U.S. Army captain’s memoirs of Korean Liberation Army and anti-Japanese operation

“The united corps with outstanding spirit gains power in the atmosphere of equality, respect, and cooperation that Lee Beom-seok (an officer of the Korean Liberation Army) and I created together to achieve our joint goals.”

In 1945 toward the end of the Japanese colonial era, Captain Clyde Bailey Sargent of the U.S., who was responsible for the Eagle Project, which was jointly conducted by the Korean Liberation Army and the Office of Strategic Services (currently the Central Intelligence Agency), said on the training atmosphere of the army. The objective of the joint operation was to send Korean soldiers who were trained as information agents for a war against Japan to infiltrate the Korean Peninsula. Captain Sargent said that young Korean people and the U.S. Army became one and cooperated in fighting against Japan.

The Independence Hall of Korea revealed the recently collected memoirs and documents left by Captain Sargent to The Dong-A Ilbo on Monday in commemoration of the 78th National Liberation Day. This is the first time that the records written by Captain Sargent are revealed to the public as only part of them were shared by his son, Robert Sargent who currently resides in Maine, for research. The memoirs are believed to be the only existing record of the Eagle Project, except for the official documents written by U.S. representatives who participated in the project. Kim Do-hyung, a former chief researcher of the Independence Hall of Korea, translated and analyzed the records.

Captain Sargent typed the memoirs about the Eagle Project on 10 letter-sized papers on March 7, 1980, the year before he passed away.


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