Word: pusan
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...Responsibility. Pusan was already choked with 225,000 refugees (normal pop. 400,000), and had to be kept free for the movement of military supplies. At week's end, the U.N. army announced that once again Communist agents had been found among the refugees, ordered more thorough screening (which would be an added burden for U.N. forces...
Last week 40 trucks bought with ECA money and loaded with blankets and clothing drove ashore at Pusan, the first to arrive of 214 trucks which ECA bought originally to rehabilitate the South Korean economy. More supplies were on the way. But at best, all that the refugees could look forward to was huddling in warehouses or other improvised shelters, waiting for rice handouts, sometimes literally burning up the buildings to keep warm...
...least implicitly, the promise of protection from the Reds. Yet the U.S., itself in a desperate military plight in Korea, could scarcely do more to help the refugees. No one knew what was to become of them if & when the U.N. line once more shrank to the narrow Pusan perimeter-or the U.N. forces were forced out of Korea altogether. Said Eighth Army Commander Matthew B. Ridgway, of the refugees' plight: "Perhaps the greatest tragedy to which Asia has ever been subjected in the course of its long history . . . Everything else is dwarfed by the pathos of this tragedy...
...been through hell-total bloody hell," said the letter. "Landed at [Pusan] half frozen from two days on open decks -no food but hot water to drink. Eleven hundred men . . . on a Victory ship-300 wounded-19 dead when we arrived . . . I was on the last ten ships to leave Hungnam . . . We left 300 on the beaches-mostly dying-why? . . . We waded in icy sea water to our hips to get into ships -men flopping all around like fish with bleeding holes . . . It's something so disastrous-and now we are in the line again...
...Statements in the Times-Herald letter are absolutely false . . . No men were left on the beaches; and none died of battle injuries among the last ten ships between Hungnam and Pusan. No men waded to ships.* Final 150 troops were lifted from beach by LVTs. There was no fighting on beachhead or nearby departing ships on final day. Troops on last ten ships . . . have not been recommitted to front lines . . . Strongly recommend take exception to ethics employed by editor of newspaper in publicizing so distorted, scurrilous and irresponsible a letter without offering the Navy an opportunity to substantiate or deny...