POWs overcome the brutality of their captors through the grace, compassion, and patience of a saint.
Now That Should Be A Movie.
(Note: I am not pitching this as my movie. Others have spent much time, work, and energy into making a film about Father Kapaun and do not mean to detract from them. I am in no way affiliated with Father Kapaun’s Valley)
Short Pitch
It’s called The Story of Father Kapaun
It is in the vein of To End All Wars (2001, dr. David L. Cunningham)
It is like The Hanoi Hilton (1987, dr. DLionel Chetwynd) meets Unbroken (2014, dr. Angelina Jolie)
It follows tough but humble Catholic Army Chaplain Emil Joseph Kapaun
And his fellow starving and freezing but determined American POWs
As they struggle to stay alive and keep their faith in the face of a brutal Communist prisoner of
war camp during the first winter of the Korean War.
Problems occur Father Kapaun’s selflessness causes him to fall ill.
Together, he and his fellow POWs will ultimately be triumphant by showing grace and compassion in
front of their captives.
The idea came to me when I came across posts about Father Kapaun on Facebook.
My unique approach would be gentle acts of kindness being victorious over intellectual arguments backed up by force.
One set piece would be when Father Kapaun is bedridden and develops dysentery. Now the others have
to clean up after him. The other POWs know that he hates being a burden on others. So they stage a
massive outbreak of dysentery. When the guards give them medications, they promptly pass them in mass onto the chaplain.
Target audiences would be men and women 30-70, history buffs, military personnel, Catholics, war movie fans, and fans of faith-based films.
Audiences would want to see Father Kapaun’s story due to its universal themes of bravery, grace, determination, and forgiveness in the face of man’s inhumanity to man
In my research for this post, I have consulted A Shepherd in Combat Boots: Chaplain Emil Kapaun of the 1st Cavalry Division by William L. Maher, from Burd Street Press, The Story of Chaplain Kapaun, Patriot Priest of the Korean Conflict by MSGR Father Arthur Tonne, from Didd Publication, and The Miracle of Father Kapaun: Priest, Soldier and Korean War Hero from Roy Wenzl and Travis Heying, from Ignatius Press.
Emil Joseph Kapaun was born on the plains of Kansas to Austro-Hungarian immigrants in 1916. He showed signs of religiosity from an early age, attending Conception Abbey straight out of high school. Ordained by the Diocese of Wichita in 1940, he began ministering in his hometown of Pilsen. However, he soon found that he was not cut out for the small conservative town and became a chaplain in the Army during World War II, serving in the Burma Theater.
Although discharged after the war, he believed he had found his calling. The incident that cemented this belief was the Berlin Blockade, in which the Soviet Union attempted to starve West Berlin into submission (the response of the West, led by America, should also be a movie). He viewed the Cold War as a struggle between good and evil, between God and godlessness.
After reenlisting, he was stationed in Japan with the 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. When war broke out on the Korean Peninsula, he wrote his parents that he believed the Russians were not only behind the invasion of South Korea, but were in the country themselves. This was not about South Korea versus North Korea, but America versus Russia. “I hope we will be strong enough to put the Russians in their place,” he wrote on July 10.
The 8th Cavalry landed at the Pusan Perimeter, the toehold that the US still had on Korea, on the 18th and faced their first battle a few days later. They were surrounded on three sides, outnumbered fifteen to one. Three times the men of the 8th were overpowered and had to escape with their lives. But Father Kapaun was in the thick of it with them. He searched for scattered and isolated groups of men to whom he could minister. Once he became separated from the 8th for several days, thus missing decent meals and being forced to eat wild fruit. As a result, he developed diarrhea and sore feet. He held Mass as close to the front as possible, sometimes as close as 500 feet. Sometimes the bodies of dead North Koreans would have to be moved to find space. Another time there was an enemy artillery barrage landing 400 yards away. At another, landmines were going off in a nearby field. And another time the background to the Communion he was leading was naked GIs bathing in the Naktong.
Father Kapaun was well aware that the enemy did not consider him a noncombatant. His chaplain assistant was shot. A Protestant chaplain was wounded by a mortar shell, losing part of his leg. Another chaplain assistant’s throat was cut during the night. He would force himself to wake up early in the pre-dawn hours since the North Koreans often attacked in the early morning hours. His pipe was shot by a sniper. Both his Mass kits were destroyed, and he had to borrow one from a Korean priest. Once a tank shell flew by him by about four feet, taking off his helmet. He lost his trailer and jeep. Men went insane around him. He accredited the prayers of loved ones for his safety. “We are close to heaven but really we are more like in hell,” he wrote on August 11th. “But we will win this thing yet.”
