The files detail the facts about orders given to U.S. military pilots to gun down civilians fleeing the war zone in the early months of Washington's 1950-53 war against Korea.

"Some people in white clothes were strafed three to four miles south of Yusong," an after-mission report by four U.S. squadron pilots noted on July 20, 1950. A spotter aircraft "said to fire on people in white clothes," the report stated.

Some of these pilots in recent interviews expressed concern about being ordered to machine-gun noncombatants. "We were concerned, very concerned," said an Air Force retiree, Herman Son. He said that it "was by no means clear on the surface who these people were." A report by pilots in Mr. Son's Fighter-Bomber Squadron said, "Leaflets should be dropped on them warning them to keep out of sight or that they will be strafed."

Following their victory over Japan in the second inter-imperialist world slaughter, Washington set up a puppet regime in the southern part of Korea in a deal with the government of Joseph Stalin in Moscow to divide the country. In the south Washington worked to suppress the revolutionary struggles of working people in the wake of the liberation of the country from Japanese colonial rule.

In the north, these struggles led to the breaking of the domination of the landlords, with land being distributed to tenant farmers and other rural toilers. The mines and other industrial centers were nationalized and the Democratic People's Republic was established in 1948

Washington mobilized its armed forces in mid-1950 in response to the southward movement of Korean troops from the north and mobilizations of workers, peasants and youth who rose up against Korean landlords, usurers, capitalists, and their cops and political agents.

The justification of the targeting of refugees by Washington is that troops from the north, disguising themselves as peasants, had infiltrated the civilian movement southward

Last September the Associated Press, based on interviews with ex-GIs, reported on the slaughter carried out by U.S. military forces at the No Gun Ri railroad bridge from July 26-29 1950. U.S. warplanes killed about 100 refugees and U.S. Army troops then killed about 300 more.

The Pentagon had no comment on the latest revelations. Spokesperson Kenneth Bacon said they are still looking into the report on No Gun Ri and will decide later "if other incidents warrant further study."

For nearly 50 years Washington and Seoul had tried to cover up the facts about this carnage and other massacres carried out by U.S. forces against the people of Korea. Since the report about No Gun Ri was published, the south Korean Defense Ministry has received petitions for investigation or compensation for at least 37 other such incidents.

"I want to ask the U.S. government why," said a survivor, Hong Won Ki, who is demanding an accounting from Washington for strafing and napalm attacks in which his parents were killed. "It was clear that we were refugees." Many witnesses said that they had refrained from speaking out for decades because they feared reprisals from the south Korean military, which ruled the country until 1992.

In one assault U.S. pilots killed about 300 south Korean civilians on Jan. 20, 1951, at a cave where they had taken refuge in Youngchoon, 90 miles southeast of Seoul. Four planes dropped incendiary bombs near the cave's entrance, villagers said. Most of the inhabitants were suffocated by smoke. "People yelled and cried for their children," said survivor Cho Bong Won. Earlier that same week, another 300 south Korean refugees were killed by a U.S. air attack as they crammed into a storage house at the village of Doon-po, according to survivor Kim In Tae.

These incidents provide a glimpse of the scope of the devastation imposed by Washington on the people of Korea through the course of this war. The U.S. rulers conducted saturation bombing of northern cities, factories, and mines as well as many areas in the south, resulting in the deaths of 2 million north Korean civilians, 1 million civilians in the south, and 500,000 north Korean soldiers out of a total population of 30 million. Some 5.7 million U.S. troops were involved in the war and 54,000 were killed.

Despite this onslaught, Washington failed to win the war or achieve its goal of reversing the anticapitalist revolutions first in the northern part of Korea and then in China. The Korean peninsula remains divided to this day, with a massive U.S. military nuclear-armed force stationed in the south.  
 
 
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