No Bullet Got Me Yet: The Relentless Faith of Father Kapaun

Father Emil Kapaun (1916–51), a Roman Catholic priest, was a beloved U.S. Army chaplain who served during World War II and the Korean War. In the latter war, he was captured by Chinese Communist forces after the Battle of Unsan in November 1950. Imprisoned in a squalid concentration camp near the Yalu River, Kapaun disregarded his own well-being to give fellow POWs material and spiritual comfort by scrounging for food, leading prayer services, and giving last rites, even when threatened by guards. This first book by Stansifer, a screenwriter, draws extensively on letters and interviews gathered by the Catholic Diocese of Wichita during the campaign to canonize Kapaun. Kapaun eventually died in the Yalu River camp, but it had a lower mortality rate than other North Korean camps for POWs, which Stansifer argues was due to Kapaun’s unflagging devotion to his unit.