Some of you may be aware that on May 7, 1952, BG Dodds — the commander of Koje Island POW camp — was captured and held hostage by the POWs. The American command sent tanks and additional troops in preparation to storm the camp if Dodd was not released. Dodd was eventually released unharmed, but he and the officer sent to negotiate with the Communist prisoners for his release lost their stars. The loss in American life was relatively light compared to the number of POWs killed, but the humiliation the United States received from the incident was tremendous.
Dodd can not be held completely responsible for the events. Conditions in the camp were a nightmare.
“The prisoner-of-war camp at Koje was composed of a number of enclosures within which was a series of compounds. Each compound was an autonomous unit unto itself, and was divided as a military unit into battalions and companies. The compounds varied in size; there were 1,000 to 10,000 men per unit. The men were housed in tents or adobe mud huts, and because of limited space crowding was a major problem. As many as 90 men were housed in a single squad tent and often 350 men lived in one adobe hut. They slept on straw mats. Each man was issued three or four woolen blankets which he alone used. These blankets were aired every day.”
Dodd’s small force of lightly armed guards were expected to maintain control over nearly 170,000 POWs — many of them armed with weapons they built themselves in workshops that were provided by the UN for the prisoners to manufacture farming tools and other items.
You can read the article here. I might add that I purchased a group of photographs about a year ago from a Mexican newspaper that was selling off its archives… For those of you who like photos you might find these interesting. Sorry about the poor post — but I have been up all night.
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Sounds fubar
I can imagine what the North Koreans say about the camp, but are there any Chinese historians who have recently been writing about conditions in the camps? Has the Chinese account undergone any revisions in the past decade or so?
And I often hear this story that certain people got themselves deliberately captured in order to operate as political officers for the Communists in the camps. Do you have anymore details about this? Does knowledge of this tactic come from official sources on the North Korean side or from interrogations? Presumably there were political officers serving with regular KPA units anyway.
My Dad was wondering about the 500 or so women prisoners that were in the camp (according to the musuem in Gohyeon). Do you know how they camp into the camp? Were they serving as nurses in the KPA or something else when captured?
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