As the battle raged around him, he did things that were not part of his official chaplain duties. With Protestant Chaplain Donald Carter, he set up an office using an ammo crate for a desk and an ammunition box for a seat to write letters to each family of the five to six hundred KIAs. He carried an unloaded gun while searching for wounded in need of last rites. His gun was unloaded but he was still able to capture a North Korean soldier. He would bury the bodies of the enemy North Korean soldiers. One veteran who helped him later said that that act gave him peace about the war, having followed the example of an uncommon, decent, and forgiving soldier.
On August 2, 1950, he displayed heroism near Kumchung which earned him the Bronze Star. His citation reads
Chaplain KAPAUN received information that there was a wounded man in an exposed position on the left flank of the first battalion that could not be removed as there were no litter bearers available. Chaplain KAPAUN, together with another officer, immediately proceeded to the front lines, where he contacted the Battalion Commander in order to obtain the approximate location of the wounded man. With total disregard for personal safety, Chaplain KAPAUN and his companion went after the wounded man. The entire route to the wounded soldier was under intense enemy machinegun and small arms fire. However, Chaplain KAPAUN successfully evacuated the soldier, thereby saving the soldier.
Eventually, the Inchon Landing brought pressure off the Pusan Permitter and allowed the Americans to break out. As the 8th moved north, Kapaun encountered more proof that Russia was behind the war, their presence obvious with pictures of Comrade Stalin above North Korean police headquarters.
He also encountered Korean Catholics who had not seen a priest or attended a service in months. Even though there was a language barrier, he held communion with them. He wrote home of the irony that in the prison next to the chapel, Communist prisoners who had not allowed the people to believe in God were now hearing a sermon. Afterward, American soldiers took up donations for the Korean believers. The people also kissed him, much to his embarrassment. Their faith had a profound impact on Kapaun, an example to him not to lose faith.
Initial skirmishing began around Unsan on October 25. The overextended Cavalry did not know how many Chinese they were facing since the communists had set the woods on fire, obscuring the visibility for reconnaissance plans. When the Chinese finally did attack on November 1st, All Saints Day, the survivors described their number to that of a plague of locusts. The Battle of Bugle Valley had begun.
Again, Father Kapaun was in the thick of it. He and his assistant had tried to escape, but the Chinese and overturned vehicles blocked the way. When he heard that one of his friends had been shot, he told his assistant to escape and went back into the battle. He ran from foxhole to foxhole, administering both physical and spiritual aid. He would give Catholics the Act of Contrition and then tell them that they were about 50 yards from the perimeter and had better make a run for it. He dragged at least 15 wounded into the perimeter. At one point he was captured by the Chinese, but an American officer directed fire at the captors, allowing him to escape.
Even as the war seemed to be winding down as the 8th advanced farther up the peninsula, Kapaun continued to go beyond and above his chaplain duties. On October 7, after the driver of a truck loaded with wounded was killed, he drove the vehicle over a fire-swept road to safety. He wrote home that “God has chosen me for some reason or another to be with the soldiers in the war.” On October 16, he sent Bishop Carroll a letter containing “items of interest which we picked up in this Communist-infested country.” He hoped the bishop could find a school that could use them in lessons about the evils of Communism. It would be his last letter home. The Chinese had entered the war.
Outside the perimeter was a dugout in which the wounded had found shelter. Father Kapaun also dragged wounded there, including an injured Chinese officer. In all, there were about 50 men in the dugout. As much as he hated to be taken prisoner, when the Chinese started throwing grenades into the dugout, he sent the enemy officer out to convince his comrades that the Americans were ready to surrender.
In the end, even though the 3rd Battalion had repulsed the Chinese six times, they were forced to either surrender or break out in small groups to find their way to American lines. Of the 800 men in “The Lost Battalion,” 600 were casualties. Worse, Father Kapaun and the survivors were about to endure a 300-mile-long death march.
The 8th Cavalry had been so far ahead of American logical operations that winter clothing had not reached them. The prisoners were forced to march through below-freezing temperatures in summer uniforms. Men would blank out during the march and only come out of what they described as a “dream world” when the column stopped at night. The wounded died daily and men unable to keep up with the column were held back by the guards and never seen again. Yet, during this horrid example of man’s inhumanity to man, Father Kapaun continued to minister in every way possible. The Chinese did not realize that he was an officer and allowed him to mingle among the other prisoners. He carried stretchers the whole way and buried the dead along the road. Once he did ride, but it was on the bed of a truck, wounded piled on top of him. He didn’t move out of fear of hurting them. When he got out of the truck, it was apparent that he had frostbite. Yet he still refused to be carried by a stretcher while carrying those of others.
