A fellow prisoner of war has fondly recalled the heroism of Father Emil
Kapaun, a U.S. Army chaplain who died in a North Korean camp and posthumously received the Medal of Honor April 11.
Eighty-five year-old veteran Mike Dowe still remembers the day in 1950
when he marched nearly 90 miles to the prison camp in Pyoktong after
being captured at the battle of Unsan.
“There was this one character who kept going around encouraging people
to carry the wounded, and helped in every way he could,” Dowe told CNA.
“Finally they marched us into a valley, and as we started out I was on
the front end of a stretcher...and I said 'I'm Mike Dowe, who's that on
the back?'”
“He says 'Fr. Kapaun,' and I said 'Fr. Kapaun, I've heard about you,'
and he said 'Well don't tell my bishop.' That's how I met him.”
Fr. Kapaun was born in Pilsen, Kansas, to a farming family, and was
ordained a priest for the Diocese of Wichita in June, 1940. He became an
Army chaplain in 1944, and served through 1946, and then re-joined in
1948. He was sent to Korea in July 1950, where was noted for his service
to his compatriots.
The priest was captured by the Chinese in November at Unsan because he was in the habit of going back for the wounded.
“He would run across the fields rescuing the wounded...including
sometimes 50-100 yards outside the American lines to drag some kid
back,” Roy Wenzl, co-author of “The Miracle of Father Kapaun,” told CNA
on April 8.
“At Unsan, he stayed back with the wounded and allowed himself to be captured so he could protect them.”
“He didn't go around witnessing verbally about Catholicism and
Christianity much...instead, he'd be on a march with the unit and he'd
see guys digging a latrine, and he'd go out and dig with them.”
“It's not like he avoided Christianity; I think he was the finest
witness to Christianity I've ever heard of,” Wenzl said, “but what he
did, is he first established a relationship with these guys, who were
busy doing really dirty work, of helping them, finding ways to help
them.”
Wenzl noted that Fr. Kapaun would stay up at nights writing letters to
the families of deceased soldiers and writing home on behalf of wounded
soldiers.
“He put on a virtual clinic about how to be a leader, and how to be an
effective witness for Christianity...there's a shortage of Catholics who
behaved like him,” Wenzl observed.
For Wenzl, Fr. Kapaun's witness is a “phenomenal” demonstrating that
there are “real Christians” in the world. “If there were more of him,
there'd probably be a lot more people in church on Sundays, because
that's the way to do it.”
The author said that Fr. Kapaun “treated everybody just the same way he
treated the Catholics, and he treated Catholics like loved ones.”
Fr. Kapaun's upbringing on a farm contributed to his ability to help
his fellow prisoners at the prison camp at Pyoktong, on the Chinese
border. In addition to his spirituality, Fr. Kapaun was the “most
practical and resourceful problem-solver,” Wenzl said. These were skills
he had learned growing up on a Kansas farm, where he was forced to find
creative solutions to challenges presented to him.
Dowe said that the death rate of prisoners in nearby valleys was some
ten times that in the valley where he and Fr. Kapaun were held, and so
one “can see the kind of effect he had on people.”
“He taught them to maintain their will to live, by teaching them to
hold to their beliefs, honor, integrity, and keeping with their
conscience, their loyalty to their country and their God.”
A “good majority” of the men who survived Pyoktong “owe their life to Fr. Kapaun,” said Dowe.
The priest was known for celebrating the sacraments for his fellow
prisoners – baptizing, hearing confessions, giving extreme unction, and
saying Mass.
Fr. Kapaun was also always volunteering to do the most menial and
laborious tasks at the camp, said Dowe. Each day he would help to take
the frozen corpses of those who had died the preceding night to an
island in the Yalu River for burial.
That winter was one of the most brutal in Korean history.
“He would always volunteer for this most heinous detail,” Dowe related.
Fr. Kapaun would then bring back some of the dead's clothes, wash them,
and distribute them to the people who needed them.
Fr. Kapaun already has been awarded several military honors, but
Thursday's presentation of the Medal of Honor to his relatives is the
highest military honor in the U.S., and is awarded for bravery.
His cause for canonization is open, and already several cures may have
been due to his intercession. When asked if he believes if Fr. Kapaun is
in heaven, Dowe responded, “I sure do.”
Fr. Kapaun died May 23, 1951, and was buried in a mass grave on the Yalu river.
“When he was being carried away, they took him to a place, a death
house...and left him where they left people to die,” Dowe remembered.
“As he was leaving, I was in tears, and he said to me, 'Mike, don't be
sad, I'm going where I always wanted to go, and when I get there I'll be
saying a prayer for all of you guys.'”