“The Korean War is the forgotten war,” Malibu writer John Stansifer said, “and I want to make it the not-forgotten war.” He claimed, for example, that out of the last 81 war movies released by Hollywood, none have been about the Korean War. He has a point — other than the popular “M*A*S*H” television series in the ’70s and ’80s, the Korean War seems to have disappeared from public view for most of the past 50 years.
Stansifer plans to revive the memory of that conflict by writing the authorized biography of Father Emil Kapaun, who served in the Korean War as Chaplain (Capt.) Kapaun in the Army. In researching the book, to be titled “No Bullet Got Me Yet: Father Kapaun in the Korean War,” and a screenplay titled “Father Kapaun’s Valley,” Stansifer has been crisscrossing the U.S. for the past several months, visiting a total of eight states.
He’s managed to track down Korean War veterans who knew Kapaun, and has also met with Kapaun’s family, military officials and Catholic Church officials. He’s visited several military bases, the National Archives, museums and churches, and reviewed thousands of documents — everything from U.S troop movements in Korea to Kapaun’s personal diaries, papers and class notes.
The condensed story of Father Kapaun, according to Stansifer, is that of a small town Catholic priest of Czechoslovakian and Bohemian descent born 1916 in Pilsen, Kan. He joined the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps from 1944-46, where he served in Burma and India, restoring destroyed missions, then rejoined in 1948 after being incensed by communism and the Berlin airlift.
In 1950, the Korean War started when North Korean communists armed with Soviet tanks invaded South Korea and quickly decimated the country. The U.S. and United Nations came to South Korea’s aid, led by General Douglas MacArthur, and drove the communists back to the 38th parallel.
Kapaun was in the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division — a combat division sent to fight in Korea. During the battle of Unsan, an “utterly chaotic” battle that “paired hundreds of thousands of Chinese with Soviet weapons and tanks,” according to Stansifer, Kapaun’s battalion was surrounded.
“Kapaun moved fearlessly from foxhole to foxhole under direct enemy fire to provide comfort to the outnumbered soldiers … repeatedly crawled to wounded men and either dragged them to safety or dug shallow trenches for protection, and stayed behind to care for the wounded even as Chinese forces were closing in,” according to the U.S. Army’s account.
The chaplain was captured and taken on a 40 mile “death march” along with other prisoners of war (POWs) to a camp on the Chinese border. Kapaun refused to take a break from carrying the wounded on stretchers.
Winter in the camp was the coldest on record in that part of the world, and 50 percent of the POWs froze to death. “By comparison, only two percent of German POWs died in captivity,” Stansifer said. “It was a disgusting atrocity that China showed such blatant disregard for the Geneva Convention.”
According to accounts that Stansifer has been able to discover, Kapaun helped with medications, stole food, and illegally held private prayer services while in captivity. On Easter morning, he gave a sunrise service with a makeshift crucifix and robe.
“He stood on the steps of a bombed out church with about 100 people gathered, and the guards were all spooked,” Stansifer recounted. “He did the full Stations of the Cross, a full service, and sang ‘America the Beautiful.’”
While the guards didn’t try to stop him, they didn’t like him giving moral support to the men. For three weeks, they tried to keep him out of sight, and began political indoctrination with an English-speaking Chinese. There were beatings, and they stripped him and stood him on the frozen river while they threw water on him. Kapaun eventually died.
The remaining POWs never forgot Kapaun’s bravery and courage — they kept telling his story and word spread. One of those men, Maj. Gerald Fink, a Jewish USMC downed fighter pilot, carved a four-foot tall crucifix out of wood in his honor, which was hidden and later smuggled out.
Kapaun was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on April 11, 2013 by President Obama, commemorating his “acts of personal bravery during the Korean War, both on the battlefield and in a POW camp.” It was the survivors of the POW camp who pushed the government for years to recognize Kapaun’s actions.
Just this past June, the Vatican decided to move forward in the long process of making Kapaun a Catholic saint.
