The
Korean Schindler
Presbyterian chaplain honored
for saving 1,000 war orphans
By
John H. Adams
The
Presbyterian Layman
Volume 34, Number 2
Posted March 26, 2001
 |
| Blaisdell
reminisces through selection of old photographs taken
during rescue. |
January’s national media story relating to the
Korean War was about the uncovering of a memo ordering
American pilots to strafe civilians who were believed to have
been harboring North Koreans.
In the meantime, most of the media missed – or ignored –
the return to South Korea of a retired Presbyterian minister
who was a hero of epic proportions to 1,000 Korean orphans
whose lives he saved in 1950 – the “Korean
Schindler,” declared The Korea Herald.
The minister, retired Col. Russell L. Blaisdell, 90, an Air
Force chaplain in 1950, returned to South Korea in January to
meet with 101-year-old Whang On Soon, owner of the “Orphans
Home of Korea,” and many of the people whose lives he had
saved.
“Koreans consider you a true hero for what you did. The
orphans you saved are now productive members of our society,
and nothing could be more precious than that,” Lee
Hee-ho, first lady of South Korea, told Blaisdell.
- Chaplain Russell Blaisdell wasn’t just
desperate. He was in danger as he raced toward the
embattled South Korean capital of Seoul in a battered jeep
he’d stolen.
- “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” he mumbled to
himself – over and over – like a prayer.
- Talking to himself helped him stay awake. Five
days without food or sleep were taking their toll, and he
had to fight to keep his eyes open and on the dusty road.
- He was running out of time and had no idea what
lay ahead. But he knew what lay behind – 1,000
children and volunteers whose fate rested in his hands.
Out of options and almost out of time to save them, he did
what any good chaplain would do in the same position. He
prayed. Luckily, God was listening, said Chaplain
Blaisdell of Fayetteville, N.Y.
 |
| Whang
On Soon tearfully greets Chaplain Blaisdell after 50
years. |
One Korean newspaper described Blaisdell and Whang at
their reunion as they “sat together for an hour,
sometimes clutching hands as they looked through old photos,
letters, magazine articles and newspaper clippings. Fifty
years ago, a war and fate brought these two remarkable
individuals together. Their common bond – the lives of
1,000 orphans – saved by this remarkable man who, with
his faith in God and his commitment to saving them, rose above
the destruction and chaos of war to carry out this
humanitarian mission.”
- His saga started two months into the Korean War. He
arrived in Seoul in August 1950 to become the Fifth Air
Force staff chaplain. He found Seoul a city in dire
straits.
- Bombed, burned and pillaged beyond recognition.
Hunger and thirst were as common as the rats, which were
under foot at every turn. Poverty seeped through the city
like a plague. There wasn’t enough food or clothing
for everyone.
- The streets were full of babies and children
shivering from the cold. Their parents had left them, or
were dead. They were dirty, hungry and covered in vermin.
“It was devastating,” said the Blaisdell. “I
had to do something.”
The reunion took place at the Orphans House of Korea in
Yangju County, Kyonggi Province. Blaisdell told a reporter, “I
can vividly remember the hard times of those days 50 years ago
and it is a shock to see the rapid improvement and growth of
Korea’s economic recovery.”
“Most people would only have thought of themselves,”
Yang Yun-Hak told a South Korea newspaper reporter. Yang was
17 when he was one of the 1,000 rescued orphans. “He
[Blaisdell] was a savior. He was like a father.”
- What he had to do was evident. “We’d go
out at dawn and pick up these tiny bodies, limp as sacks
of rice, and pile them in an old flat bed truck, 10 or 20
at a time,” he said. “They were sick and weak
and seemed to have cried themselves out. We did the best
we could. We brought them in, scrubbed them up, and
dropped them off at the local orphanage. Then we’d go
back out and do it again.”
- For two long months, Chaplain Blaisdell and his
volunteers struggled to save the children. When he asked
for help, many answered. Korean and American doctors,
nurses, dentists, troops and citizens pitched in.
- The tiny orphanage was soon overflowing with
children barely clinging to life. And every morning,
Chaplain Blaisdell and his volunteers dropped off more.
- Life, while tough, took on a rhythm. But then
disaster struck. “The North is coming” was the
word on the street in December. As Chaplain Blaisdell
battled to save children, the North and South battled to
the death in the serene countryside of their divided
country. Already living in constant fear, the citizens of
Seoul had little choice – get out or die. They fled.
- “No one was going to stick around to see what
would happen,” he said. The city decided to abandon
the orphanage and leave the kids to fend for themselves.
