L.A. Press Archives – Part 1 [Perspective In War]
[guest post by Justin Levine]
From the L.A. Examiner dated Sept. 27, 1951, come this small blurb on page 1, below the fold –
2212 Increase in Korean War Casualties Announced by U.S.
Washington – Sept. 26 – (INS) – The Defense Department today announced a sharp increase in American casualties in Korea to a total of 85,469 or 2212 more than last week.
The week’s increase, including 890 dead, exceeded the weekly average of American casualties in the entire war.
The new total includes 12,715 killed in action; 60,410 wounded, of whom 1420 have died; and 12, 344 missing, of whom 145 are known to be dead. The total of known American deaths is 14,280.
[Note: This will be an occasional continuing series that I will post, featuring past stories in L.A. papers that are interesting and/or provide perspective to today’s world. Most of the examples are from copies made from microfilm, so I regretfully won’t be able to link to any source on the Internet for others to verify from. However, if you can convince me that you genuinely doubt the veracity of the information in question, and aren’t just someone who likes to waste my time for your amusement, I will be willing to scan the copy that I have and e-mail it to you as a jpg file. Otherwise, you are free to look it up yourself in the L.A. Public Library.]
Justin:
Nice finally to meet you at the blogger thing at Yankee Doodles.
Not to be a smart-alec or anything, but since we know that the Korean War resulted in about 37,000 Americans KIA (as the graphic in the Big Lizards sidebar indicates), why would anybody “genuinely doubt the veracity of the information” that by 1951, or about halfway through the war, some 14,000 Americans had been killed?
I’ve actually never heard anyone dispute these figures… not even liberals. Have I missed another liberal “truther” conspiracy?
Dafydd
Dafydd ab Hugh (445647) — 11/5/2007 @ 3:30 amGreat idea. You might also want to include statistics on GI disciplinary actions, only to counter the prevailing view that this generation’s miliary is nothing but a bunch of savages.
Patricia (f56a97) — 11/5/2007 @ 8:44 amDafydd– I’m quite sure he’ll eventually post SOMETHING to piss off someone who will accuse him of lying.
Thus, best to start off with a warning like that.
Foxfier (94990a) — 11/5/2007 @ 9:53 amDaffyd –
Foxfier is right. It is more of an innoculation against future posts in this series. Plus, while people might not take issue with the information itself here, some might still doubt that it only appeared as a “small blurb – below the fold”. 890 soldiers dead in one week was apparently enough of an expected occurance that it was not the major headline of the day back then.
Justin Levine (848a2b) — 11/5/2007 @ 11:01 amIn WW2 there were 9500 deaths and almost 16000 wounded per week for a 45 month period.
The figures from Korea were considerably less than that which probably had a little to do with public perspective, since WW2 was still less than a decade past.
Viet Nam averaged about 100 killed and 275 wounded per week for 10 years. The biggest difference was that television was a much more common medium than the previous two wars. Combine this with the fact that the earliest baby boomers were only 7 or 8 when the Korean armistice was declared and 19 at the beginning of Viet Nam – they had no personal experience with the staggering numbers from the past two wars to put the Viet Nam losses into more balance.
The first Gulf War was such a stunning victory with less than 500 killed that the public began to believe that this should be the norm. Most military academics will tell you it was more of an anomaly – plus there was a very narrow objective which Bush stuck to.
Voice of Reason (10af7e) — 11/5/2007 @ 11:19 amThis is a great idea, Justin. Studying history can be very enlightening but I don’t think there is an emphasis in schools or in the media on a detailed look at moments from the American past. I’m glad you are starting this series.
DRJ (5c60fb) — 11/5/2007 @ 11:52 amI made a miscalculation on my figures in #5. The WW2 figures were monthly not weekly.
Voice of Reason (10af7e) — 11/5/2007 @ 12:33 pm