James Creswell
Bio
James “Jim” Creswell was born in Dalton, Nebraska, and grew up in Burbank, California. He graduated high school in 1948 and attended college for two years before being drafted into the Army in 1951. He served in Korea at the height of the Korean War as a radio operator. He arrived in Pusan and was horrified at the living conditions of the civilians and refugees. He detailed some of his experiences with the Korean Military Advisory Group and the Counter Intelligence Corps. He particularly described the dangers of dealing with guerrilla fighters. He recalled an incident where guerrilla soldiers ambushed a supply train, massacring roughly 400 civilians, which made U.S. headlines. He spoke of the difficulties faced by American and British soldiers while on the front lines. He added that the memories from the war influenced his quality of life after returning home, causing him to suffer from PTSD.
Video Clips
Conditions in Pusan
James Creswell describes his first impressions of Korea. He recounts the horrible living conditions civilians faced in Pusan. He shares that people were living in river beds, freezing to death due to lack of clothing, and had no food or money.
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Typical Day of Service
James Creswell describes his service as an advisor to South Korean senior officers. He recalls offering his leadership to train them in the use of radio signals, artillery, and tanks, and instructing them in combat to defend against guerrilla warfare. He shares that a bounty was placed on his head as a result of his successes and recalls having a rifle in his hands at all times.
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Guerilla Warfare (graphic)
James Creswell, in somewhat graphic detail, describes the hunting of enemy guerillas as a dangerous and deadly time in Incheon and around the Pusan Perimeter. He details the banding together of Chinese and North Korean troops and their plan to attack his location. He offers a visual of witnessing a mass shooting in a rice field, of beheadings, and scare tactics used by the South Korean soldiers to keep the opposition at bay.
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Supply Train Ambush
James Creswell recalls a supply train ambush where guerrillas had dynamited the track, forcing the train to stop roughly twenty miles from its destination. and the civilians to unload. He shares how the guerrillas opened fire, killing four hundred of them. He describes the event as being so horrific that it made headlines in the United States and believes it to be the largest civilian massacre in 1952.
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Video Transcript
Creswell: My name is James Creswell. I was born in Dalton, Nebraska. March 22nd, 1930.
Interviewer: March 22nd, 19…
Creswell: 30
Interviewer: 30, what school did you go through?
Creswell: I grew up in Southern California. Burbank High School. Nebraska and my father was from Oklahoma, so as a child we moved to Oklahoma …
Interviewer: Mm-hmm.
Creswell: Until I was nine years old and then California.
Interviewer: When did you graduate high school?
Creswell: 1948
00:00:30
Interviewer: From May, right?
Creswell: June
Interviewer: June
Creswell: I think
Interviewer: Yeah … and then what were you doing?
Creswell: I went to junior college, my father was an automobile dealer,
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Creswell: And I grew up in the automobile business. But I went to junior college for two years and was drafted out of junior college.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Creswell: So I didn’t get to complete it until I got home.
00:01:00
Interviewer: What was the college’s name?
Creswell: Uh, Glendale Community College, Glendale California
Interviewer: And what did you study?
Creswell: Business and pre-law
Interviewer: How did you like it?
Creswell: Well I liked it when I wasn’t studying. I wasn’t the best student in the country. In fact, my fathers attorney told me I wouldn’t be … I couldn’t be an attorney because I couldn’t study long enough to learn the procedures.
00:01:30
Creswell: So I think I would have been a good lawyer if I would have stuck with it but….
Interviewer: So you were in college when the Korean War broke out?
Creswell: Yes.
Interviewer: Ahh. Do you remember when you first heard about it?
Creswell: No, I sure don’t remember about it. I had broken my leg in 1950 right at the time the war started.
00:02:00
Creswell: And I was in a cast and I decided to try to join the Army Air Force, uh Army Air Corps in those days, and they told me to try to come back when my leg healed up.
Interviewer: Hmmmm
Creswell: While I was waiting for my leg to heal up I got drafted into the Army in January 1951. War had just started and I did not know where Korea was, of course. But, I don’t remember the exact moment I was made aware of it but I knew that it had started and people were talking about it.
00:02:30
Interviewer: What were they talking about?
Creswell: Well, that was a long time ago. I can’t remember exactly. There was a war going on in Korea, or conflict going on in Korea. I’m not sure where Korea was but I was really not that interested in it at that time. Not thinking I would be involved in it. It did not take long before we all realized some of my older friends were getting drafted. And going into the service.
