The grinding, tearing protest of metal on hard ground pierced the air as the Corsair scorched to a wheelless stop in sight of enemy guns. The dazed pilot relaxed; the ordeal of nursing a crippled plane across the North Korean hills was over. Smokey bursts from Communist batteries had followed him all the way down, but now he was safe. He had reached tiny Yodo island and friendly hands.
For three years of war Yodo was an allied thorn in the Communist flank, sitting in the shadow of the North Korean metropolis of Wonsan. On three sides the island’s defenders faced spasmodic gunfire from artillery located on the Red-held mainland and witnessed confused amphibious rehearsals aimed at recapturing their strategic sentry deep in enemy territory.
The story of Yodo began in the winter of 1950, but it was a closely guarded secret until the truce was signed. Now the island has been abandoned to the Communist forces, who for three years have seen but could not touch.
In 1950 when the Chinese People’s Army forced all UN troops to withdraw south of the 38th parallel, a partisan force was secreted on Yodo, a scant ten miles from the North Korean key city of Wonsan. The island’s position at the entrance to the horseshoe-shaped harbor was precarious. The Communists lost no time embedding heavy artillery to take the island under a harassing cross fire in an attempt to dislodge the unwanted tenants.
Sitting in the mouth of the harbor like a cork in a bottle, the tiny island became the key to the longest and most concentrated naval action in history—the siege of Wonsan. For all the half-mile-wide, mile-long island contributed, it has been called the United Nation’s biggest bargain in the basement of Korean war.
The mission of Yodo’s occupants was purely defensive in nature: to hold the island as a base for clandestine and covert guerrilla activities, spot ship’s fire, and deny the island to the enemy. Yodo also offered a haven of refuge, seventy-five miles inside hostile territory, to endangered UN fliers.
The defensive force on the island consisted of one battalion of Korean Marines headed by a small command group of U. S. Marines and Navy men. The men and ships of Task Force 95, the United Nation’s Blockading and Escort Force, were the island’s primary defense against amphibious raid or seizure. However, the island command was equipped to contain and destroy any force which might escape annihilation by the Navy during an amphibious attempt.
Enemy occupation of Yodo would have severely limited the United Nations’ destructive actions against the vital supply and communication center of Wonsan. As it was, the Communists were denied the facilities of this “Chicago of North Korea” while UN losses remained at a minimum.
Under threat of amphibious invasion by U. S. forces, the enemy was obliged to concentrate 30,000 crack troops in the Wonsan sector. This force, which might otherwise have been engaged on the battle line, seventy-five miles to the south, was immobilized by a UN team small in proportion to its achievements.
Blockading ships of Task Force 95, aided by target spotters from Yodo and neighboring islands, checkmated the heavy artillery encircling the 135,000-acre harbor. Furtive sorties by Yodo marauders sallied forth nightly to harass the wary Reds and abduct troops for interrogation. Following one such raid, partisans learned that the Communists had definite offensive plans for invasion, by night assault, aimed at Yodo and other nearby UN real estate.
Before daylight on the snowy morning of February 20, 1952, the defending garrison neighboring Yodo was alerted to an invasion force crossing the narrow channel from the mainland. The defenders, U. S. and Korean Marines, were rallied to resist the oncoming Reds. Through the blurry night thirty sampans were counted advancing silently on the little island.
The defending ships, normally stationed nearby, were away on a shore bombardment mission several miles up the coast. When the impact of the situation developed, the island signaled “Communists attacking in sampans. . . . Urgent you intercept.” One U. S. destroyer, U.S.S. Shelton, a New Zealand frigate, H.M.N.Z.S. Taupo, and American destroyer-minesweep, U.S.S. Endicott, answered the call.
As the invaders neared the shoreline, well- camouflaged, cave-concealed shore batteries heralded their coming. For ten minutes before the assault wave landed, the Red artillery carpeted the island in suppression fire. As the bombardment lifted the defending forces took the advancing enemy under fire immediately. As a result of intense and accurate shooting, less than half the raiding force actually landed. The remainder withdrew.
Those who managed to reach the island quickly occupied abandoned trenches and foxholes, but unexpected mortars drove them into the open where they were cut down by small arms and automatic weapons in what one Marine called a veritable “Turkey Shoot.” While the island fighting raged, the UN ships rushing to the rescue, spotlighted the retreating sampans and destroyed what was left. After the short battle was over, the UN forces counted 86 enemy dead and six prisoners on the island. An estimated eighty were annihilated by shipboard guns. No UN troops had been killed.
