axe murders Han was referring to claimed the lives of two U.S. officers, and brought the peninsula to the brink of conflict. About a hundred metres from where we stood was the Bridge of No Return, where, on August 18, 1976, Captain Arthur G. Bonifas and First Lieutenant Mark T. Barrett met their fates. The Bridge of No Return was so-named because when POWs from the Korean War were exchanged between April and September 1953, the predominantly American, Chinese, North, and South Korean POWs’ decision to cross from or into North and South Korea was irrevocable. Until 1976, the bridge and the road over it was the only land route connecting the two countries. Just fifteen kilometres northwest, over the bridge along the road into the North, was Gaesong, the capital of Korea’s Goryeo Kingdom, the latter in existence from 918 to 1392.
Han informed us that a poplar tree by the bridge had been the trigger for the murders. He permitted us to stroll down to the bridge — a long, single-lane slab of now darkened, worn concrete — which moved over a small stream overgrown with bushes. In 1976, on this side of the bridge, was the modest UNC Checkpoint 3; across from it was KPA Checkpoint 4 (both posts are now gone). Two lush, broad and leafy poplar trees once grew close to the UN checkpoint. One of the trees partially blocked the view of UNC guards stationed at our current location (where Han met us). The UNC would occasionally trim the poplar to ensure the view was unobstructed between the two posts.
At ten thirty in the morning on Wednesday, August 18, 1976, Bonifas and Barrett, and a modest security team and work crew, conveyed out in a work truck to trim the tree. Three men carried axes up the ladders. Within two minutes, nine KPA guards and a senior lieutenant by the name of Pak Chul dashed across the bridge to the poplar.
Lieutenant Pak’s rank was equivalent to that of an American staff sergeant, wrote Kirkbride, adding UNC brass considered Pak a tough officer, with a reputation for discipline, demanding law and order from his soldiers in the JSA. The UNC had nicknamed him “Bulldog,” for his penchant for provoking incidents. In 1974, for example, when a high-ranking U.S. officer was touring the JSA, UNC guards prevented the KPA from snapping the officer’s photo. Pak, in response, “kicked an American officer in the groin.”
As the UNC work crew began trimming the tree, Pak confronted Bonifas and ordered him to instruct his men to cease work. It was 10:50 a.m. Bonifas told his crew to continue. Pak became incensed and threatened to kill him. He called for reinforcements. By eleven a.m. there were about thirty KPA soldiers gathered under the tree.
Pak then slipped off his wristwatch, wrapped it in a white handkerchief, put it in his trousers pocket, and shouted, “Mi gun a chu I cha!” (“Kill the U.S. aggressors!”).
“He pounced upon Captain Bonifas, striking him in the back and knocking him to the ground,” wrote Kirkbride. “Bonifas was [then] beaten to death by at least five other KPA guards.”
The melee lasted about four minutes and was only stopped when Bonifas’s truck driver positioned his vehicle over his commander’s mutilated body. Four U.S. enlisted men and four ROK soldiers were injured. Meanwhile, Barrett was separated from the other men and systematically bludgeoned with an axe.
The incident was captured on film by a UN guard stationed at one of the posts who had a movie camera with a telephoto lens. Clips from the footage were shown on American television news programs the following night. In DMZ: A Story of the Panmunjom Axe Murder, Kirkbride included sixteen still frames from that assault, twelve depicting KPA soldiers massing around the officers, swinging axes. The two Americans were subsequently taken to hospital, but it was too late. Both had succumbed to their injuries. Bonifas, a West Point graduate, had volunteered to be sent to Korea, and was scheduled to return home to Newburgh, New York, to his wife and three young children, in just two weeks.
