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Korea: Forgotten Sacrifice
Frank Amoroso, author
Korea Forgotten Sacrifice tracks the experiences of Junior, a young American
combat photographer turned lethal assassin and Kim Il Sung, the Korean dictator who
led the invasion into the Republic of Korea in June, 1950. Assigned to General
MacArthur’s staff, Junior has an uncanny ability to survive behind enemy lines and
acquire valuable intelligence. Wild Bill Donovan selects Junior for Operation Solar
Eclipse, MacArthur’s plan to kill enemy leaders bearing code names of the planets.
Fearing escalation of the war, he orders Junior to avoid killing any Soviet officers.
At first, Kim’s Soviet-backed invasion is so successful that his army is on the verge of
driving the enemy off the Korean Peninsula. However, the United States brings its
considerable might to the war. Junior is dispatched into the war zone. From his sniper
hide, Junior targets two North Korean generals standing with a general in a Soviet
uniform. He kills the two and refrains from shooting the third who he later learns was
Kim.
Back in Tokyo, Junior meets a Japanese geisha named Sachie. They fall in love. She is the
only thing keeping him from becoming a soulless killing machine. MacArthur forbids
Junior from an interracial marriage with the geisha.
MacArthur turns the tide of the war by conducting a brilliant turning maneuver invading
at Inchoen behind Kim’s lines. When Junior returns from an exceptionally dangerous
assignment, he learns that Sachie is a fugitive because she stabbed two drunken American
officers who tried to rape her. With Sachie gone, Junior is sent again behind enemy lines.
When he loses another close buddy, he captures an enemy machine gun and kills several
hundred North Korean soldiers. He is rewarded with a trip to Washington where
President Truman awards him several Purple Heart and Silver Star medals. In a drunken
rage at his losses, he throws all the medals into the river.
As UN forces under MacArthur move close to the Yalu River separating Korea from China,
Mao takes over the North Korean military and commits 300,000 soldiers to stop
MacArthur’s advance. Chosin Reservoir in the North Korean mountains is where the
combatants collide in brutal, freezing conditions. Vastly outnumbered, the American
military faces annihilation. Junior is recruited for Project Ramona, a CIA operation to
recover Japanese atomic bomb research in the tunnels beneath Chosin Reservoir. After
successfully securing valuable atomic research, Junior is severely injured when a falling
soldier nearly crushes him while he is escaping on a rope ladder.
When the doctors in Tokyo fear that Junior will not survive, MacArthur contacts a
classmate who is a top spinal trauma surgeon to operate on Junior. During his recovery,
Junior is visited by MacArthur who informs him that the President has fired him for
planning to use the Japanese research to create a forty-mile wide radioactive zone
between China and North Korea. The war has destroyed everyone that Junior values.
As Junior sinks into hopelessness, a friend of Sachie tells him where to find her. A
damaged Junior travels to the remote island of Iriomote, where he re-unites with Sachie
at a scenic waterfall where she releases a traditional warrior kite in a gesture of closure.