11:00am Saturday 17th July 2010
The Korean War – later referred to as the Forgotten War – cost the lives of more than a million people. Here, reporter Lesley Tate looks at the stories of some of the men from Craven who fought in the conflict.
June 25, 1950, saw the outbreak of the Korean War. Later referred to as the Forgotten or Unknown War. The military conflict was between the Republic of Korea in the south and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north.
The minerals and industry-rich north had the support of the People’s Republic of China and air support from the Russians, while the more agricultural south had the backing of the United Nations.
The war, which was to see the deaths of more than a million people, was the first military test of the United Nations and the last martial adventure of the old Commonwealth.
Craven, still recovering from the effects of the Second World War, saw its young men once again leave home to fight.
Sam Bottomley was just 18 when he left on HMS Belfast to fight in Korea.
A stoker mechanic employed in the boiler and engine rooms, he spent seven years with the Royal Navy and left with British Korean and United Nations Korean medals.
He spent two years away from home and on June 25 this year attended a 60th anniversary event to mark the start of war at the invitation of the Korean ambassador.
The celebration took place on board HMS Belfast – now an Imperial War Museum ship which is permanently moored in London.
Mr Bottomley, a former chairman of the HMS Belfast Association and current president of the Skipton and District Royal Naval Association, also received a letter of thanks from the President of the Republic of Korea, Lee Myunbak.
Just a few years ago, Mr Bottomley bumped into a former colleague from HMS Belfast in the most unlikely of places.
“I was visiting a Chinese restaurant in Skipton and who should be there cooking, but my old Chinese shipmate, Kam Moon Leung,” he said.
On July 9, 1952, Kam Moon Leung, a petty officer cook, had a miraculous escape when a shell struck, killing one Chinese rating, who was asleep in his hammock, and wounding four others.
Mr Bottomley’s former shipmate has since died – but his daughter and husband run a restaurant in Cross Hills.
Bernard Pawson, from Earby, was on the HMS Jamaica with the Royal Navy.
Twenty-one-year-old Mr Pawson, a stoker mechanic, had been with the Navy for two years when he ended up in Korea.
Mr Pawson, who wrote frequent letters to his father, had left home in the August of 1949 and had gone almost around the world, taking in Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong, Manila, and finally, Korea.
In one of his letters home, he described how the Jamaica, along with other ships, had sunk several E boats. He also described how it was on the Jamaica where the first British casualties of the war were recorded.
Five men were killed and a further nine injured when the ship was hit by an enemy shell.
In his letters home, Mr Pawson also referred to a strange coincidence. He had been on shore leave in Penang when he met up with Arthur Leah – formerly from his own home town of Earby. Mr Leah was at the time employed in an executive post in Penang.
Despite all, Mr Pawson’s letters were “high spirited”’ reported the Craven Herald, and his father was content.
“The Jamaica appears to be a good ship,” said Mr Pawson senior, “And as long as it remains afloat, there is a very good chance for Bernard.”
In December, 1950, Skipton members of the United Nations Association had a Korean, Dr Whang-kyung Koh, as their speaker for a meeting in the town’s Temperance Hall. Dr Koh told her audience that Korea was very much in the public eye and she had not met anyone who did not want to know more about it.
Dr Koh, who was at the time travelling across Europe on a Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship, expressed her gratitude to the people of Britain for their help in the war.
She told how the Korean language had been banned while the country was under Japanese occupation and that at the time of liberation there had been a great amount of illiteracy.
She claimed that during the five years of liberation, illiteracy had been reduced from 70 per cent to 20 per cent.
Dr Koh said how happy Koreans had been when independence had been announced from the Japanese in 1945 – and how that had evaporated with the arrival of American and Russian armies.
She said the Koreans had waited patiently for the two armies to leave.
“We were suspicious, but we wanted to be polite,” said Dr Koh. “We watched carefully and eventually we spoke out. We waited two years and then we shouted, we had got sick of one master – the Japanese – and now we were getting sick of two masters.”
She went on to explain how a message had been sent to the United Nations and a UN commission arrived in Korea, in January, 1948.
“The Russians refused to open the door, or rather, they closed it more tightly,” said Dr Koh.
Then followed disputes over the division of the country and how the suggested line would have meant all heavy industry and minerals in the north and agriculture in the south.
“The South Koreans knew it would be economically impossible to survive,” she said. “However, they were forced to make a decision and decided it would be better to have half the country independent.”
She also pointed out that North Koreans had been completely cut off and had been unable to listen to any other point of view.
“There had only been one point of view – Communist doctrine – for five years and was particularly the case for young boys who had been 15 years old in 1945,” said Dr Koh.
The war was to last until July 27, 1953.
Although no one knows exactly how many people were killed, the Americans acknowledge the deaths of almost 40,000 servicemen, either in battle or by other causes, and there were 1,078 British casualties, 2,674 wounded and 1,060 missing or taken in action.
The true casualty figures for the North and South Koreans and Chinese will never be known.
It is estimated that 46,000 South Korean soldiers were killed and more than 100,00 wounded. The Chinese are believed to have lost more than 400,000, with 486,000 wounded and more than 21,000 captured. The North Koreans lost about 215,000, with 303,000 wounded and 101,000 captured or missing.
Private Ralph Austin, of Brookside, Skipton, was recalled as a Reservist in September, 1950, to fight in Korea.
He had been in the country for just eight weeks with the 1st Battalion Gloucester Regiment when he was taken prisoner.
He spent the last few months of the war working as a cook at the hospital on the camp where he had been held prisoner.
The first his parents knew of his release was when they were contacted by a reporter from the Herald.
He arrived home in September – two months after the end of the war – having sailed home along with 520 other prisoners of war.
He sent a telegram to his father and there were many relatives and friends, and the chairman of Skipton Urban District Council, Mrs Mollie Mitchell, waiting for him when he arrived at Skipton Railway Station.
The Herald reported that after depositing his kit bags, Private Austin departed to the Harts Head Hotel to celebrate his release.
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