00:03:00
Creswell: I don’t know if any of them went into Korea. Out of my high school one day there were 25 of us that went into the army the same day. That was the largest group.
Interviewer: Wow!
Creswell: That we all went in at one time.
Interviewer: You mean Burbank High School? Twenty-five of them a day?
Creswell: Yes, 25 of us in one day yeah.
Interviewer: What did these students … your friends were saying about Korea being drafted to and dragged into Korea?
00:03:30
Creswell: We had no idea what we were getting into. I had grown up during World War II. I knew what war was … but we did not know anything about Korea. But apparently some people thought it was supposed to be a small conflict. In fact the organization I was with in Korea was the only one in Korea at the time the war started called the Korean Military Advisory Group. They were in Seoul and when the North Koreans came across they thought it was just going to be a disturbance for two or three days.
00:04:00
Creswell: And they didn’t get all that excited about it until a little later. But we didn’t know about it … in Burbank anyway, as a teenager I didn’t care and didn’t know.
Interviewer: Mmmm.
Interviewer: So, ah where did you go for basic military training?
Creswell: I went to Camp Roberts California.
Interviewer: Mm hmm.
Creswell: It’s in kind of the central part of California.
00:4:30
Interviewer: Mm-hmm. And what kind of training did you receive?
Creswell: My regular basic training … I qualified for officer’s candidate school … OCS…. and I said that is fine. They said well you are a draftee so you will have to sign up for one more year.
Interviewer: Uh huh
Creswell: Well, I did not want to stay in the army so I said I wouldn’t sign up for 10 more minutes. Then they said well you are going to be a rifleman then.
00:05:00
Creswell: I said I wouldn’t sign up for another year. Then they started offering me classes, schools.. Cook and baker school. I said no thanks. They were going to teach me how to climb telephone poles. I said no thanks. Couple of other things I remembered. One of them was radio. And I said is that radio mechanic? Radio repair?
00:05:30
Creswell: I thought I could learn a career. They didn’t even know. They just said radio. They were twisting my arm to keep me out of the infantry. I said put me on for radio then. Assuming it was radio repair. It turned out to be radio operator.
Interviewer: Mm-hmm. So they didn’t have any idea about what…
Creswell: They didn’t have any idea about what … they just said radio school.
Interviewer: So how was the basic military training? Did you learn enough about radio operations?
00:06:00
Creswell: Well after I got out of basic training, I had 6 weeks of radio operation. We had to learn morse code. We had to learn eighteen words a minute and sending and receiving morse code.
Interviewer: So you know the Morse code?
Creswell: Not any more. I know the SOS. That’s about all I know. I didn’t know it. It is interesting … uh …backtracking a little bit … My sister was with the FBI.
00:06:30
Interviewer: Mmmm.
Creswell: And her boss found out I was going into the Army. And seeing how her background was top security clearance he said let’s get your brother into Counter Intelligence Corps, CIC in those days… I guess it is the CIA now … so, he contacted me and I met with him a couple times. He said you cannot tell anyone what’s going on. We don’t want the Army to know that we want you in the CIC.
00:07:00
Creswell: They put me in what we call undercover. So I went on with my basic training, my radio school. Got out of radio school and found out we were going to Korea. So, I called the FBI in Los Angeles and said, “ Hey I got my orders to go to Korea and what are you going to do about it?” And he said, “Well, we have not asked the army to cooperate with us so we can’t ask them to pull your file now.”
00:07:30
Creswell: They wanted to know what all was going on. We will see what we can do. Just go on to Korea and call us when you get home. Well, I got to Korea and 35 of us in my radio class were in Yokohama.
Interviewer: When did you leave for Korea?
Creswell: Sometime in May. I don’t know exactly what day.
Interviewer: 1951.
Creswell: 51
Interviewer: Uh huh.
00:08:00
Interviewer: Where did you depart from?
Creswell: We got from San Francisco but got to Yokohama. And Yokahama to Sasebo Japan to ship over to Pusan.
Interviewer: How long did you stay in Japan?
Creswell: Just two or three days … just long enough to get assigned to different outfits.
Interviewer: And then it must have been May when you arrived in Pusan.
Creswell: Hm-hmm.
00:08:30
Interviewer: Ok. How was Pusan at the time when you arrived?