“It was the most precious and memorable thing in my
life,” Blaisdell told The Korea Herald. He says
he still becomes dizzy when he thinks about the bombardment of
Seoul just after the children in the orphanage were relocated.
“We would have died in the freezing winter if we had
been left in Seoul,” Yang Yun-Hak, 68, recalled.
- “It never occurred to me to leave the
children,” Blaisdell said.
- He arranged for a boat to transport the children
to safety. But it was at Inchon, 20 miles away. And he had
some 1,000 people to move with just one truck. So he, Sgt.
Michael Strang, and some volunteers started piling
children into the truck, and then racing them to the
harbor city.
- “I decided to scout out the situation, so I ‘appropriated’
a jeep and went to the dock,” he said.
- But, when he got there, his heart sank. The ship
was an old scow he wouldn’t have put anyone on. The
captain didn’t know anything about any evacuation.
The situation grew worse. So he appropriated an old school
building and moved the children there. He figured maybe it
was the wrong boat and that they’d just have to wait
awhile. But he was wrong. Now the whole group was in
danger.
- Time was running out for him and the children.
Scared and hungry, Blaisdell wracked his brain for
answers. Then he went to his headquarters, where he
spotted Air Force Brig. Gen. T.C. Rogers, one of the last
military members left in the city.
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| U.S.
soldiers help children off a plane. |
At the reunion, Blaisdell shared some of the
photographs he had saved from what he had dubbed “Operation
Kiddie Car.” He also read from a short chronicle that he
had written soon after the children were moved to safety.
“The devastation and poverty in Korea is appalling even
to those accustomed to such sights,” he had written. “As
one watches suffering and death, nature creates a callousness
to keep persons rational and sane. But one reaction will never
be completely dulled. This is the reaction to the sight of
little, helpless children, orphans who are crying from hunger
and exposure.”
- “He took one look at me and said, ‘My
God, what’s the matter?’” Chaplain
Blaisdell said. “I hadn’t slept in five days and
looked like the wrath of God. I just blurted out, ‘I’m
in trouble and I need help.’” The weary chaplain
told the general his story.
- “He didn’t say a word. He just pulled out
an operations book, saying he had a wing of C-54s that
needed a mission. Then he asked me when I could have the
kids at Kimpo [Airport]. I told him right away.” But
Kimpo was 20 miles from Inchon, and his only truck was
gone.
- “I wasn’t about to give up,” he
said. “The children were starving, cold and sick. I
had to do something. It wasn’t courage. I felt a
responsibility.” He sped back to Inchon and told his
sergeant “we’re saved.” Still, he had one
very significant dilemma – no transportation.
- “But then I spotted some Marines unloading a
truck onto the old scow at the docks,” he said. “I
told the driver that he was to report to Sergeant Strang
for duty. He refused. So I just whipped out my lieutenant
colonel insignia and told him it was an order.”
- The Marine obeyed and the chaplain and his
volunteers were back in business. Each time a truck
arrived at the docks, the chaplain pulled rank to acquire
it. He soon had four, and the convoy was on its way to
Kimpo. When it arrived, the promised planes were waiting.
 |
| Orphans
being bathed in fuel barrels. |
The two aging heroes, Blaisdell and Whang, stood
together at the reunion. “This is the lady who took the
children and made an orphanage,” he said. “Without
her, we wouldn’t have had any orphanage. I only brought
the children to Cheju-do. She took it from there. She gets all
the credit for taking care of the children and organizing
everything. She did a wonderful job. It was remarkable how
well she could do it.”
- A Dec. 21, 1950, New York Times article described
the scene: “Scores of small pilgrims in distress were
covered with sores, and their bodies were shrunken from
starvation. Some gestured at their mouths to show their
hunger and mumbled, ‘chop, chop.’”
- The planes took the children to Cheju-do, a large
island off South Korea’s southern coast. “That
was the first time I breathed a sigh of relief,” the
chaplain said. Then he met with the mayor of Cheju-do, who
donated an old agricultural building for the children.
- Just in time for Christmas.
- It was the beginning of a new life for the
children, like Choi Chu-ja, who was on a plane that day.“The
only memory I have of that plane ride is sitting with the
other children on the floor,” she said. Now named
Susie Allen and the mother of four living in Chico,
Calif., she owes her life to Chaplain Blaisdell and
volunteers.
- “I don’t know how to describe the
feelings in my heart. They have just always been a part of
me,” she said. “They were my heroes.”
- But Chaplain Blaisdell, who retired from the Air
Force in 1964, said he’s no hero. “I did what I
had to do,” he said. “What any good person would
have done.”
The italicized portion of this article is reprinted by
permission from Airman magazine. |