The Bridge at No Gun Ri: RESPONSES
Young, Marilyn B.
THE AMERICAN public has grown accustomed to the notion that very bad things happened in Vietnamthough for the entire ten year period, only one bad thing, My Lai, was accorded the label...
...The manner in which No Gun Ri has been considered, so that it could be, like the Korean War itself, simultaneously noted and forgotten, is perhaps best illustrated by an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal written by James Webb, Vietnam veteran, novelist and former secretary of the navy...
...The event was a massacre...
...All but historians of the Korean War were taken by surprise...
...military...
...planes and then herded by U. S. soldiers under a railroad bridge and fired uponin some accounts over a threeday periodas they huddled there for safety...
...And it ended where it beganSouth Korea saved for the free world, North Korea properly chastised, the Chinese contained within their borders...
...avoid Chinese intervention...
...And then one fall day in 1999, the New York Times published, on its front page, an Associated Press story about an event that had taken place under a railroad bridge near No Gun Ri in South Korea in July 1950...
...As one expert in military law put it: "Battlefield war crimes committed by one's own forces are almost never charged as such...
...The war in Korea, which the U.S...
...There were lingering issuesparticularly the alleged collaboration of large numbers of American prisoners of warbut few wondered why the war had occurred or doubted its necessity...
...They are denominated war crimes only if committed by enemy nationals...
...It was a war more unpopular than Vietnam, but unlike Vietnam its unpopularity was forgotten except by the politicians who drew from it specific and limited lessons: do not lose a country...
...This is hardly unusual...
...In this economical beginning, Webb sets the terms: probably civilians died, but in the mitigating context of enemy invasion and American helplessness...
...The connection between these factors and the orders the soldiers received to kill everyone huddling under the railroad bridge is left implicit...
...Instead, they are simply alleged as the Uniform Code of Military Justice offenses of murder, rape or aggravated assault...
...Korean refugees, ordered out of their villages by American troops, were strafed by U.S...
...First, the civilians had given cause, because North Korean soldiers were known to infiltrate refugee columns in order to get behind U.S...
...The only atrocities associated with it were attributed to North Koreans and Chinese troops...
...Second, the soldiers themselves did not really represent the U.S...
...lines...
...The same articles reporting what happened under the bridge incorporated in their accounts a set of extenuating circumstances...
...THE AMERICAN public has grown accustomed to the notion that very bad things happened in Vietnamthough for the entire ten year period, only one bad thing, My Lai, was accorded the label "atrocity...
...troops were in chaotic retreat, confusion reigned, there was danger of being DISSENT / Spring 2000 n 45 wiped out entirely...
...public has had difficulty knowing how to remember (and which historians designate "forgotten"), waswhen thought about at allseen as a coda to World War II rather than a prologue to Vietnam...
...The number of dead remains in dispute, though it is likely to have been several hundred and perhaps as many as four hundred...
...Webb's opening sentence is masterful: "I do not know what happened to the civilians at the bridge near the village of No Gun Ri," he writes, "although it seems clear from recent AP reports that many of them died in the early days of the Korean War as their country was being ripped apart by a communist invasion and the U.S...
...It seemed initially an inassimilable story, misplaced in the wrong war...
...Third, the circumstances were particularly fraught: U.S...
...They were untrained troops suddenly catapulted into combat from their comfortable occupation duty in Japan...
...No one at My Lai, for example, was charged with having committed a war crime...
...Army was thrown into disarray...
...Next he suggests the questioÀÀÀÞ?ÀÀÀô?ÁÁÁ©?ÁÁÁo?ÂÂÂÅ>ÂÂÂÉ?ÃÃÃäs?ÃÃÃí¯?ÄÄÄÐ?ÄÄÄ{?ÅÅÅ´?ÅÅÅ?ÆÆÆõ<ÆÆÆ?ÇÇÇZ?ÇÇÇ~?ÈÈÈJ?ÈÈÈÕ?ÉÉɹ?ÉÉÉ?ÊÊÊà?ÊÊʶ?ËËËy=ËËËÑ?ÌÌÌÙ?ÌÌÌ£?ÍÍÍä?ÍÍÍç?ÎÎÎ??ÎÎÎz?ÏÏÏÞ?ÏÏÏë?ÐÐÐpÔ?ÐÐÐT>ÑÑÑÓ?ÑÑÑa?ÒÒÒ©?ÒÒÒÓ?ÓÓÓ×?ÓÓÓ×?ÔÔÔÔ?ÔÔÔp?ÕÕÕ¦?ÕÕÕ©?ÖÖÖ¶?ÖÖÖr?××׸?×××¥?ØØØL?ØØØÌ?ÙÙÙ`?ÙÙÙÑ?ÚÚÚ=?ÚÚÚ¶?ÛÛÛ°?ÛÛÛO?ÜÜÜÍ?ÜÜÜx?ÝÝÝs?ÝÝÝÖ?ÞÞÞS>ÞÞÞh...
...Not quite a victory, perhaps, but not a defeat, and as rapidly as could be, a war that in the main was attended to only by Americans who had relatives fighting there was filed away...
Vol. 47 • April 2000 • No. 2
