http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003571759AP Finds Documents On U.S. Atrocities in Korea in 1950
Published: April 13, 2007 9:30 PM ET
POHANG, South Korea-- A half-century on, the cold, matter-of-fact words leap from the typewritten page of a U.S. warship's journal: "DeHaven received orders from the SFCP to open fire on a large group of refugee personnel located on the beach."
The destroyer's officers questioned the order, then complied. What happened next is frozen forever in the minds of those who were there.
"The sea was a pool of blood," said Choi Il-chool, 75. "Dead bodies lay all over the place." Witnesses say 100 to 200 civilians were killed in the Navy shelling.
For seven years, since going public with their private grief, the survivors of that day, Sept. 1, 1950, have demanded an investigation of what they say was an unprovoked U.S. attack on refugee families huddled on a Pohang beach early in the Korean War. The Seoul government said in February it would launch such an inquiry, armed now with firsthand evidence-- the declassified U.S. Navy journal -- to back up what the victims say.
Since 1999, when the large-scale No Gun Ri shootings were confirmed, South Koreans have reported to their government more than 60 such episodes of alleged refugee killings by the U.S. military in 1950-51.
Last May, The Associated Press reported the discovery of a declassified July 1950 document in which the U.S. ambassador in South Korea informed Washington the U.S. military had adopted a policy of shooting approaching refugees, to guard against North Korean infiltrators. A subsequent series of such U.S. Army orders, once secret, has been found in the U.S. National Archives.
About 2,000 South Korean refugees had gathered on the Pohang beach, 230 miles southeast of Seoul, after North Korean troops took over their villages in an August 1950 offensive.
They believed they'd be safe because warships of their U.S. allies were just offshore, said Bang Il-jo, 68. He said he'd been there about 10 days with his parents, a sister and a brother.
But at 2:08 p.m. on Sept. 1, the USS DeHaven received the order from its Shore Fire Control Party to open fire, according to the ship's declassified war diary, found at the National Archives by the South Korean newspaper Busan Ilbo and authenticated by the AP.
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