The island’s defenders served brief but active stays on Yodo. For the U. S. Marines, island duty was customarily assigned after a normal tour at the front line with the division. Life on the harbor island was not too difficult despite the unpredictable enemy artillery and primitive living conditions. Housing was usually on the reverse slope from enemy gunfire, taking advantage of the protection offered by the hillside. Underground bunkers were warm, heated by crude but efficient oil stoves, and offered perfect protection against everything except large caliber direct hits. Portable generators provided electrical power and a nightly movie offered diversion from an otherwise “normal” routine.
Tough Korean Marines, trained by their U. S. counterpart, patrolled the island against enemy infiltration. They challenged with “chota nugys,” meaning “halt. . . who is it?” The friendly reply in Korean was “tomo.”
In early 1952 the Navy decided to construct an air strip on the swaybacked island. The increasingly heavy loss of aircraft, damaged by flak and forced to ditch near ships in Wonsan harbor when unable to reach their base, pointed up the need for an emergency field in the area.
Until the strip was built, helicopters offered the best chance for rescue, and in each emergency the plane was lost. Before it was safe to land a construction crew, the Communists needed convincing that Yodo wasn’t to be tampered with. This was the job of the ships and guns of the Blockading Force. They took Yodo under their wing and the Red Shore batteries under fire. Day in and day out, they pounded the surrounding shore line and hammered the caves hiding enemy artillery, but at night the Communists would dig out and begin firing again.
The recapture of Yodo had top priority in the Communist’s schedule of war, and their interest intensified as the island became a bargaining point at the armistice negotiations.
More and more Communist shore batteries ringed the tiny island. New guns began firing from Kalmagak point, six miles away. Hodo Pando opened up with batteries aimed at the end of the island nearest the mainland, while undiscovered guns, entrenched on Umido, a scant four miles across the bay, began an incessant bombardment of the island natives’ village and the air-sea rescue helicopter kept nearby.
Two small ships on defensive patrol were hit in the night duel with the enemy’s guns, while everything that moved on or around Yodo was fair game for the heavy artillery. A North Korean officer, captured a few days before, told how the Communists intended to take the island by constant bombardment and night assault. Chosen troops had been secretly assembled nearby with a commandeered fishing fleet for invasion barges.
This looked like it! Shells rained in continuously and were well coordinated. The little island was in a crossfire from batteries zeroed in from three directions. The Communists were determined to drive the United Nations from their front yard. Throughout the night the shelling continued against the unaided island. But Yodo was not defenseless. A radio call went out for help and the big brother protectors came on the double.
The heavy cruiser U.S.S. Helena and the mighty battleship New Jersey were the first to answer the call. The two heavyweights ceased their bombardment of other parts of Korea, trained in their guns, and came charging to the rescue. The U.S.S. Helena arrived at dawn and began slugging with the Communist gunners. The battleship New Jersey wasn’t far behind. Directed by spotters on the besieged island, they methodically erased the threatened invasion. Cave hidden artillery and fishing junks alike felt the weight of naval gunfire.
The Communists couldn’t win. They rolled their guns back into their caves and Wonsan harbor was quiet.
Fourteen plain crosses bore mute evidence of the need for an emergency landing site. On June 9, 1952, the Seabees of Amphibious Construction Battalion One arrived at Yodo. Work began immediately.
Unexpected conditions forced the use of emergency unloading techniques. Fuel drums and other equipment were floated ashore through shallow water while a survey team marked the bounds of the proposed 2400-by- 200 foot landing strip. As heavy equipment moved ashore, protective nets, covering native rice paddies, were removed, and work of cutting and filling began. The airstrip would bisect the island, beginning and ending in the sea.
Oil drums were cut and fitted for drainage canals and pipelines to carry excess water from the rice fields. Carryalls, graders, and dozers gouged monstrous loads of earth as the work progressed 16 hours a day.
Low hills shielded the Seabees from prying Communist observers but progress was not without enemy opposition. On two occasions enemy shore battery fire was directed at the operation.
Large caliber shells, falling harmlessly short of the target, failed to halt the record breaking construction project. Twelve days after the work began, the runway was ready to receive aircraft.
The last bit of grading was hardly finished when seven planes, crippled as a result of enemy fire, used the runway in forced landing. The seven planes and pilots were only the beginning, for the strip proved invaluable in helping fighter planes carry the attack nearer North Korean installations.
In the words of the Officer in Charge of construction, “The salvage of one plane has more than offset the cost of the project.”
Battle, measured in misery and men, is all cost, but by these standards Yodo was inexpensive—a bargain in the basement of war.