南韓認為美國。 被殺死的數百平民
「當凝固汽油擊中了我們的村莊，許多人在他們的家仍然睡覺」， 76說李Beom-ki。 「生存火焰的那些人跑了到潮汐艙內甲板。 我們設法表示美國飛行員，我們是平民。 但他們掃射了我們，婦女和孩子」。
由CHOE SANG-HUN
03/08/08 「NYTimes」 -- WOLMI海島，南韓-，當美國軍隊更比半個世紀前猛衝了這個海島，它是共產主義溝槽和藥盒蜂房。 現在它是公園，兒童遊戲和退休人員沿一樹被遮蔽的esplanade漫步。
從一個小山頂橫跨一種狹窄的渠道， Gen。 道格拉斯MacArthur，請願在古銅，看上去注視海灘仁川，他的隊伍在，改變朝鮮戰爭路線和這裡做他英雄的1950年9月飛濺岸上。
在汽車，閃爍在阳光下，等待將運輸在世界-證詞範圍內到南韓的工業威力和提示如下口岸，列，其中邊經濟上勝利了，自從衝突結束了55年前。
但在一個襤褸帳篷裡面在公園的入口，一些老化南韓每日會集引起對他們的衝突的邊，在南韓的正式歷史上沒提及的大屠殺故事或課本的注意。
「當凝固汽油擊中了我們的村莊，許多人在他們的家仍然睡覺」， 76說李Beom-ki。 「生存火焰的那些人跑了到潮汐艙內甲板。 我們設法表示美國飛行員，我們是平民。 但他們掃射了我們，婦女和孩子」。
村莊居民說許多平民被殺害了。
攻擊，雖然沒有平民受害者，未由南韓調查員最近回顧的被撤銷機密的美國軍事文件確認。 在9月。 10， 1950年，五天在仁川著陸之前，根據本文， 43架美國戰機群集了在Wolmi，投下93個凝固汽油罐對「燒光」它的東部傾斜為掃清道路為美國軍隊。
The documents and survivors’ stories persuaded a South Korean commission investigating long-suppressed allegations of wartime atrocities by Koreans and Americans to rule recently that the attack violated international conventions on war and to ask the country’s leaders to seek compensation from the United States.
The ruling was one of several by the government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in recent months that accused the United States military of using indiscriminate force on three separate occasions in 1950 and 1951 as troops struggled against Communists from the North and from China. The commission says at least 228 civilians, and perhaps hundreds more, were killed in the three attacks.
In one case, the commission said, at least 167 villagers, more than half of them women, were burned to death or asphyxiated in Tanyang, 87 miles southeast of Seoul, when American planes dropped napalm at the entrance of a cave filled with refugees.
“We should not ignore or conceal the deaths of unarmed civilians that resulted not from the mistakes of a few soldiers but from systematic aerial bombing and strafing,” said Kim Dong-choon, a senior commission official. “History teaches us that we need an alliance, but that alliance should be based on humanitarian principles.”
The South Korean government has not disclosed how it plans to follow up on the findings. And Maj. Stewart Upton, a Defense Department spokesman in Washington, said the Pentagon could not comment on the reports pending formal action by the South Korean government.
Under South Korea’s earlier authoritarian and staunchly anti-Communist governments, criticism of American actions in the war was taboo.
But after investigations showed that American soldiers killed South Korean civilians in air and ground attacks on the hamlet of No Gun Ri in 1950 — and after the United States acknowledged the deaths but refused to investigate other claims — a liberal government set up the fact-finding commission in 2005. More than 500 petitions, some describing the same actions, were filed to demand the investigation of allegations of mass killings by American troops, mostly in airstrikes.
The recent findings were the commission’s first against the United States, and it is unlikely that the commission has the time or resources to investigate many more before it is disbanded, as early as 2010.
Separately, the commission has also ruled that the South Korean government summarily executed thousands of political prisoners and killed many unarmed villagers during the war.
The Wolmi victims’ demands for recognition tap into complicated emotions underlying South Korea’s alliance with the United States.
“We thank the American troops for saving our country from Communism, for the peace and prosperity we have today,” said Han In-deuk, chairwoman of a Wolmi advocacy group. “Does that mean we have to shut up about what happened to our families?”
The airstrikes came during desperate times for the American forces and for the South Koreans they came to defend.