Creswell: Oh Pusan, it was really sad … there were millions of people in Pusan. People living in riverbeds. I saw people freezing to death in doorways. Children running around half- naked. Terrible experience in Pusan. Because everybody had been pushed down to Pusan. They had no money, no food, no … it was a very, very traumatic experience.
00:09:00
Interviewer: You saw that. You experienced that.
Creswell: Oh yea, yea, I was actually in Pusan and they kept me there for a couple months to operate a huge Army radio. I and another kid were assigned to get this radio going to communicate with … uh Seoul … and with the items … Hawaii …
00:09:30
Creswell: And so they kept us there for about two months and we had a lot of free time and we would go downtown Pusan. But it was so sad and so devastating to me to see people like that. I remember seeing people frozen to death in doorways. No place to sleep, no place to … very sad …very traumatic.
Interviewer: Then what happened to you?
Cresswell: Well, after a couple months in Pusan … the other two, Seoul and Hawaii, could not get their radios operating.
00:10:00
Creswell: So they told us to forget about it. And I went and I was already assigned to KMAG.
Interviewer: KMAG?
Creswell: Korean Military Advisory Group.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Creswell: And at that time Pusan was their headquarters and then they moved to Daegu. But they moved me from there to uh, they kept me in Pusan for another month or two. Then, we moved over to the west coast of Korea, the southwest corner of Korea.
00:10:30
Creswell: An area called Gwangju
Interviewer: Gwangju
Creswell: Gwangju and Songjeong was a railroad station next to it.
Interviewer: Uh huh.
Creswell: That had been called … that had been a Japanese base at one time. And it was a training area for South Korean troops. So that was basically our headquarters. Probably fifteen of us there working with the South Korean Army.
00:11:00
Creswell: They were training them … they were just advisors. They had a group of soldiers together, a battalion of them … and go to the line with with them and there were three of us that were assigned to each battalion to go up to the front line with them and stay with them for two or three weeks to see how they fought and how they held out.
00:11:30
Creswell: Then we would go back and get another one and stay down there in Penghu for three or four months, go back and take another group up, back and forth. So, fortunately for me I got to travel a lot of South Korea. And got to see it coast to coast. Thirty days on back.
Interviewer: What was it like to be there in 1951? What are the scenes you saw?
00:12:00
Creswell: Well, everything was pretty well blown up. Trees were all dead or dying. Bridges were all blown up. It could have been a beautiful country. And I went back years later and it is a beautiful country but at that time there was not much beauty. Like I say, everybody was in Pusan and the Pusan perimeter area… no bridges … buildings devastated … but later on, twenty years later, thirty years later I went back and it was beautiful.
00:12:30
Interviewer: What was your mission? What was your main work? Describe a typical day of your service.
Creswell: Well, a typical day … I was working with about three or four Korean majors and colonels … and I was not their right arm … and they did not take orders from me, but I would advise on different things … A lot was signal core advice as I had the signal core training.
00:13:00
Creswell: But I had also had a leadership course in the Army and a combat course, so I worked with a friend of mine and we worked with the tank battalion. We taught them how to drive tanks. Taught them artillery … we had some howitzers there… we taught a little bit of everything. We would go with them and see how they function in combat.
00:13:30
Creswell: Gwangju was the center of that magazine article I gave you, the center of guerrilla activities, so we went out on guerilla battles all the time. When we weren’t working with the troops in camp, we were out hunting down guerillas. And that was, we found out later…
00:14:00
Creswell: They knew about it in 1951 when that magazine was written that it was guerilla territory. That was a Korea Eisenhauer would never see because it was too dangerous. As Korean advisors, we found out we had a reward out for us dead or alive … because we were doing so much good for the South Korean soldiers, that the North Korean and Chinese wanted us out of the way.
00:14:30
Creswell: So we didn’t wear any insignia or logos or anything to identify us as being a target for them. It was very dangerous. We went nowhere without a weapon in our hand. We did not go to the kitchen, to the cantine. Didn’t go to the bathroom without a rifle in our hand… we slept with it, a rifle on our chest because we knew at any minute we could be ambushed.
00:15:00
Interviewer: So you were involved in the guerilla clearance.. right?
Creswell: Guerilla…a lot of guerilla warfare …yes.
Interviewer: How dangerous was it? Really?
Creswell: Well pretty dangerous … because when our Army cut the troops off, the North Korean and Chinese troops off, they went down in the Pusan Perimeter and they cut them off at Incheon …
00:15:30
Creswell: they left thousands and thousands of North Koreans and Chinese down there so they all banded together..
