Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Korean War Veteran Worked Behind The Lines
FARMINGTON — U.S. Army veteran Jackson D. Haraway grew up in Oklahoma but now calls the Farmington area his home.
He served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1952 with the 180th Infantry, an Oklahoma National Guard regiment in the 45th Division.
Haraway had graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in zoology and decided to join the National Guard so that he would not be drafted. He joined the Infantry in August 1950 and his regiment was mobilized Sept. 1, 1950.
Haraway left for basic training at Camp Polk in Beauregard Parish, La. (now Fort Polk). From basic training, he traveled along with 5,500 men by ship on the SS William S. Wiegel to Hokkaido, Japan.
“We were 28 days on that darn ship on the Pacific Ocean going to Japan. We were crammed in there. It smelled bad,” Haraway recalled.
When he lay down, he said he could not sit up without touching four to six GIs, all sleeping around him.
Each person was given one change of clothes and to wash, he said the men would tie their fatigues to a rope and rinse out their clothes in the ocean water. Haraway tried this once and his clothes smelled worse. He learned his clothes were dragging in the water beside the latrine outlet.
“I didn’t try that Haraway joked.
He remembers the ship hitting rough weather and rough seas and the boat rolling to one side.
After Japan, Haraway was transferred to Korea. He worked as a clerk typist in the finance department, saying he had experience as
again,” a junior auditor at the Oklahoma Capitol and figures that helped him with an office position during the war.
“That experience got me the clerical job. It kept me off the front lines,” he said.
Haraway, however, knew what was happening on the front lines because he was responsible for changing military pay orders. If someone was killed in the war, the soldier’s pay order had to be changed. Pay orders also had to be changed for anyone who was promoted or transferred.
“I had to take care of that,” Haraway said.
Looking back, Haraway said being in the Army benefited him because he was able to go to dental school on the G.I. Bill.
With governmental assistance and his wife’s work, he said he was able to graduate from dental school without any debt.
He worked as a dentist for 50 years in Ada, Okla. He and his wife, Betty, were married almost 65 years. She passed away in January and Haraway moved to the Farmington area to live with his daughter. He and his wife have three children and six grandchildren.