The death march ended at Camp No. 5 in Pyoktong, or what many prisoners came to simply call The Valley. Here they would suffer in forty-below weather while being fed 4 grams of birdseed, cracked corn, and millet per day. It is estimated that forty percent of the American soldiers captured in Korea died in Communist prisons. During the first winter, ten or twenty men were dying per day. Yet only twenty men died in The Valley that first winter. Kapaun’s fellow prisoners contribute the low death rate to the father’s service.
Growing up on a rural farm had given Father Kapaun both the physical strength and knowledge on how to survive. No task was too small for him. He would pick the lice off wounded and sick men in the death house – what passed as the camp’s hospital – and then wash their clothing after breaking holes in the icy surfaces of nearby creeks. He used a rock to twist metal into water pots, in which he boiled coffee to bring the prisoners every morning.
He would scavenge for food, often leading prisoners on sorties to steal food from the government warehouses. One plan the father came up with involved him hiding out next to the warehouse. When the prison detail came to collect food, they would start fighting among themselves as arranged by Kapaun. As the guards rushed to break the fight up, he would sneak into the warehouse and commandeer supplies. When prisoners asked about the ethics of stealing, he reminded them that they were stealing to save others from starving to death, and led them in prayers to Saint Demetrius, the patron saint of thieves.
One of these tasks would ultimately cost him his life. While rummaging through a bombed-out building, Kapaun found a crock pot buried in a hole. He asked another prisoner to help him pull it out since it could be used to boil and sanitize water for the men. As the prisoner was helping him pull the crock out of the wedged hole, rocks started falling. Since they were falling on the other prisoner, the father stuck out his foot to stop them. In this action, he sustained a bruise, a bruise that doctors believed led to a blood clot.
Not only did he serve the prisoners physically but also spiritually. When the prisoners first arrived in The Valley, the guards separated them by rank, race, and socioeconomic status. The indoctrination sessions were meant to make the prisoners distrust, spy on, and turn each other in. Kapaun would visit each section, exhorting the men not to believe the communist lies about God and the United States. Or more succinctly, “Don’t believe the communist crap.” He led them in prayers to deliver the Communists from their atheistic materialism.
He led by example, both physically and spiritually. In the latter, he would challenge the guards to debates.
“Where is your god now,” the Communists asked. “Ask him to get you out of his camp. See if he can feed you. You should thank Mao Tse-Tung and Stalin for your daily bread. You cannot see or hear or feel your god, therefore he does not exist.”
“One day the Lord will save The Chinese from the scourge that put them on their path,” Kapaun would reply. “The Good Lord, as he feds the thousands on the mountain, will also take care of us. Mao Tse-Tung could not make a tree or a flower or stop the thunders or lightning.” Or more bluntly, when told to thank Mao for his daily bread, “If this is an example of God’s daily bread, then God must be a terrible baker.”
When the Chinese instructors, using English taught at missionary schools, would tell him about the evils of religion, he would stump them by asking them if they had ever seen those things at the mission schools. One instructor had to be removed after he accidentally called Kapaun “father.” He told the instructors that his pro-religion arguments were “not anti-Communist propaganda, it is Christian love and I shall pray for your soul.”
When a soldier praised one of the guards as “comrade,’ the father rebuked him. He threatened prisoners who collaborated with the enemy with court martial once they were liberated. Yet when other prisoners were tortured by the guards into admitting that he was leading the soldiers in resisting the indoctrination, he rushed forward to greet them afterward, telling them they should have never suffered for a moment protecting him.
It was hard for him not to hate the guards. Sometimes he was beaten, other times he was stripped of his outer clothing and forced to stand in the cold. As he passed another soldier who knew Latin, he would say, “Ne illegitimi carborundum esse (don’t let the bastards keep you down).” One guard became a particular object of his wrath. “What a dumb son of a bitch! When the first American tank arrives, I am going to kick Comrade-so-in-so’s ass right over the compound fence,” he declared. “When Jesus talked about forgiving our enemies, he obviously did not have Comrade Sun in mind!”
Yet it would be forgiveness and compassion that reigned victorious over the Communists.
The first victory came at Christmas. The Chinese brought in a group of Korean children to perform for the prisoners. They sang hammer and sickle songs and performed the harvesting the crop dance. During an intermission, some of the soldiers began singing “Silent Night.” As some of the younger, higher voices joined in, the communists realized their propaganda ploy had failed and rushed the children off the stage with the blowing of whistles.
