they might live.”
Kapaun inspired those with whom he served with his commitment to his principles amid the darkness of a North Korean prisoner of war camp, several Korean War vets said in recent interview. Men froze and starved at the Pyoktong camp, which held U.S. POWs from late 1950 to 1953. But Kapaun picked lice off men too weak to do it themselves and stole grain from the Korean and Chinese guards who took the American soldiers as prisoners of war in late 1950. Kapaun died in the POW camp in 1951, but Obama described how upon their release in 1953 survivors carried a hand-carved wooden crucifix in honor of the priest.
Those who knew Kapaun began lobbying for him to receive the Medal of Honor in 1953. In 2009, the secretary of the Army agreed that Father Kapaun’s service during the Korean War warranted the honor. A series of Congressional actions led by legislators from Kansas, where Kapaun was born, led to the support from the Pentagon and White House.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/04/11/obama-awards-kapaun-medal-of-honor/
It was never officially a war. It was a police action. Be sure too see both photos.
In this photo provided by Col. Raymond A. Skeehan, Father Emil Kapaun celebrates Mass using the hood of his jeep as an altar, as his assistant, Patrick J. Schuler, kneels in prayer in Korea on Oct. 7, 1950, less than a month before Kapaun was taken prisoner. Kapaun died in a prisoner of war camp on May 23, 1951. (Col. Raymond A. Skeehan via The Wichita Eagle/AP)
President Obama stands with Ray Kapaun, nephew of Chaplain (Captain) Emil J. Kapaun, U.S. Army, as he awards the Medal of Honor posthumously to Chaplain Kapaun in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, April 11, 2013. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
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