Father Emil Kapaun: Leads camp prisoners in quiet acts of defiance

12/10/2009 12:00 AM

07/27/2013 9:31 AM









Tears flowed.



Kapaun spoke. His theme: forgiveness.




Kapaun had rallied them all.

When guards demanded that Ralph Nardella stand before the prisoners and recite what he had learned about Communism’s founders Marx and Engels, Nardella yelled out with a straight face to fellow captives that he’d learned a lot from “Marx and Engels and Amos and Andy,” the last two being fools from an American radio program. POWs laughed; the guards glared.


Herb Miller, inspired by Kapaun, began to read a pocket Bible, which one of Miller’s fellow prisoners hid from the Chinese by sticking it in a bandage he’d wrapped around his knee. The one place the Chinese would never search on them was a bandage, Miller thought grimly. They let the men die of their wounds.




A Chinese officer one day, outraged by POW defiance, told them he would shoot them all, and bury them “so that your bones will forever fertilize the soil of North Korea.”

There was a brief silence. Then Kapaun spoke:

“What a dumb son of a bitch!”


In private moments, Kapaun would renounce his swearing.

One day, filled with anger at the camp commander, Comrade Sun, Kapaun told Dowe, “When Jesus talked about forgiving our enemies, he obviously did not have Comrade Sun in mind!”

But he recanted after he cooled down.

“We need to forgive our enemies,” he told Funchess. “We need to love them, too.”




“What are you thinking of, Father?” Dowe asked.

He was daydreaming, the priest replied. “Of that happy day when the first American tank rolls down that road.”

Kapaun looked at Dowe.

“Then I’m going to catch that little so-and-so Comrade Sun and kick his ass right over the compound fence.”


There was at least one healing, prisoners said later.

Kapaun one day walked into a hut and took an apparently dying prisoner in his arms. Chester Osborne Jr. was one of Moose McClain and Dowe’s closest friends, but they saw, with eyes trained by experience, that he would die soon. Kapaun cradled Osborne in his arms, laid Osborne’s head on his shoulder. Kapaun then bluntly told Osborne to quit dying.

As a “precaution” he told him, “I’ll give you the last rites, just in case.” But he told Osborne to fight harder for his life. Then he prayed, for about five minutes.

Osborne rallied. This surprised everybody in that hut.




Esensten touched Kapaun’s leg. Then he pulled up Kapaun’s trouser and saw swelling, blue and black discoloration. He pressed a finger into a foot; the dent did not go away.


Kapaun stood silent.


“No,” Kapaun said.




“Would you like my spot next to the wall?” Funchess asked. Because of his injured foot, he had taken that spot weeks before. “The wall will give you protection.”

For once, Kapaun did not argue with a Good Samaritan; he said yes. Funchess lay beside him in the dark, warming the priest’s frail body with his own.


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