Vets, "Where Ya Been?"

["M. Katz" <mmkatz@aya.yale.edu>]

In other words, how come Korean War veterans kept such a low profile in the
decades following the war?  And what's changed now?

An article I wrote on this theme appeared recently in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
 It was intended to appear in connection with this weekend's armistice anniversary
but, unfortunately, editors there ran the piece on June 29.

Disappointingly, the paper's web archives only go back 14 days, so there's
no on-line link to the piece.  However, for anyone who's interested, I have
copied its text below.  

I close with congratulations -- and warm thanks -- on this anniversary to
all our veterans for your courageous service to our country. 

Mandy Katz
Washington, DC 
(writer researching a history of Hungnam evacuation)

THE ARTICLE:

Korean War Veterans came home to silence
By Mandy Katz

Sunday, June 29, 2003

When Lewis Page of Centerville, Ohio, returned from fighting in Korea in
1952, he ran into a friend on the sidewalk of his Indiana hometown. "Hey,"
the guy said, "where ya been?" 
"Over in Korea," answered Page, who had just ended a four-year Army tour.
"Oh," said the friend. 
"Just 'oh,' " recalls Page, now 74. No pat on the back, no 'let-me-buy-you-a-drink.'
Just, "Oh."
As a boy during World War II, Page had seen how even strangers hailed his
soldier cousin just back from abroad. But his own cool reception in '52 typified
the indifference Page and other soldiers faced after fighting to contain
communism in Asia. 
"I wasn't expecting a big band to be playing or anything like that" when
I came home, explained Page, who was wounded as a tank driver in the 3rd
Infantry Division. "But I expected to have a little something." 
"Where ya been?" 
It's a question we might ask all Korean War veterans - today more than ever,
as we mark the 50th anniversary of the armistice that ended the three-year
conflict. 
With few exceptions, American veterans of Korea, like Page, have maintained
radio silence about their experiences for decades following an uncelebrated
return. Their wives learned to tiptoe around the subject, children to avoid
the question routinely posed to other former soldiers, "Daddy, what was it
like in the war?" Page kept his Purple Heart a secret from even close friends.
"Where ya been?" 
It's a question the veterans themselves are also starting to ask us, the
nation they served. Korean War veterans, as a group, have begun only in recent
years to claim the recognition denied them for one of our country's least
satisfying "victories." After 50 years in the shadows, they are stepping
gingerly into the spotlight more often cast on their "older brothers," the
aging citizen soldiers of World War II hailed as "the greatest generation."
One bright moment in that quest for recognition came in 1995, when President
Bill Clinton dedicated a long-sought memorial on Washington's National Mall.
Yet, despite millions of visits to the Korean War Memorial, despite a surge
in veterans' clubs, Web sites, and memoirs of the conflict, Korea has remained
an afterthought among U.S. wars. 
After all, how many Americans under 50 know the names Inchon, Chosin Reservoir
or Pork Chop Hill? How many schoolchildren can find Korea on a map, let alone
tell what happened there 50 years ago? 