Interviewer: Chinese too?
Creswell: Oh sure, sure. They were banded together and then they were stranded and they could not get back to their homeland. So they banded together and we went out and got word one time that a band of them were going to a prison camp not too far from us, they were going to release the prisoners from that prison camp and then come over to our camp. So we went out and intercepted them.
00:16:00
Creswell: I say we, I and about three other Americans and about twenty-five or thirty South Korean soldiers. And we captured the guerillas heading towards us.
Interviewer: Uh huh
Creswell: And the officer in charge said that we captured these people and we know they are guerillas … we have no room for them. So, they shot them all right there in the rice patty.
00:16:30
Creswell: They found out the leader was a Chinese general and his wife and the general was something like twenty-five or twenty-six years old but he was a Chinese general. We found out that their headquarters was in a village across the road from our camp, which made it a little hairy. They shot all these guerillas, the general and his wife and they knelt them down and chopped their heads off …
00:17:00
Interviewer: Who did it?
Creswell: Right in front of us… South Korean troops.
Interviewer: Uh huh
Creswell: They put those heads in a box and took them to the village, the headquarters of the guerillas, and made every villager go past that box and see those two heads in that box with the understanding that this is what will happen to you if you are a guerilla, if you are an enemy, you are going to lose your head. So that was kind of my first experience with fighting I guess.
00:17:30
Creswell: We had some small arms fire from time to time but that was my first big encounter. Another time we got a notice that the train, in Songjeong, our supply train, was coming to Songjeong and it had been held up about twenty miles out of Songjeong. The gorillas had dynamited the track … a civilian train with some of our, four or five of our guys on it and one supply car.
00:18:00
Creswell: They dynamited the track and all the people got off and the guerillas’ machine guns mortared over four hundred of them. That made news here in town, here in the United States. And we went up there and had to battle them for a day and a half. Collected all of these bodies so that was over four hundred.
00:18:30
Creswell: I had told my mother I was in a safe place. Not to worry but she read about that in the newspaper. I had told her about the little villages around it so that article made a liar out of me.
Interviewer: So your mom knew about that from the article?
Creswell: Yes, that magazine article and article in the newspaper. It made the headlines. It’s the largest massacre, I think, of civilians in one area and that was sometime in ‘52 I guess.
00:19:00
Interviewer: Mmmm. So your mom was really worried about you?
Cresswell: Well, she didn’t show it. I know she did, yes.
Interviewer: Did you write letters …
Creswell: Oh I wrote letters quite often.
Interviewer: Did you keep the letter?
Cresswell: I have … she kept them then I think I have them now … she passed away a few years ago. I think I have a whole shoebox full of letters that I had written. We got to numbering the letters because the mail was really bad.
00:19:30
Creswell: You would write a letter and you wrote number one … and the next letter you would get might be number three or four. Number two or three would follow up. So she numbered her letters and I numbered mine when we mailed them. This is number ten, number eleven. Of course, over there we could not get any stamps and so like in World War II we just wrote free in place of a stamp. I didn’t know if you knew that or not. You would just write free on it.
00:20:00
Interviewer: Yea, yea. You said you still kept the letters?
Creswell: Yea
Interviewer: Could you send that to me so that I can scan it?
Cresswell: Yes, a whole shoebox that I have stored away somewhere.
Interviewer: Important for young children to know about how it was from your letter, to exchange letters between you and your mom and so on so if you can please find it and share it.
Creswell: I wrote letters telling that the children were naked, starving to death, living in straw huts, shacks. I told it pretty much like it was because it broke my heart.
00:20:30
Cresswell: It really upset me.
Interviewer: Pretty much you stayed in Songjeong? The whole time?
Creswell: Well that was our headquarters.
Interviewer: Yea
Creswell: But then our headquarters moved from Pusan to Daegu. But I went from Songjeong up to the line several times with battalions.
Interviewer: Why?
Cresswell: Well there were 3 of us with each thousand Koreans … to see how they were fighting. To see what they had learned.
Interviewer: Mm hmm
00:21:00
Creswell: And that was a very dangerous role because they did not look out after us … they were looking out after themselves. There was a front line of 1,000 troops, a thousand Koreans, there was one of us on one end, on one the other end and one in the middle and we kept in touch with walkie talkie radios. And many times we had to run for our lives because the South Koreans at first, in the middle of the night, the term was called “bug out”.
