When I am committed to something, there is no one who can get in my way. I decided one night that I would not let Inky's story go untold as I had with our parents. Therefore, against the advice of well-meaning friends I ventured alone into Walmart at 10pm. Our local Walmart does not have the best reputation for safety, especially at night, but my visit was quick and uneventful. Procuring the desired cassette recorder and some spare cassettes, I went home and wrote down a few questions to ask Inky to get him started. When he came into the office for coffee the next morning, he was a little surprised at what I had intended him to do. After a crash course in the use of a cassette recorder, I sent him back to his site with questions in hand. I suppose I never gave him the option of refusing to do this little project, but I like to think the result was enlightening for us both. He came back the next morning to tell me he’d finished. He answered the couple of questions and thought he was done. He apparently didn’t know me as well as he thought!
Over the next several weeks I prodded and pushed until I had a more complete account of his experience. It was difficult for him to remember the atrocities he had tried for so long to forget. I inserted some of the words of a fellow P.O.W. that was with him at the death camp.
As I put his words to paper, I thought of how much I disliked history class when I was in school. I learned more from him than any text book I was forced to read. I marveled at this man who should have been bitter and angry for what he and the other soldiers had to endure. But if you could meet him, you could not find a more quiet gentle man. I find his faith, tolerance and forgiveness inspiring.
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Several other seasonal campers became aware of what I was doing and were anxious to read about his time in captivity. When Inky came home, his neighbors and friends gave him a watch as an expression of appreciation for what he went through. Somehow over the years, the watch was lost. That summer we replaced his watch as a symbol of our admiration and appreciation for him as well as all those who serve in our armed forces so that we can live our lives as we do.
There are an amazing number of unsung heroes all around us that need to be kept in our prayers. Below, is a small glimpse of one man’s experience, unedited and in his own words as he spoke them into the tape recorder.
This is Inky’s story:
I was born in Philadelphia, and moved when I was thirteen years old down to Mantua, NJ. I got out of school when I was sixteen so I could go to work to help the family out. I became a tool maker for a while, and then my buddy Charlie Norris and I decided that we wanted the service, so we went to Philadelphia and enlisted in the service, and we took our tests and all, and then they took us in for our physical and next thing I know I didn’t see Charlie again until a year after I came home from Korea. I did my basic training in Ft. Dix, NJ and was sent to Japan in Sept, 1948 as part of an occupation force.
In July 1950, I was in Fukuoka, Japan on leave. That was the first I’d heard about the war in Korea. North Korean communists crossed the 38th parallel in force on June 25th 1950. The first Tiger Survivors captured were American civilians. On the 5th of July, the first American soldiers, part of the task force Smith of the 24th infantry division were captured.
Like I said, I was on leave in Fukuoka, Japan when we got word, with 2 months to go before the end of my tour of duty. We were shipped out on trains back to our base, and from there we went to the airfield to help the civilians come off the planes that were fleeing from the Communists.
And then we were shipped out on a ship to South Korea. We were with the 24th infantry division and I was with A-Battery, 63rd field Artillery. I was a scout. I went on a mission with Lt. Natchez to disable a 105 that was stuck in a ditch. We disabled it with the firing pin pulled, and they said the North Koreans were shooting at us. My jeep got shot up pretty bad but, luckily we didn’t get hit, so we sped out of there and I dropped the Lieutenant off at A-battery and I went up to service Battery to get my jeep checked over. And then the next day I turned around and came back, and I stopped at headquarters battery, and it was getting towards dark so I figured I’d stay there for the night.
And as we were staying there, we could hear this noise .. banging,….. like banging pots and pans, in this village across the way from us..… and we told the officers about it, and they said it’s probably the South Korean troops coming in, so we didn’t think nothing of it. And the next day we were attacked by the North Koreans. They had 3 tanks and probably, I don’t know, close to 8 or 9 hundred troops and they surrounded us, and we were only a small amount of men, and they surrounded us after a bunch of shooting and all, and then we… the officers said we’d better give up, so we gave up and we…
The North Koreans put our hands behind our backs and tied them with wire, and put us in a ditch. Then the ones that couldn’t move cause they were wounded,… they shot. And this one particular GI,….he was shell shocked or something – he was scared stiff – he was just sitting on a dirt pile, just his eyes straight ahead, …and you couldn’t move him,… you couldn’t do nothing for him so they ended up shooting him… and like I said, we were in this ditch and they…we knew they weren’t taking any prisoners, so we expected the worst but there was a sedan pull up away from us a little bit, and two civilians got out. I thought they were White Russians, but they had long coats on – this was July, and I couldn’t understand the long coats, but anyhow, they took us out of the ditch and I guess these civilians stopped them from shooting us, they took us out of the ditch, and they started our march.
