Remembering Meredith Victory
This December 1950 file photo shows the United States SS Meredith Victory anchored in the port of Busan on Christmas Eve after the “Hungnam Evacuation” in which it transported more than 14,000 refugees from Hungnam in North Korea to Geoje Island in South Gyeongsang Province, during the Korean War. /Courtesy of National Museum of Korean Contemporary History
By Richard Pennington
The Christmas season may be over, but there is a Christmas story I would like to relate. It pertains not to Jesus' birth in Bethlehem but to courage and compassion here on the Korean Peninsula nearly 70 years ago.
As is well known, the tide of the Korean War changed in October 1950 when Mao Zedong sent 250,000 (with many more yet to come) of his soldiers over the Yalu River to aid their fellow Communists from North Korea.
U.N. forces, mostly American soldiers and marines, began a hasty retreat. They managed to get out of the Chosin Reservoir, to the east coast to waiting U.S. Navy ships and down below the 38th parallel to regroup and fight again.
Before those military men could fully evacuate, a humanitarian crisis unfolded on the beach at Hungnam. An estimated 100,000 civilians dearly wanted out too, so they had come over back roads and mountains to get there. By that time, they had experienced five years of life under Kim Il-sung.
Freedom to breathe and freedom to live, they heard, could be found in the South. Among those cold, shivering and frightened people were Moon Yong-hyung, Kang Han-ok and Moon Jae-wol ― the father, mother and sister, respectively, of future President Moon Jae-in.
By Dec. 22, most of that throng had been evacuated. That's when a merchant marine ship named Meredith Victory arrived. It was bringing arms and other supplies, but the circumstances had changed drastically.
The captain, Leonard LaRue, was under no legal obligation to help. It would have been altogether convenient for him to say, “Hey, the game's up” and head south without even docking.
Hyun Bong-hak (a 28-year-old U.S.-educated medical doctor), Edward H. Forney of the Marines and Major General Edward Almond all helped facilitate the evacuation, and that is equally true of LaRue.
A Pennsylvania native and World War II veteran, he made a quick decision to help. All the materiel was taken off the ship, and his crew of 47 started bringing in people in the most orderly way possible.
Conditions, they realized immediately, were not ideal. There were no food, water, heat or sanitation facilities, and it was dark in the holds. Not a single doctor was on board, and the only gun was the pistol in LaRue's pocket.
Try to imagine this chaotic scene: The Chinese and North Korean soldiers were closing in, American artillery fire was flying over their heads, they had already experienced too much death (the Chinese were slaughtering so many people that the Songchon River was clogged with bodies), and they knew the big cargo ship was their only chance for survival.
The Meredith Victory, overloaded with humanity, pulled out of the harbor just as a huge explosion took place; the Marines blew up 200 tons of ammunition and fuel. Some people were left behind, and tears would be shed for them in the days, weeks and years to come.
The Meredith Victory was the last ship to leave the mine-infested harbor. It had no military escort on its south-bound journey, and a single mechanical problem could have spelled doom. The 14,000 people were packed so tightly they could only stand up, and they remained that way for two and a half days.
LaRue piloted them down to Busan. But their suffering was not over. Busan was already full of evacuees, and so permission to dock was refused. At least they got food and supplies before continuing on to Geoje Island.
It was Christmas Day when they dropped anchor. Amazingly, there had been not a single death ― and five babies had been born! “God's own hand was at the helm of my ship,” LaRue would later say.
It was the stuff of legend, the largest humanitarian rescue operation ever by a single ship. There are an estimated 100,000 living descendants of those who had made the 450 nautical mile trip from Hungnam to Geoje. The Meredith Victory, sometimes called “the miracle ship,” did service in the Vietnam War and was scrapped in China in 1993.
LaRue embarked on a new path in life four years after the evacuation. He joined St. Paul's Abbey in Newton, New Jersey, took the name Brother Marinus and devoted himself to work and prayer.
By the time he died in 2001, the once-flourishing Catholic monastery had almost withered away. This came to the attention of a group of monks in Waegwan, a place that saw considerable fighting in the Korean War. They, of course, knew the story of what LaRue had done for their compatriots back in 1950 and decided to return the favor.
To make a long story short, they went to New Jersey, revived the monastery and put it on a sound basis. As if that were not enough, there are people in the Catholic Church who are trying to get LaRue canonized and possibly sanctified.
Richard Pennington (raput76@gmail.com), a native of Texas in the U.S., works as an editor at a law firm in southern Seoul. He has written 22 nonfiction books, including “Travels of an American-Korean, 2008-2013.” He is the director of an NGO, the Committee to Bring Jikji Back to Korea.