In the fall of 1999, a team of Associated Press investigative reporters broke the news that U.S. troops had massacred a large group of South Korean civilians early in the Korean War. On the eve of that pivotal war's 50th anniversary, their reports brought to light a story that had been surpressed for decades, confirming allegations the U.S. military had sought to dismiss. It made headlines around the world.
In The Bridge at No Gun Ri, the team tells the larger, human story behind the incident through the eyes of the people who survived it. The American side, the green recruits of the "good time" U.S. army in Japan, was made up of teenagers who viewed unarmed farmers as enemies, and of generals who had never led men into battle. On the Korean side were peasant families forced to flee their ancestral village caught between the invading North Koreans and the U.S. Army. The narrative examines victims both Korean and American; the ordinary lives and high-level decisions that led to the fatal encounter; the terror of the three-day slaughter; and the memories and ghosts that forever haunted the survivors.
Based on extensive archival research and more than 500 interviews with U.S. veterans and Korean survivors, The Bridge at No Gun Ri is an extraordinary account of the tragic events of July 1950 that the world should never forget.