The town we were in was Samgyo. This was July 14, 1950. Task force Smith of the 21st infantry regiment, 24th infantry division, 52nd field artillery was the first group over there and they got into the fighting first .We came by ship. The first tiger survivors captured were American civilians on June 29th 1950,
Medical treatment was poor and lacking. The poor men who had been severely wounded, were between a rock and a hard place. No one had died at this point. The smell of the wounded was everywhere. Capture is such a horrible and terrifying event. You don’t know what will happen to you. We’d already seen men with their hands tied behind them and shot in the back of the head. You think that you, too, will be shot after being tortured. All of us were beaten soundly. And as we moved back through their front lines, attempts were made by the front line troops to hit or stab you.
We were marched from various battlefields, and snowballed into a larger group, to Seoul, the capital of South Korea. This is where the Tigers Survivors became a group. Major John Dunn, headquarters Battery 34th, 24th infantry division was the ranking officer. He had seen tough times before while company commander with the famous Merrill’s marauders who were in Burma during World War II. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for that service.
The smell of the wounded was sickening. This was the Tiger survivor group I’m talking about. We departed Seoul, in the third week of August 1950 and traveled by rail to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
We traveled at night to avoid our planes. Conditions were beginning to worsen, and food, especially water was in short supply. No medicine was available and the injured wore the bandages they already had on. Some of the men had started to die at this point; the weather was turning cold with winter early in North Korea. We arrived in Pyongyang on the 24th of August 1950, and were housed in a school on the outskirts of the city. We watched as U.S. planes destroyed the city. We were still in the clothing we were captured in, these were like summer fatigues, some had no shirts, and some were without shoes.
While in Seoul, the capital, our planes were bombing and we were…..and planes were strafing and we were hiding in holes and doorways and wherever we could get to keep out of the damage.
As long as you heard the bombs whistling, you were safe, but when they whistled and the whistling stopped, you knew the blast was gonna be close to you. And then we boarded a train composed of animal cars and coal cars. There was only one coach and the civilians were put in there…all the windows had been broken…..again, we moved by night to avoid U.S. planes. Several died during that trip, we had lost a lot of weight and had little energy, but had to go on or be shot. At the train station, we got our first look at the group of 79 civilians who would join our group. The youngest was under one year old and the oldest was 83 years old. On the eleventh of Sept., 1950 we arrived at the frontier town of Manpo-Jin North Korea. The Jin at the end of the town’s name means ‘near water’ the RI or Ni means “small place”. We were housed in the center of the town in a Japanese army buildings….Remember, the Japanese occupied Korea for over 40 years, All Koreans spoke Japanese then as the Japanese had banned the Korean language, and it had gone underground.
When we was going over, we had one Japanese boy and we called him Mike, and he was captured with us so the officers gave him a serial # and said he was American Japanese.
The Chinese army…, all 400,000 of them… joined the war and poured into North Korea from Manchuria. They said they were all volunteers. They commandeered our building and then we became street people… out in the cold.
On Oct 9th, 1950 we departed Manpo and slept in the field and when it started snowing we were in dire situation and the death rate began to soar. We moved around the area through the towns in North Korea. On Oct 25th 1950 we went to a place we now call the corn field. That’s where I went out in a cornfield to get some corn to eat… I snuck out... and while I was out there eating, I don’t know how many ears of horse corn, I was captured by one of the guards and he beat me severely and pushed me back. He didn’t shoot me but he pushed me back to the camp where we were stationed.
We thought this was as bad as it would ever get, but it got worse. On Oct 31st 1950, Halloween, a North Korean major from a security forces took over our group. He was later given the nickname of “The Tiger”, because he was so brutal and enjoyed killing. We departed the corn field that day and our death march…(the Tiger death march) began.
On the 1st of November, 1950 the line of POWs and Civilians was stretched out and The Tiger, now at the head of the column, looked back and spied several POWs sitting beside the road. He had given the orders that no one was to fall out of the march and the sick and dead were to be carried.
There was GIs that had to be carried that couldn’t make it themselves; two guys would get this one put in between them and march them as best we could. Eventually we’d fall back through the line near the end and you had to drop them or be shot too. This one particular GI was calling for his mother…. and you felt so bad...…. but then you knew what happened to him after you’d hear the shot.
