On February 23, 2024, National Tootsie Roll Day, the official X-Account of Joint Base Myers-Henderson Hall Posted a video in which several members of the armed forces told an incredible story about the Marines’ connection to Tootsie Rolls:
The claim has been shared countless times online, including on Facebook, X, and Reddit. All of these posts claim that Tootsie Rolls were mistakenly parachuted over the battlefield during the Korean War, helping Marines survive the bitter cold.
According to the United States Marine Corps Community Services websiteDuring a 1950 conflict known as the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, Marines of the 1st Division were sent tootsie rolls through the sky. The article states:
During the Korean War, the First Marine Division encountered the enemy at the Chosin Mountain Reservoir in sub-zero temperatures. Running low on ammunition, the Marines requested 60mm mortar rounds; codenamed “Tootsie Rolls.” The radio operator did not have the code sheets that would have told him what a “Tootsie Roll” was, but knew the request was urgent, so he put out the order. Soon, pallets of Tootsie Roll candies were parachuting from the sky to the First Marine Division! Although not ammunition, these candies from the sky provided the troops with much-needed sustenance. They also learned that they could use warmed Tootsie Rolls to plug bullet holes by sealing them when they refroze.
Tootsie Roll Industries honored the “Chosin Few,” the survivors of the battle, by sending them boxes of their candy. In 2023, WATE, a news station in Knoxville, Tennessee, featured one of these boxes in a Article about Korean War veteran Cary Stewart.
The box read: “Tootsie Roll sends greetings to the Chosin Few. We are proud to have been with you.” Stewart reported the same details from the Marine Corps Community Services He mentioned in this article that although he did not receive the story until two years after the candy was dropped at Chosin Reservoir, other soldiers who were there when it happened had told him.
An Iowa PBS documentary entitled “The Forgotten War: Iowans in Korea” shows comment by Korean War veteran Dennis Dorman, who also reported that a young lieutenant stationed in Japan did not understand the code language for 60mm mortar shells and parachuted two pallets of candy into battle.
We kept yelling for Tootsie Rolls, and a young lieutenant in Japan said we wanted Tootsie Rolls, so he loaded two of these huge pallets of Tootsie Rolls on us.
…
And so we would unwrap these Tootsie Rolls and stuff them in our pockets because it was cold, you know, and they were frozen. So we would… unwrap a Tootsie Roll and put it on the ground, take a bayonet and put it there and hit it with the butt of a rifle, break a piece off and put it in our mouths. Then we would take Tootsie Rolls and put them in our clothes, you know. We would warm them up so we could bite on them and chew on them.
A Video from The Hutchinson News, posted on YouTube in 2017, tells the story of Raymond Miller, another Korean War veteran and member of the 1st Marine Division, who gave the same details about the mistaken candy drop:
In an email, the National Museum of the Marine Corps told Snopes that the “myth” of the Tootsie Rolls being accidentally parachuted is actually true. We’ve asked them for evidence of the incident and will update this story if they respond.
However, an article on the website of the nonprofit group Veteran’s Breakfast Club questions the credibility of this story. Historian and founder of the group, Todd DePastino, explains that the dropping of the Tootsie Rolls into the Chosin Reservoir probably did not happen. He writes:
Before being surrounded by the Chinese, Marines from the Post Exchange Section had trucked in tons of goods to sell in the PX when the shooting in the area stopped. These shipments included many candies, especially Tootsie Rolls.
But the shooting didn’t stop, and the Marines in Hagaru had to plan their evacuation. The plan was to load everything of value onto trucks for the trip back to the coast. There would have been no room in the vehicles for the Tootsie Rolls and other retail merchandise destined for the never-realized PX in Hagaru.
Therefore, General OP Smith gave the order that the supplies (valued at $13,547.80 according to the Marine Corps’ official history first published in 1957) be distributed free of charge to the Marines in Chosin.
This explains the Tootsie Roll garbage that all Chosin survivors remember so well. And in fact, some used the candy to plug leaky radiators.
But although there were indeed urgently needed 60mm mortars and other supplies, especially ammunition, dropped from the air, the Tootsie Rolls were not delivered by air.
A letter on the Tootsie Roll website also makes no mention of an airdrop. The author, veteran Clifford W. Meyer, stated that the boxes of candy were discovered during the evacuation of Marines.
Although the story of the mistakenly dropped Tootsie Rolls is a heartwarming tale of battlefield survival passed down from generation to generation, there are conflicting accounts of how the Marines got their hands on the candy, and the exact details remain unclear. If we find new evidence that corroborates the story, we will update this story accordingly.
