Korean
Culture
I regret that I didn't see and learn more about Korea in
the six months I was there.
Unfortunately, I was trapped in the WWII GI mentality; certain that the
Koreans were a bunch of gooks, one step above the Japs, and out to cheat and steal
at every opportunity. At our level that
was largely true, but I blew the opportunity to learn anything of the history,
culture, art or architecture of the country we had liberated. I did become dexterous with chopsticks,
learned to eat any and all Oriental food (including kimchee) and to drink
slowly the first drink out of a bottle-- no matter the label or how well
sealed.
The latter proved particularly valuable one night in an
off limits restaurant (off limits to the enlisted men meant that the MPs or
Officers were trying to keep it to themselves) when a
glass of brandy from a freshly
opened bottle churned a bit in my usually receptive stomach. I excused myself, went to the rest room and
stuck my finger down my throat. Our host
from the 7th Infantry Division ignored my doubts and spent a week or
so in the hospital with methyl alcohol poisoning before his sight was miraculously
restored.
The Army of Occupation was not a particularly happy time
for those of us who had been overseas a year and a half or two years during
wartime. Korea was hot and stank when we
arrived in September 1945. There were
thousands of refugees at the Seoul Railroad Station, in front of which there
was a mountain of human feces. The
people were suffering from thirty years of oppressive Japanese occupation and
now they had a new army occupying their country; they were hungry for food,
freedom, and self government, and the United States wasn't in position to
provide any of it.
By the time the weather turned cold the relationships between
members of the Army of Occupation and the Korean civilians had also
cooled. We had gone from
"Liberators" to another, somewhat more benign, oppressor; worse,
still, their country was now divided between the US and Soviet Armies and the Koreans
couldn't even cross the line to visit friends or relatives.
The
natives were, indeed, restless; in December of 1945 we had what were called the
"Christmas Riots". Thousands
of Koreans clogged the major streets of Seoul in protest of what we didn't know,
shouting slogans and demands we didn't understand and waving banners, clubs,
old (hopefully unloaded) Japanese Army rifles with fixed bayonets. The US Military Government, perhaps correctly,
labeled the protestors "Communists".
Several Americans were dragged from vehicles and beaten to death. US troops were confined to their quarters
except for essential sorties. I made
one, riding "shotgun", with Whiteside one night to pick up one of his
drivers who had been stranded on the other side of Seoul.
I don't know why I agreed to do anything so stupid,
except my buddy asked for my help. We
took off in an ambulance, Whiteside driving, a 45 automatic in his lap and me
with a loaded
Thompson submachine gun, the
red light on and the siren going full blast.
When we reached downtown Seoul it was terrifying; the streets were
completely filled by the rioters, but Whiteside
never slowed down. They parted like the bow wave in front of a speeding
boat, there were a few thuds from stones and bodies that didn't move fast
enough. We had a confrontation or two I
won't recount, both because no one would believe and I'm no longer sure of
their absolute authenticity. There is
one thing, though, that is still crystal clear in my memory; I have never been
in such peril or as scared in my life.
A few nights later I was Hospital CQ (Charge of Quarters,
the Noncommissioned equivalent of Officer of the Day (OD)), sitting at a desk in Headquarters, and MPs
began bringing in bodies of Korean rioters they had shot under duress. I kept telling them to take them to the
morgue, that they couldn't leave them in Headquarters. They all said "Sorry, Sergeant, we got
work to do" and dumped the bodies on the floor. Eight to twelve were strewn about on the floor before I could get
someone up to move them to the morgue. The MOD (Medical Officer of the Day) was
no help; he was too busy repairing the damage the troops had done to still
living rioters brought in to Emergency.
I wondered about that philosophy occasionally; our troops
shoot them, bring them to the hospital where we do blood typing and cross
matching, give transfusions, surgically repair the
wounds, nurse them back to
health and send them out to do it all over again.
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