56 years later, U.S. still grateful
for Korean man's act of courage
By Franklin Fisher, Taegu
bureau chief
Courtesy U.S. Army
The memorial Kim Duk Hyung erected on the crash site. in 1956, almost 11 years after the
fatal crash of "Lady Luck II." |
TAEGU, South Korea — Flying crippled after an aborted night raid
over Japanese-occupied Korea, the B-24 bomber “Lady Luck II” slammed into a
mountain.
All 11 aboard were killed that night of Aug. 7, 1945, when the bomber
struck Mangwoon Mountain on Namhae island, off Korea’s southern coast.
The crash shook the island, and shook 31-year-old Kim Duk Hyung from
sleep. Kim, then a civil servant, later called it “the loudest sound I’ve ever
heard in my life.”
He looked toward Mangwoon, which towers some 2,600 feet above the
small, picturesque island.
“When I went outside, there was a huge column of smoke rising
from the side of the mountain.”
Kim couldn’t have known in those first moments that the crash
was to shape the course of his life.
Kim was among a group of island residents tagging along as Japanese
military police hiked to the crash site the next day. Korea was in its 35th year of
Japanese forced occupation.
They were greeted by smoldering wreckage, fire-blackened corpses and
body parts strewn about. Lady Luck’s fuselage was ripped apart at the middle and its
wings were snapped.
Kim watched as the Japanese took watches, documents, ammunition and
parachutes. They left the corpses unburied.
“As we watched from a distance, Japanese soldiers gathered up
all the items from the plane they considered useful, and left the bodies of the dead
airmen,” Kim told Stars and Stripes in a 1995 interview.
The scene also reminded him of his elder brother, who was forced into
service with the Japanese military.
“When I saw the bodies lying on the ground, it reminded me of my
brother, who was killed in a plane crash over Burma and whose body was never recovered. I
didn’t want the same thing to happen to those people.”
Kim returned, dug shallow graves, and fashioned crosses from pine
branches.
The Japanese soon discovered the burial and traced it to Kim.
They tortured him extensively and imprisoned him. Among other
injuries, a finger was warped from burning.
“I never knew there were so many ways to torture a human
being,” Kim said. “My body still bears the scars.”
But within a week, Japan surrendered and Kim was free.
When American forces arrived on Namhae, Kim gave them the dead
crew’s dog tags and helped them recover the bodies. He also resolved to build a
monument to them.
The dead were Staff Sgt. Thomas G. Burnworth; Staff Sgt. Walter R.
Hoover; 2nd Lt. Ronald L. Johnson; 1st Lt. Edward B. Mills Jr; Staff Sgt. James E. Murray;
2nd Lt. Joseph M. Orenbuch; Staff Sgt. Henry C. Rappert; 2nd Lt. Nicholus M. Simonich;
Sgt. Warren E. Tittsworth; and Sgt. Steven T. Wales.
Kim saw them as heroes fighting for the side to which Korea owed its
liberation from Japanese occupation.
After the war, Kim began annual memorial services at the site. Over
the years, he struggled to save money toward a monument.
In 1948, he founded the War Memorial Activities Association for U.S.
War Dead.
But in June 1950, the Korean War erupted when communist North Korean
forces surged across the 38th Parallel.
The communists arrested him for being pro-American. He was again
tortured, and a ruptured eardrum was among his newest injuries.
After the war, he resumed his efforts to build the monument. By
October 1955 he’d laid the base at the crash site.
The monument was finished the next year, on May 11, 1956, almost 11
years after the fatal crash. Made of hand-hewn, natural granite, it stands 11½ feet.
It was unveiled at a ceremony Nov. 30, 1956.
An envoy of then- President Eisenhower, and U.S. and South Korean
officials attended.
At a Pentagon ceremony 30 years later, in November 1986, the U.S.
secretary of the Army presented Kim a distinguished civilian service medal.
In 1989, when Kim was 74, construction was completed on a memorial
hall at the foot of Mount Mangwoon.
On Thursday, U.S. and Korean officials again will converge at the
foot of Mangwoon to honor Kim, now in his 80s, and the aircrew he’s spent his
lifetime memorializing, said Army Maj. Andrew Mutter, a spokesman for the 19th Theater
Support Command at Camp Henry in Taegu.
Namhae county’s governor and Army Maj. Gen. Barry D. Bates, the
19th TSC’s commander, will speak.
The U.S. Army will present a certificate of appreciation to Kim, and
another, posthumously, to his wife.
“He’s been recognized by many leaders throughout the years,
and Mr. Kim is older now,” Mutter said. “We want to show Mr. Kim our sincere
thanks and gratitude for maintaining this memorial of the 11 airmen who died in 1945.
Rarely in this day and age do you have an opportunity to meet somebody who’s put 56
years of effort into maintaining a memorial of this nature. We want to go and say
‘Thank you. Thanks for being a compassionate and caring person.’”
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