The next came at Easter. Father Kapaun spoke of suffering, since for many men it was still their Good Friday, but their Sunday was yet to come when their faith would overcome the world. He spoke of Christ’s condemnation, torture, and death. Then he spoke of forgiveness. He led the prisoners in the Lord’s Prayer and the singing of “God Bless America” and “The Hymn of the Republic.”
During the sermon, the prisoners noticed that he was limping. His voice faltered and he collapsed in front of the group. The pain in his leg had been attributed to hunger, but it was clear now that a blood clot had swollen from above the knee to his toes, turning yellow and black. The doctors ordered that his leg be suspended for a month.
During that time his only complaint was that he was a burden to others. He soon developed pneumonia. The Chinese offered no medicines. They also denied him basic nutrition like salt and coffee. The American doctors could only give him aspirin. The men had to carry him to the latrine, where he would stay for an hour before asking for someone to help carry him out. They carried him outside as the weather became warmer. Through his ordeal, he would tell the prisoners his favorite story, the mother with seven sons found in Second Maccabees. After seeing her sons martyred one by one, the mother rejoiced that her sons had been faithful unto death.
A set piece in a movie would be when he developed dysentery. Knowing that he was humiliated because others had to clean up after him, the other prisoners staged a mass break out of fake dysentery. When the guards gave them more medication, they promptly passed it on to the father.
After a month, the guards had had enough. They would take him to the death house where men were left to die. “He’s a man of God,” they said. “Let God save him.” The other prisoners would have strangled the guards who had come to carry Kapaun to the death house if he had not stopped them. “Tell my bishop that I died a happy death.” Before he left, he talked privately with a Protestant Chaplain to make sure that the prisoners were taken care of spiritually. A Turkish prisoner said he would pray to Allah for him, and an atheist prisoner called him father. “I’m going where I’ve always wanted to go. And when I get up there I’ll say a prayer for all of you.”
Within two days of being in the death house, he was gone. He was buried in a mass grave, unmarked. The guards had unwittingly become the tools that God used to answer his prayers and deliver him from the prison.
Not long after Kapaun’s death, a prisoner abandoned in the death house rolled over to the corner. He put his hands on the walls, took a breath, and started to pull himself up. As he did so, he prayed, “Father Kapaun, help me.” A year later, an American lieutenant asked if he could lead a memorial service for Kapaun. The Chinese refused. They were still scared of him.
The prisoners found other ways to honor him. They held onto his ciborium and pyx, returning to America with them once they were released. His helmet liner which bore a cross had been thrown on a trash heap. He had left it there so other soldiers could see it, have hope, and even have a place to go for prayers. After his death, a soldier tore the cross off and held on to it until released.
The most remarkable memorial was made by a man who never knew him but heard about him from the other prisoners. Marine Captain Gerald Fink, a Jew, began using firewood and scrub oak to make a crucifix. Radio wire was used to make a crown of thorns. When the Communists saw the crucifix at religious services, they were baffled but never took it away. When asked who the man on the cross was, Fink replied, “Abraham Lincoln.” But the other prisoners believed it resembled Father Kapaun, who during his time in the camp had become so worn and haggard with facial hair that he resembled a Renaissance painting of Jesus. This had brought him much embarrassment. “Christ in the Barbwire” was smuggled by four prisoners into Freedom Village on the last day of the prisoner exchanges. It then made its way to the Kapaun family in Kansas.
Father Kapaun has received many earthly honors. The most decorated US Army Chaplain in history, he has been awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Korean Service Medal with two Bronze Service Stars, the Republic of Korea Taegeuk Order of Military Merit, a Combat Infantryman Badge, the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, the United Nations Korea Medal, a Purple Heart, the Prisoner of War Medal and the Republic of Korea War Service Medal. In 2013, after years of campaigning by his fellow prisoners, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. In 2021 his remains were positively identified and returned to the US. The Catholic Church has declared him A Servant of God and is in the process of canonizing him.
One earthly honor he has not been given is a movie. There was talk of him being played by Kirk Douglass, but nothing came of that project. He was played by James Whitmore in an episode of the 1950s TV show Crossroads called “The Good Thief.” I believe it is time for him, his fellow POWs and those still missing in action from the Korean War to be honored with a major motion picture.
Because of the universal theme of bravery, grace, and forgiveness in the face of man’s inhumanity to man, I believe that Father Emil Kapaun’s story should be a movie honoring our Korean War veterans.
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