Korean War Massacre

Re “GIs Massacred Civilians in S. Korea, Veterans Say,” Sept. 30: As a member of the first U.S. division to see action during the Korean War, I was saddened to read about the possibility of massacres of civilians by other units.

While we were no better trained than those other units and probably not even as well equipped, we were given the task of buying the time to allow other units to get to Korea to set up the Pusan perimeter. Our casualty reports will attest to the difficulty of the task but we did succeed.

Our commanders were certainly concerned about infiltration by North Korean soldiers using the constant streams of refugees as cover, but there was never any order to target those civilians.

In the early days the battle lines were so fluid that in at least one instance I can recall a South Korean unit was attacked by our air support and suffered great losses.

I am very proud of what we accomplished and while I can sympathize with those people who might have been victims at No Gun Ri, I can only hope it does not detract from what those of us who served in Korea before and after those weeks or days in July were able to achieve at a very high cost.

GOLDY NORTON

Los Angeles

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Your article begins with the statement, “It was a story no one wanted to hear,” and suggests the American public knew nothing about noncombatants being shot to prevent enemy infiltration during the Korean War. That is not the case. The incident at No Gun Ri was such common knowledge that Howard Hughes used it as the primary plot device in a big-budget motion picture at RKO called “One Minute to Zero.”

In the film, Robert Mitchum plays a heroic Army colonel who must open fire with artillery on a refugee column to stop North Korean infiltrators from crossing American lines. The Times, incidentally, gave the film a mostly positive review in 1952.

BILL WASSERZIEHER

Long Beach