|
Elizabeth Hajek Kapaun and her husband
of one year, Enos, had moved the bed into the warm kitchen
of the remote farmhouse and had completed all the other
preparations that expectant parents of 1916 would make for
the birth of their first child. On April 20, Holy Thursday,
their son Emil Joseph was born at 11:00 a.m. Rev. John
Sklenar, surely the most towering and influential person in
the area, baptized the boy on May 9th at the
one-year-old St. John Nepomucene Church in Pilsen, Kansas,
three miles from the Kapauns’160 acre farm. Emil was
christened for a life in the pious, hard working Kapaun
family in this Bohemian enclave just forty miles south of
the central Kansas town of Abilene, the boyhood home of
Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Thirty-five years later
Captain (Chaplain) Emil J. Kapaun was dead. He was the
victim of malnutrition and pneumonia in a prisoner of war
camp in North Korea. The intervening years of Emil’s life
are the story of one man’s dedication to Christ and to the
Church. The last seven months of his life, spent in the POW
camp, are the inspiring story of a saintly hero consumed in
living a life of Christian virtue and service to his fellow
man under the most difficult and despicable conditions
imaginable.
Emil’s German-Bohemian ancestry
was typical for residents of the Pilsen area in 1916 and
today. His father Enos had been born of German and Bohemian
background in Czechoslovakia in 1880. His family emigrated
to Pilsen, Kansas, in 1887. Emil’s mother, Elizabeth Hajek,
was born in 1895 in Trego County, Kansas, of Bohemian
parents. Enos and Elizabeth were married on May 18, 1915.
Father Sklenar officiated at the nuptial Mass in Pilsen.
Emil had only one sibling, a
brother Eugene, born in 1924 when Emil was almost eight
years old. Emil always had a close relationship with his
family. He was a willing worker who was assigned chores
like gardening and weeding on the family farm. Emil enjoyed
hiking, hunting, swimming and fishing. Even as a youth,
Emil was skilled at repairing and building implements, a
talent that served him well all his life and especially in
the POW camp.
The young Emil was quiet and
retiring, with a keen sense of humor. Like his parents, the
Kapaun boy was hard working and neighborly; but, typical of
the German-Bohemian immigrants of the area, he was also
tenacious and determined. He grew up with these talents and
traits into a handsome man, blond and slender, with wide-set
eyes, a cleft chin and a strong nose.
Emil started school at age six
in the fall of 1922. He attended the Pilsen School,
District 115, where three Sister Adorers of the Precious
Blood of Christ (Wichita) taught grades one through eight.
Emil completed eight grades in six years with almost perfect
report cards and attendance. His instruction was in both
English and Bohemian, and Emil studied intensely to
understand the difficult Bohemian language. He frequently
arrived in Pilsen one hour before the start of school in
order to serve Mass for Fr. Sklenar. Emil continued to
serve Mass during vacations and on free days. He received
his First Holy Communion on May 29, 1924, and he was
confirmed by Bishop Schwertner on April 11, 1929, seven
months after starting his high school education at Pilsen
High School. The Sisters continued to serve as his teachers
at Pilsen High School, and his cousin Emil Melcher came to
Pilsen to live with the Kapauns while he attended high
school with Emil Kapaun. The two Emils became close
life-long friends as a result of their family and high
school experiences together during the next two years.
In September of 1930, Emil
Kapaun entered Conception, a boarding high school and
college in Missouri. His tuition and board were covered by
scholarships. He was an exceptionally good student, active
in sodality, drama, and choir. He learned Latin and Greek,
and had duties as sacristan, head librarian and writer for
the school newspaper. During his six years at Conception,
Emil returned each summer to help out on the family farm.
Each day of those summers in Pilsen started with Mass and
Holy Communion for Emil, no matter how much work had to be
done that day. He graduated from high school in 1932 and
spent the next four years studying classics and philosophy
at Conception College.
Fr. Sklenar, along with the
Bishop of Wichita and several of Emil’s aunts, were able to
put together financial assistance for Emil so he could begin
his studies for the priesthood at Kenrick Seminary in St.
Louis, Missouri, in late summer of 1936. By August of 1939,
Sub-deacon Emil Kapaun was assisting with street preaching in
the Bohemian language around the area of Caldwell, Kansas.
His first sermon was delivered in Bohemian from the pulpit
at St. John Nepomucene in Pilsen that same year when he was
the deacon at Christmas Midnight Mass. Bishop Christian
Winkelmann ordained Emil on June 9, 1940, at St. John’s
Chapel on the campus of Sacred Heart College in Wichita.
