Their War for Korea: American, Asian and European Combatants and Civilians, 1945-1953 - Book Review

Richard Story | December 13, 2004  | 0 comments  | Print  | E-mail

Their War for Korea: American, Asian and European Combatants and Civilians, 1945-1953
Allan R. Millett
Brassey’s 25 November, 2002 Hardcover

Korea; saying the word out loud conjures up mental images of two countries that are dichotomous in extremes. One is economically vibrant, politically free and a player on the world stage. The other is economically stagnant and politically repressed and isolationist. Now mention the Korean War and totally different mental pictures are conjured up. The waves and waves of Chinese soldiers attacking outnumbered United Nations (UN) soldiers; freezing cold winters and unmercifully hot summers compounded by the intransigence of the leadership of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) to reach an armistice. The Korean War has recently come back into favor as a subject worthy of study, but only on the personal first hand level or in the macro “big picture” level. While I prefer first person narratives; the lack of academic rigidity that ensures accuracy and provides sourcing that allows further studying in depth of source material is an issue. I was glad when I was given the opportunity to read Professor Millett’s book which is a hybrid book that combines the first person point of view along with the academic submission of sources.

Published by Brassey’s Inc., the book is a compilation of vignettes of individuals who experienced the war in Korea from the end of World War II until the armistice was signed in 1953. The book, counting appendixes, glossary, notes and index runs to just over 310 pages. The book is divided up into four main sections. The introduction serves to orientate the reader to the Korean War and a broad and general outline of the war. The heart of the book however lies in the three sections that deal with the narratives. Each section dealt with a particular group in the Korean War. The first one naturally deals with the Koreans. The next section dealt with the Allies of both the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea. The last segment dealt with the forces of the United States and is called simply: Americans. Each segment is broken down into chapters for each narrative about an individual, or occasionally a group of individuals who are linked by time, job and/or place.

The section on the Koreans was an eye opener. I knew the war was brutal for the Korean peoples, but I was unaware that up to 3 million Koreans died during the war and that there was such bitter and bloody fighting going on before the armed forces of the north crossed into the south. One of the items that kept being reiterated through the book was how guerilla warfare on both sides aided to the misery of the ordinary person who was trying to live in difficult enough times. When the North Koreans crossed the border the South Korean Labor Party (SKLP) came out and denounced class enemies who subsequently were all too frequently executed. When the troops of the UN Command and the South Koreans retook the territory; it was the SKLP’s turn to be seized and executed by the nationalist elements. Yet one thing was shown that struck me as making the war more a civil war along the American model than a war between two nations, was how family was more important than political sides. Two other things that really struck me while reading the book was how large a percentage of Christians there was in Korea and how faith shaped many of the participants and their subsequent actions. Finally, Professor Millett documented that the Koreans served in the Imperial Japanese military as more than unwilling slave labor. In fact, when talking about the United States Air Force (USAF) training program for the Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF), one of the best and first pilots was Colonel Lee Gun-Suk who had 20 victories flying for the Japanese!

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