00:21:30
Creswell: They would just leave. And leave the flanks open, maybe a British flank here and an American flank here and a hole here where the North Koreans could come right on in. And they didn’t tell us when they did it. I woke up twice hearing strange voices and it was Chinese voices. And I grabbed my rifle and my sleeping bag and headed south.
00:22:00
Interviewer: So you are saying that South Korean Army soldiers just left without even notifying any Americans?
Creswell: Yea
Interviewer: That’s bad.
Cresswell: It was the very beginning. They were scared … they weren’t trained. I contacted a general, an American general, and I don’t know who he was … that they would take men off the line, American men and British men off the line and give me, them, some rest and relaxation back miles behind.
00:22:30
Creswell: I suggested to this general that you put them right behind my battalion… so we had Army … American on one side and British, Greek, or French on one side and the troops behind us so the South Koreans could not bug out. That saved our lives a couple times I’m sure.
Interviewer: What was your rank?
00:23:00
Creswell: Well that is interesting. It’s hard to believe I went in a PFC, private first class. I was working with majors and colonels so the general and the colonel in charge of my outfit gave me what they call a field promotion a Major.. so that these majors would identify with my major logo. They would respect my rank rather than one stripe on my arm.
00:23:30
Creswell: So they took a stripe off my arm and put a major shield on my ah… a major leaf on my arm.
Interviewer: What do you mean? You were promoted from PFC to major?
Cresswell: Yes, major and I got paid for it.
Interviewer: How did it happen?
Cresswell: Well they had to because there was nobody between me and them. The majors were all busy. There were very few non-commissioned officers in my group.
00:24:00
Creswell: Now when I got out of the Army, I got busted back down to PFC. So I did not retire as a major. But, my rank was major in Korea. Temporary major … temporary rank. Pretty rare I think. I don’t know of anyone else.
Interviewer: So how much were you paid? How much were you paid when you were PFC?
00:24:30
Creswell: Well I don’t remember but originally when you went in as a recruit, we got $21 a month. Then, we got to Korea, we got overseas pay, we got combat pay … it probably went up to $50 a month.
Interviewer: That’s it?
Creswell: That was 60 years ago.
Interviewer: And then?
Creswell: Then, with major, it went up to probably up to $200. I sent all the money home. I could not spend it. I sent it all automatically home.
00:25:00
Creswell: I couldn’t spend it, there was no place to spend anything.
Interviewer: How was the living condition in Songjeong? You were in the tent or in the building?
Creswell: We were in tents to start with … uh … then we built … they built some quonset huts for us … and an interesting story about the quonset hut … we had one quonset hut that was our kitchen and our dining room.
Interviewer: Ah
Creswell: And it was not insulated and quonset huts are cold in winter time … freezing cold.
00:25:30
Creswell: Well, the Chinese were not too far ahead of us and they had some quonset huts. And we could see them.
Interviewer: What do you mean in Songjeong?
Creswell: North of Songjeong. The guerillas had some quonset huts.
Interviewer: Really?
Cresswell: Where they got them I don’t know. But we could see them with our binoculars and they had insulation and paneling.
Interviewer: Better than yours.
00:26:00
Cresswell: Warmer than ours, so I and another kid went over and stole a truck load of those one night.
Interviewer: You stole it.
Creswell: Stole it. In those days, you could take a wire and hot wire car very easily … so, I had a piece of wire and a screwdriver and we went and stole this Nissan truck … Japanese truck full of insulation and paneling and brought it down and the engineers paneled our quonset hut. Well on Christmas Eve in 1951, we got to bed and that night the guerillas came over and set fire to the quonset hut and burned it up.
Interviewer: [laughing]
Creswell: So they got even with us.
Interviewer: Are you sure about this?
Creswell: Why sure. Yea. And the mess sergeant was sleeping up in a loft up in the quonset hut and he had a lot of ammunition and hand grenades and they kept going off and we could not even get close enough to it to try and put the fire out. That camp we were in had been a Japanese camp, it had been a prison camp actually. It was on a hill and underneath the hill was a large cavern where they could hide several airplanes… well down at the bottom of this hill down in a cave was a dungeon and the dungeon had concrete floors and steel iron bars like a prison and the Japanese apparently kept the prisoners down there … and that is where we kept all of our ordinates, all of our weapons, all of our guns, not our guns but our ammunition and hand grenades and shells because it was very cold down there. It was very cool. But it had been a Japanese camp.