Fr. Kapaun, the first Pilsen native to be ordained,
celebrated his first Mass at his home parish eleven days
later in the presence of 1,200 guests. On June 30 of that
year he was assigned to be the assistant pastor at his own
parish, St. John Nepomucene in Pilsen. He made good use of
his Bohemian language skills there.
Bishop Winkelmann assigned Fr.
Kapaun the additional duty of serving as the auxiliary
chaplain at the army airbase in Herington, Kansas, sixteen
miles north of Pilsen. This appointment lasted for eighteen
months in 1943-44, and allowed Fr. Kapaun to learn the needs
of enlisted personnel and experience the satisfaction of a
calling to the chaplaincy.
In November of 1943, Fr. Sklenar
(now a monsignor) retired and his assistant at Pilsen, Fr.
Kapaun, became the pastor. As pastor, Fr. Kapaun desired to
spark an interest in the Bible among the younger members of
the parish. For Christmas that year Fr. Kapaun gave every
boy and girl in Pilsen a copy of the New Testament. But the
conscientious Fr. Kapaun, concerned that some who had known
him since childhood would be reluctant to confide in him as
their priest, requested that Bishop Winkelmann assign a
different Bohemian speaking priest to St. John. The bishop
relieved him of his pastoral duties at Pilsen and his
auxiliary chaplain duties at Herington, and recommended him
for U.S. Army chaplaincy on July 12, 1944.
Fr. Kapaun received a great deal
of personal challenge and satisfaction, both mental and
physical, from the daily army regimen he experienced at the
Fort Devens, Massachusetts, Army Chaplaincy School from
August to October 1944 and at his first post, Camp Wheeler,
Georgia, from October 1944 to March of the following year.
It was at Camp Wheeler that Chaplain Kapaun started his
habit of sending a copy of his monthly chaplain’s report
along with a long letter to his bishop in Wichita. In these
reports he listed the number of Sunday and daily Masses he
offered, the number of confessions he heard, the number of
instructions in the faith he conducted, as well as the
general attitude toward faith that he found among the
Catholic and non-Catholic service personnel. Both Bishop
Winkelmann and later Bishop Carroll sent written responses
to every monthly report and letter written by Fr. Kapaun.
Chaplain Kapaun served the
remainder of World War II and until May 1946 in Burma and
India. He considered the missionary priests and sisters
there to be real heroes for all the spiritual and physical
work they did in those countries to build up the faith and
to serve the faithful, especially during that time of
deprivation and hardship caused by war. For his own part,
Fr. Kapaun traveled two thousand miles by Jeep in May 1945
to celebrate Mass for troops in forward areas, two thousand
five hundred miles in July, and two thousand miles in
October. He was promoted to the rank of captain on January
3, 1946, and left Calcutta on May 3 of that year bound for
San Francisco. He was separated from the service one month
later and spent two weeks of his vacation that July serving
as the substitute pastor in Strong City, Kansas.
While waiting to find living
accommodations in Washington, D.C., to attend Catholic
University on the G.I. Bill, Fr. Kapaun served in brief
stints as temporary administrator of St. John Church in
Spearville, Kansas, and as assistant pastor at St. Teresa
Parish in Hutchinson. When he finally found a place to live
in Washington, he left Kansas to pursue post-graduate
studies in education and history so he could become
certified to teach in his home state. He completed a
dissertation entitled “A Study of the Accrediting of
Religion in the High Schools of the United States,” and Fr.
Kapaun was granted a Master’s Degree in Education from
Catholic University in early 1948. During his course of
studies at the university, Fr. Kapaun wrote to Bishop
Carroll in Wichita requesting the bishop’s permission to go
back into active military duty as a chaplain. Bishop
Carroll instead assigned Fr. Kapaun to be pastor of the
largely Bohemian parish in Timken, Kansas. After six months
as pastor at Timken, Fr. Kapaun again wrote to Bishop
Carroll requesting his permission to re-enlist. Fr. Kapaun
told the bishop that he loved his pastoral work in Timken,
but that his conscience told him that his priestly duty was
in the service. The bishop granted his request and Chaplain
Kapaun reported to the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Corps at Fort
Bliss, Texas, in late 1948. The routine of sharing his
monthly chaplain’s reports with the bishop was renewed, as
was the bishop’s written response to each report.
