LIVING TREASURES
Korean War vets share experiences
FORT EDWARD, N.Y. >> Local students got a unique perspective Friday about current tensions in North Korea from U.S. service members who fought there 65 years ago.
Five area Korean War veterans visited Fort Edward High School to discuss their personal experiences as part of a Tell America program whose goal is educating young people about the “Forgotten War,” which lasted from 195053.
Army veteran Bruce Blackie, of Saratoga Springs, explained that Korea’s location between Japan, China and Russia has made it a hot spot, rife with contention for centuries. The only way to avoid this is through a unified “neutralized” Korean peninsula, he said.
“How do you get there? I don’t know,” Blackie said. “Until you do something like that there’s always going to be tensions in the area.”
Threats to peace in the region have perhaps never been higher, since the war ended, because of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un’s highly unstable policies such as recent ballistic missile tests.
“All of us are hoping he doesn’t attempt to use nuclear weapons,” said army airborne veteran Bob Garland of Ballston Lake.
For army veteran Peter Bushey, a Bronze Star recipient, Friday’s program was a homecoming of sorts because he attended Fort Edward High School before serving his country. Nearly 100 students in teacher Peter Prindle’s American history classes attended.
Student Ian Ladd said meeting “boots-on-theground” veterans was an invaluable experience.
“In a book we’re not really told much about the actual conflict itself whereas these guys, they’ve been there, they’ve seen conflict with their eyes,” he said. “It helps give us more indepth analysis about something we don’t really know too much about.”
Prindle said the program gave students a better understanding about history and current events.
“These gentlemen are living treasures,” he said. “The personal experiences they can bring does so much more than what a textbook can do. I think that’s what really excited students most, that one-on-one interaction, where they could ask, ‘What did you do when you were there?’”
Air force veteran Bill Reid of Rock City Falls was stationed in Texas, expecting to be sent overseas to France when the Korean War broke out.
“So much for French lessons,” he said. “The next thing you know we boarded a troop ship in Corpus Christie. It took 25 days to cross the Pacific. We went through a typhoon.”
At Okinawa, he inspected B-29s that made bombing runs over Korea.
His favorite memory is sailing home beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, in San Francisco, when the war was over.
“That was wonderful,” Reid said.
Veterans are scheduled to visit Saratoga Springs High School on May 24.
Navy veteran Roger Calkins of Saratoga Springs told how rapidly things changed during the first several months of the war, starting with North Korea driving all the way down to Pusan, near the south end of the peninsula.
When the U.S. landed at Inchon, the tide turned and North Korea was forced all the way back north to the border of China.
“(General Douglas) MacArthur wanted to go all the way into China and even use small nuclear weapons,” Garland said. “The president, Harry Truman, had to relieve him because it would have started World War III. Russia and China would have come in full force.”
China, which Japan had invaded during World War II, entered the Korean War because it didn’t want U.S. forces so close to its border, Blackie said.
War raged for two more years while peace negotiations were being hammered out.
Today, South Korea is a global economic power, in stark contrast to its communist neighbor to the north. But it came at a high price as 33,627 Americans were killed in action, 805,000 were wounded, 8,170 were missing in action, and more than half of the 7,000 taken prisoner died from starvation and disease.
“It’s certainly not the Forgotten War in South Korea,” Blackie said. “I’m not aware of any other country that has shown its appreciation to U.S. veterans like Korea has. They’re very grateful.”