You’re Welcome.

Today is Liberation Day, at least for those of us on this side of the International Date Line. And because we’ve recently been on the subject of things that happened at Incheon, I thought I’d mention that the Incheon landing pictured here took place on September 8, 1945, when the United States Army arrived to liberate South Korea for the first time … from Japanese rule. You did hear that, right? Funny how no one ever talks about it.

If you’d like to know more, I strongly recommend the accounts of PFC Mario “Ben” Benedetto and PFC Milo Smith, who were there to accept the Japanese surrender.

Among other fascinating finds is this scanned image of a handwritten letter from the leader of one of Korea’s radical labor unions of the day (o, how little times change), which I’ll let you read for yourself.

The aspirational welcome hits a sour note when it demands the execution of the Japanese prisoners. As PFC Smith described it:

The first day a flier from some Korean organization was passed out to all of us asking us to kill and behead the Japs. The Koreans really hated them. Of course we didn’t do it. We disarmed the hundreds of soldiers and marched them to ships to be loaded and sent back to Japan. (Can you imagine if the tables were turned what would happen to us?)

Panning out for the bigger picture isn’t as easy. The needle of reliable information that does exist is buried under a mountain of Kimsoft crap. Here’s a brief take from the official U.S. Army history:

Although the US. Army saw no action in Korea during World War II, the 6th, 7th, and 40th Infantry Divisions arrived there in September and October 1945 to occupy the southern portion of the country and assist in the demobilization of the Japanese Army. An agreement with the Soviet Union had divided the former Japanese colony at the 38th Parallel. The Korean contingent for a short time remained at three divisions but soon dropped to two, the 6th and 7th Infantry Divisions. Following establishment of an independent South Korean government in 1948, the Far East Command inactivated the 6th and moved the 7th to Japan, leaving only a military advisory group in Korea.

For a better take on what the occupation forces encountered when the Army first arrived, I recommend Gordon Cucullu’s “Separated at Birth.” I’ll give the last word to Ben Benedetto:

Today they are a great country, a far cry from the muddy dirt roads, the oxen driven wagons and the ditches at the side of the road which were used for latrines. We helped them a great deal and slowly, as they progressed, we were less appreciated. I don’t know if it was worth going there but I guess it had to be done.

In fact, I think it was worth it, but I can certainly understand why he would wonder.