Graybeards - Korean War Veterans Association

Father Kapaun
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Wichita [KS] Eagle ran an eight-part series on Father Kapaun in
December 2009. Deputy Editor Tom Shine graciously offered to let us reprint the series in
its entirety. We will do that in serial fashion, since the series is too long for us to include
in one issue.
We offer our deep gratitude to writer Roy Wenzl and Deputy Editor Shine for permission
to reprint the articles.
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This is Part V of our continuing series on Father Emil Kapaun.
The Wichita Eagle (Kansas), December 11, 2009 Wednesday
Father Emil Kapaun: As hundreds die, Kapaun rallies the POWs;
Part 5: The Miracle of Father Kapaun
BYLINE: ROY WENZL; The Wichita Eagle
SECTION: a; Pg. 1: LENGTH: 1267 words
“No sincere prayer is ever wasted.” -
Father Emil Kapaun
At sunrise on Easter Sunday, March 25,
1951, Father Emil Kapaun startled POWs
by donning his purple priest’s stole and
openly carrying a Catholic prayer missal,
borrowed from Ralph Nardella.
He had talked atheist guards into letting
him hold an Easter service, a favor
they soon regretted.
No one there would ever forget this
day. The most moving sight the POWs
ever saw.
At sunrise, 80 officers — bearded, dirty
and covered with lice — followed Kapaun
up a little rise, to the cold steps of a
bombed-out church. They gathered in a
circle around him. Kapaun held a crude
crucifix made from broken sticks. He
looked thin and filthy; except for the black
eye patch, he looked to Walt Mayo like
one of the ragged apostles.
Kapaun began speaking, and his voice
caught; he said he didn’t have the equipment
to give them a proper Mass. But then
he held up his ciborium, the tiny gold container
that before his capture had held
communion hosts he had placed on
tongues of soldiers.
He opened Nardella’s prayer missal,
and as he began to recite from it, the
Christians among them realized what a
risk he was now taking. He was beginning
not from the Easter promise of rebirth but
from the dark brutality of Good Friday.
As the guards glared, Kapaun read the
Stations of the Cross, describing Christ’s
condemnation, torture and death. Captives
who had been mocked and tormented and
beaten listened as Kapaun spoke of Christ
being mocked and tormented and beaten.
Tears flowed.
Kapaun held up a rosary. He asked the
non-Catholics to let the Catholics indulge
for a bit; they knelt as he said the rosary,
recited the glorious mysteries of Christ
rising, ascending, defying death for all
time.
A Cross at Kapaun High School that was carved
in honor of Father Kapaun
Fr. Kapaun
A voice rose in song. A POW, Bill
Whiteside, had a beautiful voice, and he
raised it now to sing the Lord’s Prayer, a
recital that gave goose bumps to Sidney
Esensten, the Jewish doctor.
Kapaun spoke. His theme: forgiveness.
And he said he did not feel qualified to
advise them about life because, “I am not
any better than you are.”
Then they all sang as Kapaun had
taught them: loud so that the enlisted men
could hear. Starving men sang at sunrise,
the same song Whiteside had sung, the
Lord’s Prayer, a song they laced with reverence.
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.
There were now hundreds of acts of
defiance in the camps every day. Kapaun
and a prisoner named William Hansen
stole dysentery drugs from the Chinese
hospital and smuggled them to Esensten.
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
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