From December 12-16, 1949,
Chaplain Kapaun had what was to be his final visit to
Pilsen. He shipped out to Yokohama, Japan, in January of
1950. Fr. Kapaun was in Japan from February to July 1950.
One day each month he participated in a Day of Recollection
with other Catholic chaplains in Japan in order to refurbish
their spiritual lives and to enable them to carry out the
duties of the chaplaincy. On July 18, 1950, Chaplain Kapaun
landed at Po Hong Dong, Korea, with the First Cavalry
Division of the United States Army. For the next four months
Chaplain Kapaun tended to his chaplaincy duties with fierce
devotion. All the while he experienced first-hand the
horrors of the Korean War: the killed and wounded, the
shell-shocked, the refugees, the heat and mosquitoes in
summer, the wind and cold in winter, the sweat all year
round, the frequent lack of sleep and hot food, and the
constant nerve-racking noise and confusion of battle.
Chaplain Kapaun escaped with his
life on three separate occasions. His smoking pipe was shot
out of his mouth by a sniper’s bullet. He lost all his
possessions, including his Mass kit and Jeep. However, he
always carried the holy oils, the Blessed Sacrament and his
confession stole next to his body. Fr. Kapaun celebrated
Mass on the battlefield (many times with the hood of the
Jeep as the altar), kept up the morale of the GIs, helped
the Catholic servicemen in their efforts to be faithful,
tended to the wounded, and buried the dead (ally and enemy
alike). Many times he took time to write personal letters to
the next of kin of servicemen who had died in battle to
reassure the relatives of the fallen soldiers that they had
died in the presence of a priest and with the consolation of
the last rites.
Fr. Kapaun was present when the
allies captured An sung, and he celebrated Mass at a mission
there. The local Korean Catholics, who hadn’t attended Mass
or seen a priest in months, joined the troops in assisting
Fr. Kapaun at this moving service.
Fr. Kapaun received the Bronze
Star Medal for heroism in action on August 2, 1950, near
Kumchon, where he rescued a wounded soldier despite intense
enemy fire. This chaplain raised on the farm in Kansas was
becoming a legend to many in the Eighth Cavalry Regiment for
his heroism and faith.
Bishop Carroll received Chaplain
Kapaun’s last report and letter along with a package of
Korean War mementos in October of 1950. On November 2,
1950, Chaplain Kapaun was captured by the North Korean army
and its Chinese allies and became a prisoner of war. During
the next seven months this modest priest from Pilsen became
the saintly hero priest of Pyoktong prison.
The communist forces had
surrounded Chaplain Kapaun’s outfit near Unsan on the night
of November 1, 1950. Fr. Kapaun was captured once but
escaped when his captors were shot by allied soldiers. He
was captured a second time the next day when he went back to
be with the wounded. He and the other POWs were marched for
days to the prison camp at Pyoktong. Father had difficulty
walking because of his frostbitten feet. Once at the prison
site, the officers were separated from the enlisted men and
kept in a farmhouse located on a hill above the rest of the
camp. Fr. Kapaun would sneak down the hill to tend to the
sick and wounded, and he would even sneak out of the camp to
scrounge for corn, salt, millet, and soy beans for the
starving POWs. He prayed to St. Dismas before every one of
these missions. He gathered sticks to make fires to heat
water in the twenty-below-zero temperatures of February
1951. Using the talent he had perfected on the farm in
Kansas, he fashioned vessels out of old iron sheeting so he
could have containers to launder the clothing of the wounded
and have a place to store purified water. He led daily
prayers for the POWs and tended to their spiritual needs.
It is remarkable that this man
served as the pastor and caretaker for the officers and
enlisted men of Pyoktong prisoner of war camp while he
himself was participating in the daily routine demanded of
the prisoners. Required indoctrination sessions were held
every morning and every afternoon. Long before these
sessions began each day, sometimes as early as 5:00 a.m.,
Fr. Kapaun was off on his rounds. He led the prisoners in
prayer for their daily material and spiritual needs and for
their deliverance and liberation. He even led prayers for
their captors. His favorite prayers were the rosary and the
prayers from the Mass and from the Stations of the Cross.
He ministered to all, even conducting separate services for
the Protestant POWs. After prayers he made his rounds in
the camp, burying the dead and tending to the sick and
dying. He boiled water in his home-made vessels and
laundered the soiled clothing of the weak, incontinent POWs,
and he bathed those too ill to do so themselves. Then he
reported to indoctrination where his Chinese captors taunted
him that his God must not exist since He would not rescue
him. According to a 1954 letter from fellow POW Lt. Walter
Mayo reprinted in Fr. Arthur Tonne’s book The Story of
Chaplain Kapaun, the prisoners were buoyed by Fr.