In Washington, the National Military Command Centre and Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon were notified within two hours of the deaths. Washington taxed Eighth Army Commanding General Richard G. Stilwell in Seoul with devising a response plan. Stillwell and his officers hatched Operation Paul Bunyan. It called for sixteen ROK engineers to be sent to the tree to cut it down, protected by infantry, attack helicopters and tanks. Sixty-four members of the elite 1st ROK Special Forces Brigade would surround the tree. In the air above would be twenty American UH-1 Huey helicopters carrying U.S. troops to be placed on the ground if KPA forces responded. Eight American Cobra attack helicopters would be circling, another eight idling on the ground, and seven on standby. An American platoon of twenty Sheridan tanks would be moved to the JSA, ready to level it with shells, to allow forces to evacuate if the KPA attacked.
And there was more, much more. Within twenty hours of the killings, the Pentagon ordered U.S. air and naval reinforcements to Korea, and a squadron of F-111 fighter jets stationed in Idaho flew nonstop to Suwon Air Base, just south of Seoul. A number of F-4 Phantom fighters stationed in Okinawa and two B-52 bombers from Guam were also sent to Korea. The U.S. Fifth Air Force in Yogota, Japan, was placed on increased readiness. Parts of the U.S. Seventh Fleet and the aircraft carrier USS Midway were directed to the peninsula. In the South, the 38th Air Defense Artillery Brigade — which would control an air war — went into full readiness. The ROK’s 600,000 and the U.S.’s 37,000 troops in the South were put on alert for a mission they knew little about. This was big.
Two days later, on August 19, Operation Paul Bunyan was approved by official channels in Washington. Later that day, President Ford gave final approval. By late evening, General Stilwell, in Seoul, still had not received official word when the mission would go. He needed to know by midnight if he was to carry out the plan the next day. With fifteen minutes to spare, he got his reply: commence operations at seven a.m. He briefed ROK and U.S. battalion commanders, who briefed their soldiers.
“Pray we can get through the next day without war,” Stilwell told his wife, the military weight of the ROK and U.S. Army, Air Force, and Navy, directed at Panmunjeom.
Just after seven the next morning, three days after the murders, a U.S. officer entered the JSA and announced to a North officer that the operation was commencing. Minutes later, the operation’s first element crossed into the DMZ. Major Kirkbride, who spoke some Korean, had a firsthand view as interpreter for the ROK troops. The sixty-four ROK Special Forces, clutching long wooden clubs, formed a human ring around the engineers at the tree. Nearby, ROK Reconnaissance troops were concealed at the line of trees and U.S. helicopters buzzed low overhead.
To cut through the poplar’s three massive limbs required thirteen chainsaws — each kept getting gummed up with sap. Four burned out. By seven forty-five, the tree was finally down. All forces, except ROK Reconnaissance, began to depart. By eight o’clock, the operation was complete. A U.S officer in an overhead helicopter said he sighted upwards of five hundred KPA soldiers in the JSA, dashing about in all directions, many in groups of two, three, or more, apparently confused about the show of force. From a tunnel in the JSA previously unknown to UNC, KPA soldiers had emerged wearing helmets and carrying rifles.
By four thirty in the afternoon, all U.S. and ROK forces, except aviators, had returned to their home bases to wait out the night on alert. No one knew how North Korea would react. General Stilwell, who had managed to get only an hour of sleep in the previous seventy-two hours, took the opportunity to get some shuteye. In the following weeks, numerous meetings between the two sides were held at the MAC building in the JSA. The UNC demanded an apology for the murders. Kim Il-sung offered a half-hearted response. After a month, all UNC units returned to normal duties.
Changes came in the JSA because of the incident. Personnel from both countries, once free to wander the entire compound, were now relegated to their own side. A concrete sidewalk — today visible along Conference Row — was poured to delineate the demarcation line. As well, The Bridge of No Return was permanently shuttered. As for Lieutenant Pak, he continued to patrol the JSA. But after the 1984 firefight involving the Russian, Matauzik, Kirkbride claims that Pak was not seen again, and speculated he may have been one of the three KPA guards killed during that gun battle.
