Kapaun endured enemy fire to bring comfort to wounded bring wounded to safety, Father Emil Kapaun will be awarded the Medal of Honor on April 11, the White House announced Monday.
The White House issued a news release Monday saying that President Barack Obama will award the medal to members of Kapaun’s family. The release said Ray Kapaun, one of Emil Kapaun’s nephews, and other family members will be present at the White House ceremony.
“Father Emil led by example,” Ray Kapaun said Monday. “His devotion was deep, to his faith, to his country and to the men who were there with him.
“My one regret is that my Dad (Emil Kapaun’s brother, Eugene) didn’t live to see it. But Dad is standing beside Emil right now."
The news release said “Chaplain Kapaun will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously for his extraordinary heroism while serving with the 3d Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division during combat operations against an armed enemy at Unsan, Korea and as a prisoner of war…”
The Secretary of the Army and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended Kapaun for the Medal of Honor in 2009. Obama called Helen Kapaun, Kapaun’s sister-in-law, in December to tell her he would give Kapaun the award, the family has said.
The news that Kapaun would be awarded the Medal of Honor, which his fellow POWs have lobbied for since the Korean War ended in 1953, leaked last month when former Congressman Todd Tiahrt posted the news on his Facebook site. Tiahrt was among several members of the Kansas Congress delegation who had pushed for Kapaun to be honored.
“It’s about time,” said Mike Dowe, one of Kapaun’s close friends in the prisoner of war camp. He had written a recommendation for Kapaun to receive the Medal of Honor in 1953. He had written and lobbied members of the Congress and Army officials ever since.
Father John Hotze, who was assigned years ago by the Wichita diocese to investigate Kapaun’s candidacy for sainthood, said he had interviewed at least 15 of Kapaun’s fellow prisoners of war. He said they all felt “confused” about why Kapaun did not get the Medal of Honor after the war.
“They felt confused because they’d seen others get the medal, and they’d seen up close what he had done that they felt was so deserving,” Hotze said.
“They will look on this as a great accomplishment for Father Kapaun – and that it should have happened 60 years ago.” Early life
Kapaun was born on a farm near Pilsen, the eldest of two sons of Enos and Bessie Kapaun. He was ordained a priest in 1940 at what is now Newman University in Wichita.
He served as a priest at St. John Nepomucene in Pilsen. In 1944 he joined the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps, and served as the auxiliary chaplain at an army air base near Herington. He served from 1945 to 1946 in India and Burma.
He came home to become the priest of Pilsen again in 1946, but rejoined the Army chaplain service in 1948.
He was sent with the 8th Cavalry Regiment to Japan and deployed with his soldiers when they became part of the first reinforcements sent to the Korean War in July 1950, one month after North Korea invaded South Korea.
He earned a Bronze Star for heroism in action on Aug. 2, 1950. Soldiers who served with him said he repeatedly ran through enemy fire, dragging wounded soldiers to safety. On at least one occasion, his tobacco pipe was shot out of his mouth in battle.
In November 1950, after the Americans and their allies had destroyed the North Korean Army and advanced to within miles of the Chinese border, the Chinese Army sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers south. The 8th Cavalry, in the battle of Unsan, was destroyed by Chinese troops who greatly outnumbered them.
Kapaun would later be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions at Unsan; he dragged many wounded to safety under fire, and soldiers said he saved more lives when he persuaded the Chinese to quit shooting into a dugout where he was protecting dozens of wounded Americans.
According to Monday’s news release from the White House, “When Chinese Communist Forces viciously attacked friendly elements, Chaplain Kapaun calmly walked through withering enemy fire in order to provide comfort and medical aid to his comrades. When they found themselves surrounded by the enemy, the able-bodied men were ordered to evacuate. Chaplain Kapaun, fully aware of his certain capture, elected to stay behind with the wounded. As hand-to-hand combat ensued, he continued to make rounds. As enemy forces approached the American position, Chaplain Kapaun noticed an injured Chinese officer amongst the wounded and convinced him to negotiate the safe surrender of the American forces. Shortly after his capture, Chaplain Kapaun bravely pushed aside an enemy soldier preparing to execute a comrade … ” ‘God-fearing man’
Now a captive, along with hundreds of other wounded and hungry American soldiers, Kapaun was force-marched north, to prison compounds established in North Korea just south of the Yalu River border with Manchuria.
Soldiers held captive with him there said he saved hundreds of lives, in part by making cooking pans out of discarded roofing tin. That allowed soldiers to boil drinking water out of snow, which held off dysentery.
He also picked the lice off sick and dying soldiers, stole food from guards to share with his fellow prisoners, washed their underwear, dug latrines, and rallied starving prisoners in sub zero temperatures to hang on to hope. Hundreds died but hundreds survived.
He also defied the Chinese guards, resisting their attempts to brainwash him and other Americans. He also continued to pray and hold religious services with fellow prisoners – acts that the Communist guards had prohibited.
Kapaun, weak from seven months of starvation, had suffered from several ailments in the days leading up to his death. But POWs including Dowe had stolen food and medicine for Kapaun, and had begun to restore his health.
Seeing this, Dowe said, the Chinese guards forced their way into the hut where Kapaun was resting and ordered him taken to the camp “death house,” a “so-called hospital,” as Dowe called it, where Kapaun could be isolated from food and water. Kapaun died two days later.
“He was martyred,” Dowe said Monday. “The Chinese communists were afraid of him because of the inspiration he projected for us as a God-fearing, free man.”
In 1993 the Catholic church declared him a “Servant of God,” the first step toward possible canonization. The Wichita Diocese of the Catholic Church has spent years gathering evidence for Kapaun’s candidacy for sainthood. That evidence, including eyewitness accounts of his faith and heroism in the North Korean prison camps, is now in Rome being evaluated, church officials have said. Efforts rewarded
Fellow prisoners of war recommended Kapaun him for the Medal of Honor as soon as they were released at the end of the Korean War in 1953. But despite their efforts over the decades, the recommendation had been rejected, until now.
Ray Kapaun said his family will forever be grateful to those fellow prisoners of war.
“Emil’s life and story was one of love and compassion, devotion and heroics,” Ray Kapaun said. “But the story would never have been told if not for the men who were there with him. They told everyone and anyone who would listen for 60 years what Emil had done.
“Because of their devotion to him, and how they felt about him, they allowed us to see how much they loved and trusted and admired him. So this Medal of Honor I can honestly say is for them as well as Father Emil.
"If Father Emil were here today, he’d tell his POW friends that, ‘I’m so happy you boys made it home, because I made it home. too.’ ”
Monday, May 27, 2013
Kapaun endured enemy fire to bring comfort to wounded bring wounded to safety
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