TITLE: No Gun Ri Questions Remain

AUTHOR: Charles J. Hanley

PUB: Defence News

DATE: January 13, 2001

No Gun Ri, the story the Army didn't want to hear, is now the story the Army itself is telling - in an 80,000-word report of a yearlong investigation into the Korean War refugee killings. But through the haze of 50 years, of traumatized memories and missing records, the story of what American troops did to South Korean farm families outside that hamlet in mid-1950 leaves many questions unanswered. Korean and U.S. investigators concluded, in reports issued Thursday, that the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment killed "an unconfirmed number'' of refugees at No Gun Ri between July 26 and July 29, 1950. Ex-GIs who were there told investigators the civilians were killed by "small arms, machine guns, mortar and artillery fire'' under a railroad trestle and elsewhere near No Gun Ri. Survivors estimate 300 died, mostly women and children, in the tunnels and an additional 100 in a preceding air attack. Korean officials have compiled a list of 248 names of reported dead, wounded and missing. Army investigators said they believe the number was lower. American commanders and their troops, retreating before the North Koreans, feared enemy infiltrators among South Korean refugee groups like the one the 7th Cavalry stopped at No Gun Ri. Various orders had been issued across the war front to "shoot'' or "fire on'' refugees. The survivors' allegations were repeatedly dismissed by the Army with little investigation, until a 1999 Associated Press report, saying that ex-GIs supported the Koreans' story, prompted the U.S.-South Korean inquiries. After 15 months of collecting and assessing evidence, however, Thursday's joint statement and lengthy separate reports confirming the killings left much unresolved: WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE? Some ex-GIs told the Army they don't recall specific orders at No Gun Ri to shoot the refugees; some others believed there were orders, including several who told the AP or the Army they remembered word coming down to the front line from higher headquarters. The Army report discounted the second group's testimony because their 50-year-old memories were vague about the order's origin and wording. The Army conclusions implied the shooting be blamed instead on confused, panicky soldiers on the line. It also said officers on the battlefield lacked combat experience. But the Army conclusions did not note a crucial fact: The 7th Cavalry log is missing from the National Archives, the one key document that should contain such hour-by-hour communications from officers at higher headquarters. The Army report also sought to isolate the No Gun Ri shootings from the "free-fire zone'' that resulted from standing orders in various units to "fire on'' approaching refugees or treat civilians as "enemy.'' The Army investigators questioned the meaning or effect of such communications. But, again, critical omissions raise questions: -The Army report, in discussing a high-level Air Force memo, leaves out its pivotal passage saying U.S. warplanes had begun strafing civilian refugee columns in Korea. The memo was dated July 25, the day before the killings began at No Gun Ri with, survivors say, an attack by U.S. warplanes. -The Army report omits entirely a July 26 order in the 25th Infantry Division, deployed beside the 7th Cavalry, that unambiguously instructed subordinate units that civilians in the combat zone "be considered as unfriendly and shot.'' President Clinton said the evidence "was not clear that there was responsibility for wrongdoing high enough in the chain of command in the Army to say that, in effect, the government was responsible.'' A spokesman for the No Gun Ri survivors called the Pentagon finding a "whitewash'' of command responsibility. WERE THERE INFILTRATORS AT NO GUN RI? Some ex-GIs said they believed hostile gunfire came from the direction of the refugee throng at the trestle. This would have been after the refugee group was first searched, and then strafed from the air, suffering many casualties, and after survivors were led into the trestle underpasses, according to both survivors and some ex-GIs. No relevant documents report any enemy weapons recovered or any enemy infiltrators captured or found dead at No Gun Ri - even though they would have been the first such in the war for the newly arrived 7th Cavalry. The Army investigative report cites no hard evidence of infiltration. One ex-GI who told the AP he saw infiltrators' bodies at the trestle told Army investigators he did not. Korean survivors, residents of villages four miles from No Gun Ri and more than 100 miles from North Korea, vehemently deny anyone fired from their midst. They say soldiers may have seen ricochets of U.S. fire from the opposite sides of the underpasses. DID TOP U.S. COMMANDERS KNOW ABOUT NO