Chinese Soldiers Reached Hungnam and Found an Empty Port

December 1950. Hungnam, North Korea. The Chinese 9th Army Group had been sent to annihilate the 1st Marine Division and take Hamhung. When their troops finally walked into the port of Hungnam, they found smoking craters where the piers had been, and nothing they could use. Behind a wall of naval gunfire, 109 ships had taken out 105,000 troops, 17,500 vehicles and 98,100 Korean civilians in fourteen days. One of those ships was the SS Meredith Victory, a cargo ship with berths for twelve passengers. Captain Leonard LaRue and fewer than fifty crew loaded some 14,000 refugees into her holds, on top of 300 tons of jet fuel, and sailed south alone. This is the real story of the Hungnam evacuation, from the order to turn the refugees back to the five babies born on the way to Koje-do. Sources: HQ X Corps, Special Report on Hungnam Evacuation, 9-24 December 1950 (declassified, National Archives); Billy C. Mossman, Ebb and Flow (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1990); James A. Field, History of United States Naval Operations: Korea (1962); Lynn Montross and Nicholas Canzona, U.S. Marine Operations in Korea, Vol. III (1957); Public Law 86-398 (1960); MARAD, SS Meredith Victory; accounts of Leonard LaRue, J. Robert Lunney, Burley Smith and Merl Smith; Song Shilun's 9th Army Group review (11 Dec 1950); People's Daily, 1 January 1951; PRC Military Encyclopedia. Archival footage & credits: Film: U.S. Government works (USMC, U.S. Army Signal Corps, U.S. Navy, DoD), public domain, via the National Archives and the Internet Archive — used in short, re-framed excerpts as visual evidence: • ACTIVITY AT HUNGNAM HARBOR, KOREA (428-NPC-165) (1950) · archive.org/details/428-npc-165 • EVACUATION OF HUNGNAM (UNDERWATER DEMOLITION TEAM), KOREA (111-ADC-8617) (1950) · archive.org/details/111-adc-8617 • EVACUATION ACTIVITIES AT HUNGNAM, KOREA (428-NPC-167) (1950) · archive.org/details/428-npc-167 • EVACUATION OF HUNGNAM, KOREA (428-NPC-170) (1950) · archive.org/details/428-npc-170 • BOMBARDMENT OF HUNGNAM, KOREA (428-NPC-173) (1950) · archive.org/details/428-npc-173 • ACTIVITIES IN HUNGNAM HARBOR (428-NPC-189) (1950) · archive.org/details/428-npc-189 • EVACUATION OF HUNGNAM, KOREA (428-NPC-168) (1950) · archive.org/details/428-npc-168 • REFUGEES, PUSAN; EVACUATION, HUNGNAM AREA, KOREA (111-ADC-8634) (1951) · archive.org/details/111-adc-8634 • + 9 more U.S. Government reels (National Archives / Internet Archive) Photographs & documents: U.S. Navy photo 80-G-424297, National Archives; HQ X Corps, Special Report on Hungnam Evacuation (1950), NARA; U.S. Navy photo 80-G-424096, National Archives; U.S. Navy photo 80-G-424513, National Archives; U.S. Navy photo 80-G-424455, National Archives; U.S. Navy photo 80-G-423911, National Archives; Louis Claes, MAS Antwerp, public domain. Maps: drawn by Forgotten War Memo from Natural Earth data; Chosin Reservoir © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); terrain: Terrarium elevation tiles (AWS Open Data). Original research, script, narration, maps, animated graphics and edit: Forgotten War Memo. Some scenes use illustrative footage of the campaign, not the specific men named.