The men beside the road were too weak to proceed and the North Korean guard told them to stay beside the road and transport would be provided. Then Tiger went ballistic and asked his guards about what happened and they denied they had given any such orders. The Tiger then ordered Major Dunn, our Commanding Officer, to come to the front. He then ordered officers from each of the sections having the men who dropped out come forward. Now, there were 6 officers standing at attention on a knoll beside the road. Commissioner Lord of the Salvation Army of England, who was the Tiger’s interpreter, announced that the Tiger would execute all 6 for disobeying orders. Then, the Commissioner started to beg for their lives and the Tiger threatened to shoot him as well.
Finally, the Tiger said he would shoot one officer. He said that the section that had the most men beside the road would determine who would be shot and that was Lt. Cordus Thornton from Texas. Lt. Thornton was officer in charge of the 7th Section. The Tiger asked Thornton if he had anything to say and the gallant Lt. replied that, in the American army, they would be a court martial, to determine guilt or innocence. The Tiger asked his guards if the Lt. was guilty and the guards said “yes, kill him, kill them all”, The Tiger then shot Lt. Thornton ….I should say executed him…in front of all of us. The Lt. did not beg …he stood like a man and showed us all how to die...
At Chung- Gang- Jin we could see the war across the field to the south. We were hoping to be rescued but that was as far north as the United Nations forces came. I really think that if they had come across the field we would have all been killed.
On Nov 16, 1950 we were suddenly ordered to move out into the middle of the night. It was here that one of my best friends got shot. Men were brutally beaten to death, and we were powerless to do anything about it.
The tiger death march ended on Nov. 9th 1950 at Chung-Gang-Jin North Korea. We left 89 persons behind who were shot to death by the Tiger and his men. One was a helpless French nun, and an elderly, white Russian women. The only sin they committed, these people, was that they were too tired to go on, and they tried to seek privacy to relieve themselves.
Strong men became weak, because they had to carry the sick and the dying as well as the dead, until they were told to leave them beside the road.
Next morning we came to a place that was to become our home until the 29th of March 1950. It was a small place called Hanjang- Ni, North Korea. There was a large school building of one story and several outbuildings and a central well. We thought that things would improve, but we were dead wrong.
I was put in a shack… was called the death shack... a so called hospital, where the guys would die. While we were in the death shack, I had a boil on my back, and they had these women there, they were supposed to be nurses, but they didn’t know nothing about nursing, cause they took me in and bent me over and held me there while one of the guards used a stick to break it open, to smash it and break it open, and …this hurt pretty good. And there was also a guy in there with his hip all sliced open, and you could see right down to the bone, and they didn’t do anything for him either, this is what we had to put up with.
And they would take them out and throw them in the snow, because it was too hard to dig a hole for them. I was about 80 lbs. … could hardly get up and move around. I had bad dysentery, beriberi, and malaria, and… I prayed to God that I wouldn’t die, cause we used to take some of the men, and prop them up after they were dead to get an extra rice bowl to split up between the sick and wounded, and I was determined not to die, for I…..a friend of mine, slept next to me, Charles Skerow, we’d work ourselves so we could get moving around, and I moved around and got so I could stand up and walk a little bit. Charles, one of my buddies,… we shared our spoon together, we ate the millet or maze, whatever they gave you. And I got out of there, but Charles … before he died …, he sent the spoon to me via one of the other prisoners, and told me to take care of it. So when I got home, I took the spoon with me, and I ended up sending it to his brothers and sisters as a memory of him...
When we were in the death shack, I believe I was the only one to get out alive, I was sent back in with the other troops. And they decided that I could go with the rest of the GIs and be on work detail. And first day I was out, I was sent on a wood detail up a mountain, and I went up the mountain to gather wood for the fires for the North Koreans and the cooks….and…
A typical day under the Tiger was not something to remember. It was hard, it was cold, and it was brutal. You didn’t know when you were going to be beaten or shot. He was just a terrible person. And the guards following us were --------- It’s hard to describe how bad things were. We all were sick. Some had pneumonia, beriberi, yellow jaundice, dysentery. … All of us were weakened, under a hundred pounds, could hardly move around….those who could move around were sent on wood detail to gather wood for the fires for the Koreans and for us. There was always a beating going on…under the Tiger… someone was always being punished for something…or for nothing. He just didn’t care about life or the human being.
