Emil Kapaun

Emil Joseph Kapaun (April 20, 1916 – May 23, 1951) was a Roman Catholic priest and United States Army chaplain who died as a prisoner of war in the Korean War. For his wartime activities, the Roman Catholic Church has declared him a Servant of God, the first stage on the path to sainthood, and on April 11, 2013, President Barack Obama awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously to Captain Chaplain Kapaun.

Early life
Emil Joseph Kapaun was born on April 20, 1916, and grew up on a farm three miles southwest of Pilsen, Kansas. His parents were Enos and Elizabeth Kapaun, Czech immigrants.

He graduated from Pilsen High School in May 1930. Kapaun graduated from Conception Abbey seminary college in Conception, Missouri, in June 1936. He then attended Kenrick Theological Seminary (now Kenrick-Glennon Seminary), St. Louis, Missouri.

On June 9, 1940, Kapaun was ordained a priest at what is now Newman University in Wichita, Kansas. He celebrated his first Mass at St. John Nepomucene in Pilsen, Kansas. In 1943, Kapaun was appointed auxiliary chaplain at the Herington Army Airfield near Herington, Kansas. In December 1943, Kapaun was appointed pastor to replace Fr. Sklenar who had retired. After serving in the Pilsen area under the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wichita, Kapaun joined the army in July 1944.

U.S. Army service
Kapaun began his military chaplaincy at Camp Wheeler, Georgia, in October 1944. He and one other chaplain ministered to approximately 19,000 service men and women.

He was sent to India and served in the Burma Theater. Kapaun was promoted to captain in January 1946 and returned stateside in May 1946.

Kapaun was discharged in 1946. He earned a Master of Arts degree in education at the The Catholic University of America in 1948.

In September 1948, he re-joined the Army and resumed his chaplaincy at Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas. Kapaun left his parents and Pilsen for the last time in December 1949.

In January 1950, he was stationed near Mount Fuji, Japan, as a military chaplain. In July, Kapaun was ordered to Korea, a month after North Korea had invaded South Korea. Kapaun's unit, the 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, from Fort Bliss, participated in the fighting on the Pusan perimeter. From there, he was constantly on the move northward. His main complaint was lack of sleep for several weeks at a time. He constantly ministered to the dead and dying while performing baptisms, hearing first confessions, offering Holy Communion and celebrating Mass from an improvised altar set up on the front end of a jeep. He constantly would lose his Mass kit, jeep and trailer to enemy fire. He told how he was thoroughly convinced that the prayers of many others were what had saved him so many times. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal in September.



He was captured near Unsan, North Korea, in November 1950. He and other prisoners of war (POWs) were marched 87 mi to a prison camp near Pyoktong, North Korea. Kapaun was able to persuade some prisoners, who had ignored orders from officers, to carry the wounded. At the camp, he dug latrines, mediated disputes, gave away his own food, and raised morale among the prisoners. He was noted among his fellow POWs as one who would steal coffee and tea (and a pot to heat them in) from the Communist guards. He also led prisoners in acts of defiance and smuggled dysentery drugs to the doctor, Sidney Esensten.

Kapaun developed a blood clot in his leg, dysentery, and pneumonia. Weakened as the months passed, he managed to lead Easter sunrise service on Sunday, March 25, 1951. He was so weak that the prison guards took him to the hospital, where he died of pneumonia on May 23, 1951. He was buried in a mass grave near the Yalu River.

He was played by James Whitmore in the Crossroads TV episode "The Good Thief", which aired on November 25, 1955.

Awards and decorations
Kapaun received the following awards:
 * Medal of Honor
 * Distinguished Service Cross, posthumously on August 18, 1951, for his actions at Unsan
 * Legion of Merit
 * Bronze Star Medal with V (Valor) Device
 * Prisoner of War Medal
 * Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one Bronze Service Star
 * World War II Victory Medal
 * Army of Occupation Medal with Japan Clasp
 * Korean Service Medal with two Bronze Service Stars
 * National Defense Service Medal
 * United Nations Korea Medal

(ribbon bar, as it would look today)

Medal of honor
In 2001, U.S. Representative Todd Tiahrt began a campaign to award the Medal of Honor to Kapaun. Before leaving office on September 16, 2009, Secretary of the Army Pete Geren sent Tiahrt a letter, agreeing that Kapaun was worthy of the honor. Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also agreed.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (Senate Bill 1867, Section 586) contains an authorization and a request to the President to award the Medal of Honor to Kapaun posthumously for acts of valor during the Battle of Unsan on November 1 and 2, 1950, and while a prisoner of war until his death on May 23, 1951. President Obama presented the medal to Kapaun's nephew at the White House on April 11, 2013.

His Medal of Honor citation reads:

Possible canonization
The following is a general narrative from the many reports of Kapaun's ordeal as a prisoner of war given by many repatriated American soldiers after their release from prison camps. He was most remembered for his great humility, bravery, his constancy, his love and kindness and solicitude for his fellow prisoners. "He was their hero... their admired and beloved "padre." He kept up the G.I.'s morale, and most of all, allowed a lot of men to become good Catholics."

Reports received noted that Kapaun's feet had become badly frozen, but that he continued to administer to the sick and wounded. He continuously went out under heavy mortar and shelling to rescue wounded and dying soldiers at personal risk of being captured or killed.

