I won’t be super specific on locations for OPSEC, but I can describe some prominent war crimes that he participated in. Relative has severe PTSD and there is not a single day in his life where he didn’t relive his crimes, and he has lived a long life indeed. He has been a burden to our family as he descended into a mess of a person with age. In a way, I’m glad he has lived long in relative peace. It is the best punishment for him, because he definitely feels guilt despite his old age and the long time since his actions.

Highlights:

He thought that I, a young child of age 7-14, was a good therapist for his trauma. I called him a monster multiple times and he seemed to be happy that I called him that. He wrote down some notes over the years and to be frank, I’d like to get them to the DPRK at some point for proof. He would regularly do these ‘sessions’ as he was driving me to school and I’d have to sit there during the fucking anthem, pledge, and ‘brave’ soldier worship while thinking of the latest revelations. I was disgusted the entire time. He encouraged me to think critically about the world, and was upset when I used this critical thought to be a communist. He never told any other relatives.

He was airforce and joined the war voluntarily.

Recalled the slaughter of potentially thousands of people in a firebombing he helped perpetrate as they jumped into the river. He later landed back on a carrier and saw the bodies up close, it was majority women and children. Many were around my age. I had a Korean girl in my class. As an innocent kid, I asked if he would kill her if given the chance and called him a disgusting murderer.

He had a ‘comfort girlfriend’ in Busan of Japanese descent. I did a DNA test somewhat recently and noticed a lot of Japanese names pop up. Yeah. I told him about that. He said he actually grew attached to her and wanted to marry her but decided to leave, mostly for racist reasons and self disgust. Left her with all of his military checks out of guilt, which was quite a lot of money for a Japanese person at the time.

As he was on a carrier, a DPRK one-man sub suicide bombed it and he almost drowned to death. He freaks out all the time in the bath tub and one time fell over and broke his leg in it.

He said he dropped all sorts of things on the DPRK that weren’t bombs. He said he wasn’t sure what it was. I suggested insects that carried plague after doing some research, and he said ‘The load was so light and they usually just said it was leaflets. But you don’t drop leaflets over a farm and near rivers.’

He helped bomb dams with the stated mission of destroying them to flood the countryside.

He mentioned that one time the carrier engaged likely Soviet civilian aircraft, destroying them. Despite his anti-communist views, his brainworms saw this as a huge, unforgivable crime because he was a young adult during WW2 and saw the Soviets as arms-length allies still. Very weird, was probably mostly angry because he saw them as white.

Still uses racist slang to refer to Asian people, and it has in fact gotten his ass beaten before, which he didn’t fight back against. Which makes me assume that he did that on purpose out of guilt and wanted the shit kicked out of him.

He said he was tempted by suicide multiple times but couldn’t bring himself to leave his American wife hanging. Now that she’s dead, its all he talks about.


If you guys have any specific questions, feel free to ask.

    • koreanwarvetama [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      2 years ago

      He’s written what is essentially a giant screed of notes on the war of what he did and I read through them all. Not published or anything, but I have it all digitally transcribed after a lot of work. I haven’t told anyone except people online and people not connected to my family, because his condition for telling me more stuff is that I don’t tell the family. I think its more important to get all the details, personally. He said he gave some vague notions of bad stuff happening to his kids, but nothing in detail.

        • koreanwarvetama [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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          2 years ago

          He spent a lot of time with me alone is the main thing I think. It was a pretty long drive to get to school and I figure his mind wandered a lot during it and he was the only person able to take me to it for like 7 years. I was also a very curious and critical kid and I think he liked that and enjoyed encouraging it. In a fucked up way, I do think he had a good interest in mind by telling me about this at a formative age. It certainly made me very discerning about what was in my history books in school. But it was probably way too early to tell me. Maybe when I was a teen. But I also get a hint that he wanted to discourage me from joining the military, and my parents would goad me with the idea a lot citing him as a good example. So maybe it was his nuclear solution, and despite being an incredibly shitty person, he does feel regret about it or at least didn’t want me to be subjected to the PTSD he has. Which is something, I guess.

  • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netM
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    2 years ago

    He said he was tempted by suicide multiple times but couldn’t bring himself to leave his American wife hanging. Now that she’s dead, its all he talks about.

    Have you discouraged this? If your goal is to get this information out of him you don’t want him disappearing. Keeping access for as long as possible is valuable especially if this info is useful to the DPRK at a later date.

    • koreanwarvetama [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      2 years ago

      Yes, though he is becoming increasingly incoherent but has random bouts of having absolutely zero filter which is a bit useful for clarifying previous questions. He even provided me with some film he took at one point in the cockpit, which afaik is very rare and has only been seen by family. I had it digitized and plan to release it when he dies. It depicts some bombing runs and carrier operations. I also have video of his stories which I told him was to help him with his notes. I’ll probably scrub identifying information out of it as a precaution at some point and attempt to give it to some socialist news sources. If it won’t fuck my life over (re: living in not America) I’d just say who I am and who he is.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.netM
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        2 years ago

        Make sure you have these backed up with multiple sources in case you get a visit in the not distant future seeking to contain it.

        • koreanwarvetama [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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          2 years ago

          Yeah I have it on a lot of drives, encrypted on cloud storage, and so on. Also gave some drives to some friends with a big ‘DO NOT ERASE: VERY IMPORTANT FILES BELONGING TO X’ written on the drive lol.

    • REallyN [she/her,they/them]@hexbear.net
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      2 years ago

      maybe I am sympathetic to a fault, but it strikes me as like…kind of coldhearted to talk of discouraging someone’s suicide purely for the utility their continued existence serves to propaganda.