I won’t go into the terrible description of life there….suffice it to say that 222 brave people were promoted to Glory at that hell hole of all hell holes... The dead were stripped of clothing, such as it was, and carried to a nearby hill. The clothing was for the living….we had no other choice. We were not allowed to dig a grave, nor did we have any energy or tools with which to dig. We all weighed less than 100 lbs., but now some were sick and consumed by lice. We had so many lice you could put your hand under your arm and pull them out. We were mental basket cases. The dead were left in shallow indentations, in the earth. “God please take care of our brothers”, we would say.
Once, some GIs found some marijuana, and there was a GI that had somehow kept his Bible even after being searched…. And they tore pages from the Bible and used them to roll the marijuana, to make joints they could smoke to relive the pain….
Spring came, even to that ungodly place, and the warm sunshine was most welcome.
And things were really going to get better now, that the Tiger was replaced by a kinder North Korean Major. But we were still starving to death and there was little food even for the North Koreans. We would catch frogs to eat... or rats…or pick wild onions and dandelion greens to eat. One night, March 1951, we were moved from Hanjang Ni, to Andong, to an old Japanese army camp.
As we were approaching ChunGang Jin, the sky became full of B-29 bombers…the first we had seen since Pyongyang. We were happy to see them… when suddenly, their bellies opened up and bombs started to fall. Now we were not so happy. Miraculously, only one POW was wounded.
Summer passed at Andong and fifty more died there. In October 1951, we were ordered to move again. The civilians went to a different place, and we did not see them again. We were put on river barges and moved down river to Chang-Song, North Korea and turned over to the Chinese Army Prisoner of War Camp system….also known as Camp 3. The Chinese took us to a parade field of sorts, and brought out huge amounts of rice and steamed bread. We couldn’t believe our eyes! What a meal! We were in the” tall cotton,”
so to speak. The next day was the same. More food. We were given new clothing…the first since our capture. Some tobacco was also issued, along with sugar. From then on, we started to gain weight.
When were taken over by the Chinese, a typical day was from sunrise to sunset brainwashing you… and giving you materials to read….., and you had to read it and you had to go to classes…..meetings or so to speak, and they would tell you how bad you were and horrible,…. dropping bombs and killing people…. and dropping bacteria. We didn’t believe none of that stuff. We knew what happened, because we were there when the Koreans started the war. The Chinese tried to say it was the Americans and the South Koreans that started it. We knew this was not so. That’s why they called us the reactionary group. We talked about home. There was nothing else to think about…but survival …and what we were going to do when we did get home. The waiting was terrible. All there was to do was pray to the Lord that we would make it… and trust in Him..... and do what we were told to do,… regardless of how hard it was.
We were by the yellow river, and we’d go into the river and bathe and get rid of the lice; and the Chinese soldiers would watch you. Ten more of our brothers died at Chang-Song. They died as a result of the treatment under the North Koreans. All of them were returned to our side and sent home to their loved ones. Life became boring and the Chinese tried to make Communists out of us, by using the so- called brain washing method, but they did not have much luck.
We were called the Reactionary Group. In August 1953, we came to freedom…but it was not a quick plane ride to the states for most of us. We were put on ships that took 16 days to get to Frisco….and we were treated on the ship as if we were still in prison…
When we were turned over by the Chinese to our side in Penmanjong, we were put through this tent there. There’d be a nurse there, a doctor, and a red-cross person. They’d just look you over and ship you out to the next station.
We were missing in action for 17 months…. listed as MIA before the Chinese took over, and then they publicized the fact that they had prisoners of war and their names. I guess it was the fact that North Koreans didn’t want to publicize the names because there were so many of us shot, or died from pneumonia, or froze to death, or beriberi or yellow jaundice, whatever - so they didn’t put our names out and didn’t want anyone to know how many of us were dead or got killed.
We later found out that the Tiger, the North Korean Major, was also in charge of the tunnel massacre, where quite a few GIs had their hands tied behind there back and they got shot in the head by the same major that took over us.
Then, we were sent home, which was a mistake. We should have been taken to hospitals, and given thorough mental and physical examinations…such as having the worms removed from our system.
The rest is history, and I hope that I have explained how it really was. Sixty-six percent of the Tiger Survivors died in captivity. It was a terrible price to pay when a simple medication could have saved many of our brothers and sisters.
I was put on the hospital ship to be shipped back to the United States. I had sea sickness all the time and it wasn’t a very pleasant trip, but we got back to San Francisco…and then we got put on planes for our home…closest airport… where my father and mother was waiting for me. It was a happy reunion…but it still had bad memories.