Interviewer: Mmmm
Creswell: But Songjeong now I understand now is a college town. Beautiful college town.
Interviewer: When did you leave Korea?
Cresswell: Well I got on a ship in Sasebo the 25th of December of ‘51 no ‘52.
Interviewer: December 25th?
Creswell: Christmas day we got on the ship.
Interview: From Sassabo
Cresswell: From Sassebo
Interviewer: 1952
Creswell: 1952
Interviewer: And left for the states.
Cresswell: Left for the States. It took us fourteen days to get to San Francisco.
Interviewer: What did people say about your service when you got back?
Cresswell: Well, they were just happy to see me. Basically, I was happy to get home. We did not talk much about it.
Interviewer: Why not?
Cresswell: Well, I guess as this other gentleman you’re interviewing talked about the post traumatic stress.
Interviewer: Mm hmm
Creswell: I apparently had it but I didn’t realize it … what it was. Uh, one time I watched a movie … a real good movie … The Bridges of Toko-Ri.
Interviewer: Mm hmm
Creswell: A Korean story. This pilot got shot down and Mickey Rooney was flying a helicopter to recover him. And they were in a ditch, an irrigation ditch. Well, I saw that movie and that night I went to bed. I was a single parent for eighteen years. I had two daughters. That next morning I woke up and my daughter said, “Daddy, who were you hollering at last night?” I said I wasn’t hollering at anybody. “Well you were making a lot of noise,” she said. Well, my bed was a mess and I had realized I had been in that same kind of irrigation ditch with the guerillas chasing me. And it brought back all of that and I relived it. And so I guess I had that PTSD … whatever it is called.
Interviewer: PTSD
Cresswell: And another time years later in San Diego, California … a commercial airplane, a PSA commercial plane and a small plane collided in midair over a residential district of San Diego. This was in the 60’s and they talked about bodies being hung up in trees and parts of bodies being hung up in the trees. Well I got sick … I could not eat and I couldn’t sleep … I did not know what was wrong with me … and I realized seeing these four hundred bodies and looking for my buddies … this mention of these other bodies brought back all those … memories … so I guess I had it. Probably still have it. When I got home I had to sleep on the floor … I couldn’t sleep on the bed … the bed was too soft. Had to sleep on the floor.
Interviewer: When did you go back to Korea?
Cresswell: I went back in …. on account of the Daegu perimeter. They had a celebration in Daegu for us. Beautiful! It was absolutely beautiful. Trees had all grown back, the buildings. I, this gentleman, said he had pictures of Seoul. That he was in Seoul. I had pictures of Seoul with nobody in it.
Interviewer: Why didn’t you bring any pictures?
Creswell: It is in my collection. That stuff is all buried. I have pictures of Seoul without a soul in it … Now there are eleven million people living there. We crossed the Naktong River when I first went up there, across a pontoon bridge, now there’s four or five bridges across there … not the Naktong River … Naktong River is down south. We crossed the river four times. We went one time … we had to deliver a message from Pusan up to coast of Taegu and the fighting was still going on up there. A buddy and I were in a jeep and it was raining and it was about fifty miles, twenty-five or thirty miles each way … 50 miles round trip I think.. And we would have to stop and see a red flag on the hillside, that meant guerilla activities and would have to stop and wait until the white flag to go up. We would go a little further and a red flag, white flag, red flag , white flag… it took us thirteen hours to cover a hundred miles. 50 miles up and 50 miles back.
Interviewer: Do you have any message for our young generation?
Cresswell: Uh … Well yes … I don’t think they will listen. The younger generation is so involved in electronics that they are not associating with their parents or with other children in a game like situation. They are all playing with their ipads or electronic gear. We used to play kick the can in the streets. We used to play football and baseball and all kinds of things around the neighborhood
Interviewer: But, now they are just texting.
Cressewell: Nowadays they are so busy with the electronics that they don’t know what we are talking about. So that is kinda sad but that is the generation … a couple of generations from you and I so … and talk about war … they don’t know anything about war. They know Afghanistan and that area. They see it on the news. But, they don’t have any association with it unless they have a relative that was involved in it … and then they get a little closer. But they are so caught up in their own growth that they don’t, they aren’t interested.
Interviewer: Thank you very much for your fight. Because of your sacrifice Korea is now what it is and we all thank you and the Korean War has never been forgotten in the minds of Koreans.
Creswell: That’s the truth.
Interviewer: Thank you.
[End of Recorded Material]
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