cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/336103

The article includes photos of mass graves taken by the Daily Worker correspondent as well as his accounts of events he saw, and interviews he conducted of American POWs.

An excerpt from the section “Talks with American prisoners” where captured American soldiers describe what they saw their own side doing to Koreans:

Here is Major Charles T. Barter, 63rd Field Artillery Battalion, of Mount Vernon, Indiana, with nineteen years service in the U.S. Army: “I made up my mind when I was captured not to listen to anything these people told me. But you do not need telling, you can see for yourself. I saw it all the way along and I am sick in my heart at what our people are doing. Southern Koreans want to go with the North and the further south the Korean People’s Army goes the more people they are going to get. Not a man or woman supports Rhee.”

Here is Private Reuben K. Kimball, Junior, of Baytown, Texas, talking of activities of what he described as “Uncle Sam’s air force”. “Have you seen what the lousy bastards are doing? Have you seen villages miles from anything like a military objective—flat as a field? “Have you seen them shooting peasants working in the fields and strafing little cottages not big enough to hold a cow?” Kimball was several times nearly killed by American strafing planes while marching up to Seoul under guard. He said, “A pilot told me back in the rear, their orders were ‘Anything that is moving—stop it! Anything that’s stopped—move it!’ I thought he was fooling then. I don’t think so now. Coming through, I saw nine peasants dead in one field where they were working on the rise, and three more in another. I guess the air force is just trigger happy. What sort of a war is this where you leave military targets alone and go around bombing a lot of villages and shooting up peasants?”

Here is Second-Lieutenant A. H. Brooks, of the 24th Division, in a broadcast speech: “If we had not interfered in the Korean Civil War it would now be all over and Korea would once again be united. That is what the majority of the people want. South Koreans have not supported Syngman Rhee’s army at all.”

I asked every prisoner I met: “Why are you fighting in Korea?” Not one could give a clear answer. Most said: “I don’t know.” Some said: “It’s something to do with the United Nations, they told us.”

About the author (from Wikipedia): Alan Winnington was a British journalist, war correspondent, and Communist activist most famous for his coverage of the Korean War and the Chinese revolution. He is most well-known as the author of I Saw Truth in Korea (1950), an anti-war pamphlet containing photographic evidence of the mass graves of civilians executed by the South Korean police. The publishing of this leaflet led to the British government debating whether to have Winnington tried for treason, a charge which carried the death penalty, though it was decided instead to make him stateless by refusing to renew his passport.