The grudging armistice of July 1953 left two hostile governments in a virtual
stalemate. 
Backed by mainland China and the Soviet Union, Kim Il-Sung had nearly succeeded
in unifying the Korean peninsula under communist rule before the United States
reluctantly stepped in. 
In an early test of the United Nations, the international community also
rallied to South Korea's defense; 21 countries joined a U.S.-dominated coalition
against the invaders. But the U.N. democracies had been caught off-guard.
Ill-equipped and unprepared American soldiers were rushed into the breach
that first summer, suffering staggering casualty rates. Few of them had expected
to see combat at all. 
Then, as now, the peacetime military represented a career opportunity for
small-town boys fresh out of high school. There was also the continuing draft
to consider, which targeted all but college boys, and few families in 1946
could afford to send their boys to university. 
Had peace prevailed, most recruits would have served in the States or pulled
Cold War garrison duty in Europe or occupied Japan. Reservists, including
thousands who had fought the last war, could have counted on contributing
the odd weekend while rebuilding careers and family lives stalled by World
War II. If hostilities did erupt, strategists expected to fight Russia. In
Asia, the greatest threat emanated from "Red China," where Mao Zedong had
consolidated power in 1949 under a new People's Republic. 
But the first "hot" engagement of the Cold War would spark unexpectedly in
tiny Korea, threatening a worldwide conflagration when China took up arms
in October 1950. Presumably to avoid antagonizing the Soviets, President
Harry Truman avoided the word "war." He infamously termed it a "police action."
More than 1.5 million men - and they were mostly men, with the exception
of perhaps a thousand nurses - fought in Korea. Some 33,700 died in combat.
About 35,000 still serve there today. But then, as now, their duty affected
few at home. 
Most Americans lived lives remote from lonely GIs in bunkers, savoring tastes
of home in Tootsie Rolls, Lucky Strikes, and Patti Page on Armed Forces Radio.
The Pentagon, according to writer Richard K. Kolb, found even soldiers' families
reluctant to hang commemorative flags in their windows. Wartime support for
"Truman's War" at home had plunged by 1952 from 75 percent at the outset
to just 10 percent. Even before the armistice, the Army Times was already
calling it the "forgotten war." 
The vets themselves didn't forget, but most buried their memories for decades.
They had demobilized in rotations rather than all at once, trickling home
to a humming national economy, the appearance of TVs in half of America's
living rooms, and their own interrupted lives in a country tired of war.
Worse than indifference, outright belittlement often attended any mention
of their service. Some posts of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), in a
policy since changed, barred Korea's defenders from membership on the grounds
that theirs wasn't an actual "war." The barroom ribbing was even more direct:
"Back from the 'police action'?" they would hear. "Where's your billy club?"

Memories on hold 
If these veterans suffered nightmares, resentment, or depression about their
experience, they did so mostly in private. Whether they remembered grim combat
or just the tedium of life behind the lines, few dwelt on the experience.
Only decades later, when they found themselves with more time for old memories,
did Korea's servicemen begin to reach out in significant numbers to each
other and an uninformed public. 
Demographics, particularly retirement, clearly played a role in their willingness
to look back. But for some, Vietnam's activist veterans also provided a goad.
Others have picked up on a resurgent pride in the military following the
two Gulf Wars and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. 
For Marvin Morris, 70, the war just went "on hold" after he finished his
four-year tour. A Jeep driver in the 3rd Division, who was wounded in an
ambush, he put it all behind him on his return, forging a career as an X-ray
repair welder at General Electric after the war. He concentrated on putting
his schoolteacher wife and three daughters through college. 
Two years ago, Morris heard about a group of Korean War veterans near his
home in Loveland, near Cincinnati. His wife learned more about his service
in one meeting with them than she had since they married, Morris said. Now
he shares his stories with his grandsons. 
A waist-gunner in the Air Force's 452nd Bomb Wing, 72-year-old Jack Edwards
of Largo, Fla., also "just blended into the population" after Korea. He "got
a job, got married and started having a family." His work as a police officer
left little time for veterans activities. 

Reclaiming their honor 
Like Morris, Edwards sought out comrades only after retiring. In 1989, he
discovered the Korean War Veterans Association, founded in 1985. 
A board member since 1990, Edwards has watched membership in the all-volunteer
organization grow to 18,000. That is a tiny minority, he admits, of eligible
veterans, who include any U.S. soldier under arms anywhere during the war
years (the census counted 3.9 million in 2000), plus servicemen from South
Korea and U.N. coalition countries. But KWVA membership has doubled from
five years ago. 
Its leaders say more will join if Congress accords the group a national charter
like those granted veterans of other wars. Charter legislation has passed
the Senate but stalled in the House. The Pentagon has also called fresh attention
to Korea's servicemen with three years of anniversary observances culminating
today. 
If these remembrances fail to convey the conflict's significance, Americans
need only read recent news reports of starvation and saber-rattling in Pyongyang
to remember what our soldiers fought for. Or, the next time they see an old
guy with a military patch on his cap, they can just ask him: "Hey, where
ya been?" 

Katz is a free-lance writer from Washington, D.C.