GUN RI? No Gun Ri was the first bloody encounter of the 7th Cavalry's Korea deployment, but officers appear not to have recorded it in after-action documents. No such reports are found in relevant records at the National Archives, even in daily documents noting much less significant matters. Retired Col. Gilmon A. Huff, the regiment's executive officer at the time, told AP before his death in 1999 that he had heard that 7th Cavalrymen were killing refugees, but he was not aware of No Gun Ri specifically. Declassified U.S. military records show that information about the killings circulated two weeks afterward at the headquarters of the 1st Cavalry Division, the 7th Cavalry's parent unit, in the form of a captured North Korean army communication. It reported a "barbaric'' mass killing of South Koreans by the "enemy'' in an area where only the 1st Cavalry Division operated. There's no indication Army commanders investigated. DID GEN. MACARTHUR RULE ON REFUGEES? Declassified correspondence shows that Army legend Gen. Douglas MacArthur, supreme U.S. commander in the war, informed the Air Force on July 18 that he personally would resolve any inter-service disputes over Army requests for ground support in Korea. The July 25 Air Force memo about strafing civilian refugee columns represented such a dispute. The 5th Air Force operations chief recommended to his acting commander that the attacks be discontinued before they embarrassed the United States before the world. Research by the AP has been unable to determine whether MacArthur was aware of the issue. Possibly relevant documents remain classified or otherwise unavailable or unfound. Army investigators told reporters privately last week they found no follow-ups to the strafing memo. But Korean and American witnesses, including U.S. journalists who covered the war, said such strafings continued into early 1951. WHY WAS NO GUN RI MISSED BY U.S. MILITARY INQUIRIES? When No Gun Ri survivors filed a claim for compensation with the South Korean government in 1997, they blamed the 1st Cavalry Division for the killings. The U.S. Armed Forces Claims Service countered with a brief contending there was no evidence the division was even in the No Gun Ri area at the time. But basic war histories showed that No Gun Ri did, indeed, fall squarely in the division's operating area. After the U.S. National Council of Churches took up the survivors' cause and asked the Pentagon to investigate, Army researchers examined relevant military records. In March 1999, the Army told the church council it found "no evidence to demonstrate U.S. Army involvement'' with the No Gun Ri killings. The records examined included examples of Army orders to shoot civilians and hints of bloody Army encounters with refugees, but no deeper investigation was ordered at the time. Thursday's report said simply, without explanation, that the Army previously "did not fully address the concerns raised by the Koreans.'' WHERE IS THE 7TH CAVALRY LOG? Army regulations required the maintenance of "Regimental and Battalion Journals,'' that is, communications logs, noting radio and other message traffic in the combat zone. Such logs for the 7th Cavalry's sister regiments, the 5th and 8th Cavalry, are in their assigned places at the National Archives. But the 7th Cavalry log is missing, although other 7th Cavalry documents are available, such as the regimental war diary, a follow-up document compiled by a staff officer. The log, the single "real-time'' record of running events, should not only have included communications with line companies and higher headquarters about what was happening at No Gun Ri. It should also have noted receipt of standing orders such as one in the 8th Cavalry log to "fire everyone,'' including refugees, trying to cross U.S. lines. WHAT ABOUT OTHER REPORTED KILLINGS? Since the AP articles on No Gun Ri 15 months ago, South Koreans have filed reports with their Defense Ministry of at least 61 incidents of multiple killings by the U.S. military in 1950-51, involving hundreds of deaths. Before democratization in the 1990s, authoritarian South Korean regimes had suppressed such reports. Many other alleged attacks involve U.S. strafing of South Korean refugee groups, including two in which survivors say a combined total of about 600 were killed. In another, 13 days after No Gun Ri, survivors claim troops of the 25th Infantry Division killed about 80 civilians packed into a village temple in the far south. Defense Department officials had said they would consider looking into other claims after the No Gun Ri investigation. But department official Charles Cragin, while acknowledging such incidents probably occurred, indicated Thursday that no further investigations were planned. EDITOR'S NOTE - Charles J. Hanley is a member of The Associated Press' Pulitzer Prize-winning team that reported on the shootings at No Gun Ri. END top