Many accounts have been given of the many creature comforts he provided his comrades of the 8th Cavalry Regiment during imprisonment. They were both spiritual and physical. He provided endless hours of prayer and what nourishment he could find to all he could to keep them from starving to death.

A detailed account of Kapaun's life is recounted in Fr. Arthur Tonne's Chaplain Kapaun: Patriot Priest of the Korean Conflict:

In a very definite sense, we are all beneficiaries from the life of Fr. Kapaun. He has left us a stirring example of devotion to duty. He has passed on to us a spirit of tolerance and understanding. He has given us a share of dauntless bravery – of body and soul. He has transmitted to every one of us a new appreciation of America, and a keener, more realistic understanding of our country's greatest enemy – godlessness, now stalking the world in the form of communism. He has bequeathed a picture of Christ-like life. What Fr. Kapaun willed to us cannot be contained in memorials, however costly or beautiful. It is a treasure for the human soul – the spirit of one who loved and served God and man – even unto death.

When Kapaun was assigned to the Eighth Cavalry regiment – which was surrounded and overrun by the Chinese army in North Korea in October and November 1950 – he stayed behind with the wounded when the Army retreated. He allowed his own capture, then risked death by preventing Chinese executions of wounded Americans too injured to walk.

In 1993, Kapaun was named a Servant of God by the Roman Catholic Church, the first step toward possible canonization. Also, the Vatican is now examining whether a medical healing that took place in Sedgwick County, Kansas, can be considered a miracle.

Possible 2008 miracle
On June 29, 2008, the Opening Ceremony which officially opens the Cause for Sainthood for Kapaun was made on Father Kapaun Day held at St. John Nepomucene Catholic Church in Pilsen, Kansas.

On June 26, 2009, Dr. Andrea Ambrosi, the Roman Postulator for Kapaun's cause for canonization arrived in Wichita in order to interview doctors in relation to alleged miraculous events.

Among these is the claim of 20-year-old Chase Kear who survived a severe head injury last year in part, he and his family claim, because they petitioned Fr. Emil Kapaun to intercede for them. Kear, a member of the Hutchinson Community College track team, fell on his head during pole vaulting practice in October 2008, but, it is said, was miraculously healed despite being near death. The Rev. John Hotze, the judicial vicar for the Diocese of Wichita, and trained in Canon Law, will assist in investigating Kear's case.

Fr. Hotze has spent eight years investigating the proposed sainthood of Kapaun. The Catholic Church has considered canonizing Kapaun ever since soldiers were liberated from Korean prisoner-of-war camps in 1953 and told of Kapaun's heroism and faith. The Wichita diocese has continue to receive reports of miracles involving Fr. Kapaun. He is being considered for possible designation as a martyr.

Possible 2011 miracle
On May 7, 2011, Nick Dellasega collapsed at a Get Busy Living 5K race in Pittsburg, KS (honoring the memory of Dylan Meier). Due to a series of coincidences, Dellasega survived, even though he had seemingly died on the scene. His childhood friend, EMT Micah Ehling, is quoted by The Wichita Eagle as saying "I know what a face looks like when the soul leaves the body. And that's what Nick looked like". Some bystanders attribute Dellasega's survival to the devotion of his cousin, Jonah Dellasega, who fell to his knees at the scene and prayed to Kapaun. In a strange coincidence not reported by The Eagle, Dylan Meier, in whose memory the 5K was being held, was slated to teach English in Korea at the time of his death.

Skeptics point out that Kapaun's spirit could not possibly have orchestrated the bizarre coincidences that saved Nick's life because some of them were set in motion long before Nick collapsed (including a visit by Nick's uncle, Mark, a medical doctor from Greenville, N.C.). However, believers insist Kapaun intervened to save Dellasega's life. The Eagle reported, "The coincidences are strange enough and the prayer notable enough that a Catholic church investigator has reported Nick's story to the Vatican, which happens to have a representative in Wichita again, sizing up Father Emil Kapaun for sainthood."

Memorials

 * Kapaun Memorial Chapel, Seoul, South Korea; dedicated November 4, 1953.
 * Kapaun Chapel, Camp McGovern, Bosnia; dedicated 1998.
 * Kapaun Religious Retreat House, Ōiso, Japan; dedicated December 1954.
 * Kapaun Barracks and Chapel, United States Military Base, Kaiserslautern, Germany; dedicated June 7, 1955.
 * Father Kapaun Memorial Technical School, Kwanju, Korea; dedicated Summer 1955.
 * Chaplain Kapaun Memorial High School, Wichita, Kansas; dedicated May 12, 1957. Later to become Kapaun Mt. Carmel High School, 1971.
 * Honolulu Memorial; dedicated 1964
 * Bronze Door Panel, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Wichita, Kansas; dedicated February 1997.
 * Knights of Columbus Council 11987
 * Chaplain Kapaun Korean War Memorial Site, Pilsen, Kansas; dedicated June 3, 2001.
 * Chaplain Kapaun Complex, Fort Riley, Kansas; dedicated 2001, 2002.
 * Emil Kapaun Knights of Columbus Fourth Degree Assembly, Katy, Texas.
 * Knights of Columbus Council 3744