Kapaun’s retort to the communists that, “God is as real as
the air they breathed but could not see, as the sounds they
heard but could not see, as the thoughts and ideas they had
and spoke but could not see or feel.” The POW survivors
report that Fr. Kapaun frequently told the indoctrinators
that the Chinese would eventually be saved from the
disasters which communism had brought them. After the daily
indoctrination sessions Fr. Kapaun went back to tending to
the needs of his flock. Fr. Tonne calls Fr. Kapaun, “…the
counselor, the nurse, the leader, the provider, the defender
of his fellow prisoners...” Fr. Kapaun was posthumously
awarded the Distinguished Service Cross on August 18, 1951.
He received this medal for tending to the wounded and dying
without regard to his personal safety at Unsan on November 1
and 2, 1950. It was at Unsan that Fr. Kapaun had
volunteered to remain behind with the wounded and where he
was captured.
Fr. Kapaun’s witness while
imprisoned at Pyoktong kept the other prisoners from losing
hope and giving in to the torture and indoctrination they
experienced there. His Chinese captors considered him to be
an agitator and a propagandist, but they did not know what
to make of the fact that he would not be scared or
threatened or humiliated. They were afraid to eliminate him
or stop him for fear the other prisoners would start a
rebellion. The story of Fr. Kapaun is the most mentioned
memory of the surviving POWs of Pyoktong. They admired and
loved him for the witness he gave by his kindness, humility,
cheerfulness, piety and hard work. Fr. Kapaun’s words and
example were instrumental in the conversion of several
fellow POWs. His words and works, his mild manner and soft
speech, gave all the men, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish,
Muslim, agnostic or atheist, faith to persevere through the
endless indoctrination sessions and tortures. His caring
example gave them the faith to serve one another.
Chaplain Kapaun, suffering from
a clot in his leg and an infection in his eye, led Easter
services for the prisoners in 1951. He employed a cane to
help him walk, and his infected eye was covered with a black
patch. Shortly after Easter, Fr. Kapaun was immobilized on
the floor of the prison so that he could heal. The POWs who
visited him knew he had to be suffering great pain, but Fr.
Kapaun rarely let on that he was hurting. Over the protests
of the other POWs, the Chinese captors ordered Fr. Kapaun to
the prison hospital after six weeks of immobilization in the
camp. Everyone knew that hardly any prisoners came back
alive from the hospital. It was a place to go to die.
Father Kapaun died in that hospital, alone and so weakened
that he was unable to even pick up the plates of the meager
meals left by the guards.
Sources differ on the exact date
and cause of Fr. Kapaun’s death. The U.S. Army records
indicate that he died of pneumonia on May 6, 1951. His
fellow prisoners insist that he died on May 23, 1951, and
that the cause of his death was malnutrition and
starvation.
Despite the disagreement about
these details of Fr. Kapaun’s death, both the army and the
POWs agree that this man must be honored and never forgotten
for the virtues he lived in that grim camp during those
seven months. Two artifacts from that time and place have
come to us as such an honor and remembrance to Fr. Kapaun.
One is the pyx that Chaplain Kapaun always carried on his
person in the camp until it was confiscated by the Chinese
and made into a child’s toy. The POWs convinced their
captors to return the pyx to them before liberation. The
other artifact is a hand-carved crucifix created by POW
Major Gerald Fink, a Jew. Major Fink carved the crucifix as
a tribute to Fr. Kapaun, whom he had come to admire and love
for the example of faith and good works the priest displayed
in that camp.
It is assumed that Fr. Kapaun’s
remains lie buried today in a common, unmarked grave close
to the location of the gruesome hospital of the POW camp at
Pyoktong, North Korea, near the Yalu River. He was only
thirty-five years old when he died, eleven years a priest.
May he rest in peace. And may the whole world come to be as
inspired by his life of virtue and service as those were who
knew him as priest on the prairies of Kansas and as chaplain
on the battlefields of Korea.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Maher, William L. A Shepherd in
Combat Boots, Chaplain Emil Kapaun of the 1st Cavalry
Division.
Shippensburg, PA, 1997.
Tonne, Rev. Arthur. The Story of
Chaplain Kapaun, Patriot Priest of the Korean
Conflict.
Emporia, KS, 1954. |