      A part of me can understand (although I doubt ever fully) the hatred for this man who left devastation in his wake.
      How many lives did he destroy and now he has the gall to feel guilty about it!?
      When he can just walk away back to the US while those people were left to pick up what was left of their lives and country!

      but at the same time when I just hear about this broken shell of a human being the only emotion I can really muster is a deep and utter sadness.

      • koreanwarvetama [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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        2 years ago

        I feel extremely conflicted emotions about him myself. The guy was genuinely helpful to me as a kid. When I told him he was a racist piece of shit, he listened and changed his words, like he genuinely cared what I said. He said some homophobic shit during one of our talks, I told him to stop, and he stopped. No questions asked, never did it again. I do genuinely feel that if he wasn’t propagandized, felt like his country was ‘right’ and ‘correct’ after WW2 and its propaganda, if there was less systemic racism, he would have been a genuinely good guy.

        But he wasn’t, and turned out to be a monster. Its very disconcerting and horrifying to know this is how the world can work, especially learning that as a kid. But the only way to respond to this sort of thing is to side with the victims, of which he has many.

  • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    Tell him that a Korean communist thinks he should get rid of all his earthly possessions, and buy a one-way ticket to Manchuria/North-East China and surrender himself to the border guards of the DPRK to face justice for his crimes against humanity.

      • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        2 years ago

        He could at least go over there and admit all his crimes to a jury of his peers there, help them with their propaganda by being the face of American evil, and face a firing squad with his head held up high knowing he’s done more good for the world than any of his peers has done and can go face his creator knowing he truly sought repentance instead of choking out one last hail Mary on his deathbed and being buried with full military honors by this country of war demon worshipers

        • koreanwarvetama [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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          2 years ago

          I’ve pretty much alluded to as much in the past as a kid. He still feels like he has a duty to family. I know that is hypocritical of him cause he killed a fuckton of people who won’t be able to fulfill their duty to their families, but that is how it is. Also, he is hardly put together at this point, so American media would just spin it as him going insane and the DPRK using it as an opportunity to torture a dying man.

          • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            2 years ago

            the DPRK using it as an opportunity to torture a dying man

            Now I’m going to apologize ahead of time for what I’m going to say, but he deserves anything and everything he would face in the DPRK full stop.

            That said, I’ll just have to be satisfied knowing that you’ve done good by recording him and preserving his own records and look forward to reading them whenever you think it’s appropriate to publish them. Thank you genuinely for sharing your story here.

            • koreanwarvetama [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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              2 years ago

              Agreed. He isn’t leaving behind anyone vulnerable at this point, to say the least. Personally, I think he could have been a great person if he avoided the war. Could. That’s part of what is so frustrating about him to me.

  • geikei [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    Its natural to feel the urge for sympathy and forgiveness towards his old , somewhat remorseful and ptsd riddled self but its hard not to think the reality. That american soldiers in Korea were basicaly indistinguisable from Wehrmacht soldiers in the Eastern front. Even worse arguably since they traveled a globe away to do it, more volunteered as a % and there wasnt an outward ideological framework comparable to the anti-slavic/bolshevik genocidal Nazism behind their actions

  • Weedian [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    did he ever say anything regarding the american aircraft crew POWs who confessed to war crimes similar to the one’s he described?

    • koreanwarvetama [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      2 years ago

      He met with the Black Sheep Squadron, notably, and described them as even crazier and wild than him, including gloating about how many dead they wracked up.

      But he mentioned only meeting them briefly on a mission and talked on a radio.

      edit: Part of the gloating was the pilots doing extremely reckless things in order to kill more people and getting away with it. Sort of like frat bros trying to up each other, except with war crimes.

  • CTHlurker [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    I have no questions, but I want to say that it breaks my heart to hear that you were exposed to that kind of crap at such a young age.

    • koreanwarvetama [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      2 years ago

      It was wild. A lot of people have always described me as ‘old beyond my age’. Wonder why. Definitely wasn’t because I legitimately believed my relative was a murderer and everyone worshipped him for it and told me to stop insulting him every moment I had.

  • ssjmarx [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    He thought that I, a young child of age 7-14, was a good therapist for his trauma. I called him a monster multiple times and he seemed to be happy that I called him that.

    Assuming this is real, It sounds to me like he knew that troop worship was all bullshit and he wanted to hear an unpropagandized kid call him exactly what he knew he was.

    It’s tough knowing bad things about family members, because no matter what you do they are going to impart big chunks of themselves onto you by virtue of helping raise you during your critical development years. i hope you got all of the good things and none of the bad.

    • koreanwarvetama [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      2 years ago

      That’s what I figure. It is unfortunately very real :(. I’d like to provide more proof but that’s not in my ability right now (from promising him and also because I’m not in a good spot in case there is backlash). Might be a big headline on some socialist papers within the next decade though, so keep an eye out assuming we all live till then…

      I like to assume I’ve done pretty well. Though I definitely have a lot of problems from my upbringing.

  • BeamBrain [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    As he was on a carrier, a DPRK one-man sub suicide bombed it and he almost drowned to death. He freaks out all the time in the bath tub and one time fell over and broke his leg in it.

    :juche-boi:

    • koreanwarvetama [they/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      2 years ago

      Yeah that tidbit was pretty wild. He said he remembered being one of the last people out through a ladder/seal despite knowing there were numerous people following him up. Said he woke up and realized what was happening after the explosion with his nose and mouth just barely out of the water. Has hearing issues to this day because of how the explosion reverberated. Didn’t stop him from piloting.

      Oh and fun fact, he didn’t realize he qualified for special healthcare for combat injuries until like, two years ago because Veteran Affairs lied to him for decades. So he has been suffering a lot from that.