The war broke out in June 1950 with a Communist invasion from the north. In September, when the American military planned the landing at Inchon to relieve United Nations forces cornered in the southeastern tip of the peninsula, it decided it first had to neutralize Wolmi, which overlooks the channel that approaches the harbor.
“The mission was to saturate the area so thoroughly with napalm that all installations on that area would be burned,” Marine pilots said in one of their mission reports on Wolmi that were retrieved by the commission from the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States.
They also reported that no troops were seen, “but the flashes observed on the ground indicated the intensity of the fire to be accurate enough to destroy any about.”
The reports describe strafing on the beach but make no mention of civilian casualties.
The Inchon landing helped United Nations troops recapture Seoul and drive the North Koreans back. But the tide turned again when China entered the war.
The other two attacks the commission ruled on, in Tanyang and Sansong, south of Seoul, occurred as Communist forces barreled down the peninsula. As the allies fell back, they were attacked by guerrillas they could not easily distinguish from refugees.
Fearing enemy infiltration, American troops stopped refugees streaming down the roads and told them to return home or stay in the hills, or risk getting shot by allied troops. On Jan. 14, 1951, the Army’s X Corps under Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond ordered the “methodical destruction of dwellings and other buildings forward of front lines which are, or susceptible of being, utilized by the enemy for shelter.” It recommended airstrikes.
“Excellent results” was how American pilots summarized their strikes at Sansong on Jan. 19, 1951.
The same day, however, one of General Almond’s subordinates, Brig. Gen. David G. Barr of the Seventh Infantry Division, wrote to General Almond that “methodical burning out poor farmers when no enemy is present is against the grain of U.S. soldiers.” At least 51 villagers, including 16 children, were killed in Sansong, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The attack on Tanyang followed the next day, when, survivors say, American planes dropped napalm near the entrance of the cave where refugees had sought shelter.
“When the napalm hit the entrance, the blast and smoke knocked out kerosene and castor-oil lamps we had in the cave,” Eom Han-won, then 15, said in an interview. “It was a pitch-black chaos — people shouting for each other, stampeding, choking. Some said we should crawl in deeper, covering our faces with wet cloth. Some said we should rush out through the blaze. Those who were not burned to death suffocated.”
Like Mr. Eom’s family, most of the people there were refugees who had been turned back at an American roadblock south of Tanyang, survivors said. In the days before the attack, the cave was packed with families. When the American warplanes flew in from the southwest, children were playing outside amid cattle and baggage.
That day, the Seventh Division’s operations logs noted that 13 planes attacked “enemy troops” and “pack animals and cave.” It reported “many casualties and got all animals.”
Mr. Eom, who rushed out of the cave into a hail of machine-gun fire from the planes but survived, said, “The Americans pushed us back toward the enemy area and then bombed us.” He said he lost 10 family members.
Shortly afterward, South Korea’s Second Division reported 34 civilians killed and 72 wounded at Sansong, but “no enemy casualties,” prompting the American military to open an investigation. The American investigators did not dispute the South Korean report but concluded that the airstrike was “amply justified.” They said that Sansong was considered an enemy haven and that its residents had been warned to evacuate.
The case appeared closed until several years ago, when, in the course of a Korean television reporter’s investigation, villagers acquired a copy of the American military’s wartime report and read that they had been told to evacuate. They insist, and the commission agreed, that this was not true. They say the village where North Korean troops were sighted was elsewhere and was never bombed.
Regarding the Wolmi attack, the commission said that while it recognized the need for the landing at Inchon, it could find “no evidence of efforts to limit civilian casualties.”
Wolmi survivors said the North Korean officers’ housing was about 1,000 feet away from their village. They say the American pilots, whose mission reports noted “visibility unlimited” and firing altitudes as low as 100 feet, should not have mistaken villagers, including many women and children, for the enemy.
They said the American troops later bulldozed their charred village to build a base.
“If you say these killings were not deliberate and were mistakes, how can you explain the fact that there were so many of these incidents?” asked Park Myung-lim, a historian at Yonsei University in Seoul.
The victims’ grievances found an outlet in 2005, when left-leaning civic groups tried to topple the MacArthur statue. But Wolmi survivors said they did not join the protest for fear they might be branded anti-American.
“We consider MacArthur a hero to our country, but no one can know the suffering our family endured,” said Chung Ji-eun, an Inchon cabdriver whose father died at Wolmi. “Both governments emphasize the alliance, but they never care about people like us who were sacrificed in the name of alliance.”
Have Your Say: South Korea Says U.S. Killed Hundreds of Civilians
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