Visit to UN First Battle Memorial Hall, Monument(Tower) & Its Peace Park

 It has been known the first UN battle place is renovated in 5 Jul. 2020, three years ago.

I had visited a couple of time, but it was my first visit for the memorial hall and its renowned peace park.

Yesterday on Wednesday on 5 Jul. 2023 on the 73rd anniversary of the battle, I would like to visit there to remember the sacrifice of the Task Force Smith and their souls fallen down on this hill on the same day that day.

From my house in Songpa-gu, Seoul, I and my wife drove my car on the highway of Yongin-Seoul and kept driving to arrive Dongtan lamp way. I passed through a downtown of Dongtan and tried to find the route for the monument, seeing the configuration of a front mountain and a national flag flagging over the range. I lost my way and found we were on the road where a city education office was seen on the eastern side of the monument hill. I later identified that the wrong road we took had been a main retreat route of the TF Smith, which was the rail ways. We finally could arrive the monument parking lot and were surprised to look around at the new building name Peace Hall, exhibited Patton Tank, Shooting Star Fighter Plane and a lot of landscape.

The monument was there as before and so was 23 participant flags. The wheelchair lamp was still preserved behind the monument. But the new building and the area, around the building, sloped downward from the north side of the memorial hall were brilliantly new.

We entered the memorial hall, paying out respect and looked at the pictures and stories of the veterans mostly from the American Army 24th Division and their relatives. These were the scenes of Japanese Camp Wood where TF Smith had stationed and the scenes of their relics where these were dig out in the hills.

At the north edge of the parking lot, we watched down and surveyed the newly modified area around the Peace Building and the old monument(tower) of the battle monument which had been located at the opposite hillside of this new facility, crossing the national road #1.

We started to take our steps up the wood steps behind the memorial building and continued on to take the path covered with a strips of soft fiber mats on top of the ridge for the observatory stand at the peak of the eastern edge. I thought the path we had trodden was a main resistance line of TF Smith along which members of TF occupied fox holes, setting up their rifles and guns.

It is great to form a trail of the fighting as an excursion route and we appreciated the government and Osan city authority to renovate the facility in a highly new brand manner. We had the opportunity to remind of the stories of the battle in line with our knowledge and to pay our respect, deep in our hearts to the brave souls perished in these hills, 73 years ago.

Let me introduce here the sad story written by a survival veteran participated in the battle, and exhibited in the wall of the hall.

“Oh Father

Why did I have to suffer this awful gruesome test,

For I was there from start to his dying and tearful end.

I hugged my dearest buddy, my companion, and closest friend.

His ashen face took on the mask of death.

I was there when my dearest friend took his final dying breath.”

God mighty save the souls for their spirit that they responded the call to defend a dying country from the communist regime, that they never saw and whose people that they never knew.

After hiking down, we walked into the Peace Building providing the VR facilities to let us be in the process of TF Smith from Japan to the final moment of the battle. Regretfully, some devices could not be used due to a closing time at about 1700. You can drink a cup of coffee at the café on the 1st floor, enjoying a scene of peaceful water pool.

It is quite good to bring your children as a playground facility and workshop are furnished.

For two hours, we enjoyed our excursion, and it was 1800.

It was time to have dinner and an idea hit my brain that we drove, a little further south, to have the special dish in Songtan near US Air Force Camp. It was a spicy sausage stew named in Korean sense as Military Stew. This town was famous for this dish due to the military facility.

After completion of our meals, we didn’t drive back on the way we came, considering a traffic jam, so we entered Eoyon IC for Yongtong-gu, Suwon and drove to Heungdeok IC on the highyway of Yongin-Seoul. It took 2 hours for arrival, and it was quite reasonable to pay the highway ticket.

Last summer, this time, I and my wife had been River Nakdong Resistance Parameter to feel the most terrible hardship of the military members of the USA 24th Army Division who dispatched the TF Smith for the first time since the outbreak of the Korean War.