Home Editorial Activities Stories Links
  Saving Lives Feature Stories Having Fun Culture Conflict    
  Kiddy Car Airlift Orphanages Adopting Children Help from Home    

transparent.gif (42 bytes)

 

Pacific Stars and Stripes, April 17, 1953 

Tots Offer Goodness To Repay Airmen

By Andy Tarvin NAGOYA, Apr. 17-"We want to give you something to repay your great kindness, but we don't have anything.  So, we will repay you by being good boys and girls." 

These were the words of a 12 year old Korean orphan speaking in behalf of some 2,000 other Korean orphans who live in the 14 orphanages of Cheju Island off Korea's southern tip.  Many of these same children had been snatched from almost certain death two years before by the Air Force.  They had been airlifted from the doomed city of Seoul to the island sanctuary of Cheju, and during the two years since then, most of their clothing, food, medicine, toys, and other supplies had been given to them by various Air Force units in Japan and Korea. 

"Your smiling faces are payment enough for any kindness we may have given you," Chaplain (Lt. Col.) R.M.R Rutan, Japan Air Defense Force said.  And then the brief ceremony was over.  It was a ceremony occasioned by successful completion of the Easter-time phase of Operation Giftlift, JADF wide charity drive which was started last Christmas by the JADF chaplains and service clubs to provide aid for the more than 2,000 homeless children of Cheju.  Eight tons of food, clothing, bedding, medicine, toys, tools, and other needed supplies were airlifted to the orphanages by JADF during the Christmas and Easter phases of the command wide charity drive. 

The story of Orphans Island began in the fall of 1950 when many of the same children now living in safety on Cheju were roaming the streets of beleaguered Seoul.  Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Russell L. Blaisdell, former JADF chaplain, was then chaplain for the Fifth Air Force in Seoul.  A foundling center which he had started earlier in the war-torn city sheltered nearly 1,000 homeless waifs who had been roaming the streets.  As the Communist troops drew closer to Seoul, the evacuation of these waifs became more imperative. 

Chaplain Blaisdell made arrangements to have the children and their Korean nurses evacuated to Cheju Island by a Korea LST. 

At the port city of Inchon, Chaplain Blaisdell, the children, and their nurses waited four and a half days for the LST, which never arrived.  Meanwhile, seven of the children died in the 40 by 70 foot room where they were waiting.  In desperation, the chaplain returned to Seoul and explained the situation to Col. (now Brig. Gen.) T.C. Rogers, then assistant director of operations for Fifth Air Force.  Rogers contacted Combat cargo and 16 C-54 Skymasters were soon on their way from Japan to Seoul to remove the children from the doomed city. 

Chaplain Blaisdell returned to Inchon, commandeered 11 trucks, loaded his tiny charges and proceeded to Seoul, where the C-54s were waiting.   Nurses of the 801st Medical Air Evacuation Squadron helped load the waifs aboard the planes.  Most of the youngsters were less than 5 years old.  The oldest was 14.  More than 100 of them were suffering from infectious diseases and wounds, and hundreds more were victims of extreme malnutrition and exposure. 

This was the start of what newspapermen later labeled Operation Kiddie Kar.  When the planes landed at Cheju Island, the children were loaded on waiting trucks which bore them to their new home, a dilapidated two story building, which has now been turned into the hospital, classroom, workshop, dining hall, and administration facilities for the original Orphans Home of Korea.

SSA-685

 

 

 


Home  |  Editorial  |  Activities  |  Stories  |  Links