When I came home, after I got out of the service, I had to go to the VA hospital because I had trouble walking. They had to operate on my back and my neck and my spine to take 5 layers of growth or something off from the beatings that I had. When I come home, I was passing worms the size of night crawlers, I had a lot of problems with my stomach I would have night mares about the prison camp and the death march that would wake me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
When I got released and got home, I worked with my father for a Venetian blind & shade co. It took me quite a while to get used to being back home. I had nightmares about the prison camp ….. would keep me awake every night And it changed me one way that’s for sure, I believe more in the Lord and to trust in Him, and in all my family and my neighbors. When I got home, the neighbors threw a big party for me. They gave me a gold watch with an inscription on it that said “Thank You Inky”. About a year after I finally came home, I met up with Charlie Norris. He had been originally rejected by the army ‘cause he got hit by a milk truck when he was a kid, but was accepted later into the army’s airborne division. When I got home, we got together and had some pretty good times together.
I knew Lois before I was in the service, when we were young. I lived on East First Ave, and Lois, my wife lived on West First Ave. She was thirteen and I was 18. When I came home, she came down to the house; we talked some, and asked if I knew of her brother, who had been killed over there. And naturally, I told her no, because he wasn’t in my division, and being I was one of the first ones captured, I did not know. Next thing I knew we were going out on dates, and finally decided to get married. We got married…Dec 5th 1953. It will be 55 years in Dec.
After we were home I went to the VA in Camden, New Jersey, because I lived in NJ, to see if I could get some help. And they said there was nothing they could do for me, so I put it off and went to my own doc who treated me. And then I finally went back to the VA, and they put me under the care of a psychiatrist for 4 years. For a while there, he wanted to put me in a home, but I said no, I didn’t want to go there. So I got my medicine from the VA. Eventually -I got 100% disability. And, since I’ve been home of course, the stress, pain, beriberi and all that I went through, I have trouble with my heart. I ended up having two open heart surgeries, 3 heart attacks, two mini strokes, 10 stents put in and 26 catheters put in. My health is not good now, but I still have faith in the Lord, and I’ve lived a long while……I have no regrets for what God has done for me, and He’s done a lot. At least I’m alive.
The Tiger Group was recognized and given some medals about 40 years after we were released. And I got the Purple Heart for some beatings that had occurred to me when I was in the POW camp under the Tiger.
Shorty Estabrook took it on himself to be in charge of the Tiger Group when we got home. We started having reunions. He’s a good hard working man and he deserves a lot of credit.
We have a reunion once a year; it would be in a different state. The ones I could go to would be close or else I’d fly by myself because my wife didn’t fly We’d sit around tables and have a beer and talk about our lives…what’s going on now. What happened…., how come we were captured, our experience in the prison camp. We were a unique group, I’m talking the Tiger survivors, we’d have our own separate reunion different from the others on Friday, and then on Saturday there’d be all the Korean War POW’s that would have theirs separate.
One thing our government was wrong about was that if you got killed in the war…. if someone had seen that you got killed….whether they got the body back or not, their family got the Purple Heart. But the ones that were a prisoner of war, that got shot, killed or died from some kind of disease, or malnutrition and all, they weren’t entitled to the “Purple Heart”, and I think that’s wrong. And another thing, the ones that were in the beginning of the war towards near the end of Sept. got the bronze star. And we were in the beginning of the war, up until the time we were captured but we didn’t get the bronze star. They said because we got the POW’s medal, we didn’t deserve the bronze star and that’s a lot of malarkey! (It was 40 years after the war and took 4 years of petitioning for men like me to be awarded the Purple Heart. It has taken 55 years for those who died or were killed as POWs to finally be recognized and awarded the Purple Heart. This order finally came through in October 2008. The order for the bronze star stipulated it was for those who were involved in the war in September and reported for duty on Nov. 24th. Since they were prisoners and unable to report, they were excluded for the medal. The army POW’s in Korea were only paid for 4 months of combat pay. They were shorted 33 months of combat pay which the army admits to, but regulations enacted in 1951 allowed them to get away with this.).
I forgot a lot that happened in there….I guess your mind goes blank on you on some things. But this is the story I remember of the Tiger Survivor group... We have a reunion every year, and the men are getting fewer and fewer. The civilians were shipped to Russia… well they was with us cause the Chinese separated the civilians… and the officers were separated from the non-commissioned officer…and the men.
This is all I could remember….Many thanks to Shorty Estabrook (his words in italics) for input on dates and times which I couldn’t remember myself….and Jean Taylor, of Taylor campground for helping me with this letter.
I’m Adelbert W. Chance. Thank you very much…I’m out.
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