Dan McKinney

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D:        I’m Dan McKinney.  I’m 88.  I was born in Balandra, Mexico July 22, 1926.  At the age of six weeks, my dad who was a railroader moved me to Clovis, New Mexico, and I’ve stayed there ever since with the exception of sometime in World War II and

 

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going into Korea.  I finished high school in Clovis in, I was drafted into World War II, spent three years over there and got out.

I:          How old were you when you were drafted?

D:        Eighteen.

I:          Eighteen.

D:        Uh huh.  I just got in on the tail end of the War, and I spent most of my time in Army

 

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occupation.  After I got out, I returned to Clovis and worked at various jobs and learned to cook from a friend of mine that had a restaurant.  And I worked as a fast-food cook for a couple years, and thought I was pretty good at it.  And he was a very good cook. He worked in hotels in Los Angeles.  So, I got a good education in that.

 

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And then I worked some in high school, I worked in the theaters as an usher and then as a projectionist showing pictures. And after that, I was recalled to the Korean War in October of 1950.

 

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Uh, arrived in Korea about the 10^th I guess of January 1951.  And I joined K Company 19^th Infantry Regiment 24^thDivision January 18, 1951.  We were in various fire fights up until April.

 

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I was captured on April 22.

I:          Do you remember about where?
D:        It was in, called the Iron Triangle.

I:          Um hm.
D:        And it’s in the Chorwon Valley.

I:          Where did you arrive in Korea at?
D:        What?
I:          Where did you arrive?  Did you arrive in Inchon or Pusan?
D:        No, Pusan.

I:          Pusan.

D:        Um hm.  And I was taken up to the front

 

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and joined them on the 18^th of January.

I:          Um hm.  On April 22, you were captured.  Can you tell me a little bit about I guess that day?

D:        Well, that’s a day that most men, a lot of men back out of getting married.  But I was captured on the day I was supposed to get married.  And my wife now was not a very happy camper.

 

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She had to wait almost three years.  And we finally got married in ’53.

I:          Did she know that you were still alive?  Were you able to write back to her and let her know like hey honey, I’m not?

D:        Well, I’ve got an unusual story there.  We’d been captured about three weeks I guess, and we were on the march up to the rear, to the Yellow River.

 

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And we always walked at night because they were so afraid of our airplanes.  And one night we were getting ready to walk out and move some more, and somebody, there was a rumor came down that there was a bunch of Marines gonna be released.  And there was 19 of them I think. It was dark, and I said, hollered out is there anybody here from Texas?  And this man said yeah, I am.  I said where you from?

 

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He said Amarillo.  That’s just 100 miles from Clovis where I lived.  And I said are you gonna get release?  He said well, that’s what they tell us.  I said would you do me a favor if you get out and call my girlfriend and tell her I’m alright?  He said yeah. I said she lives in a small town south of Amarilla about 40 miles, in Tulia.  And he says yeah, what’s her name?  I said Joyce Ann Reilly.  And he said

 

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my God, I’ve double dated with her.   Six thousand miles away, and that guy’s double dating with my wife, my girlfriend.

I:          Oh, my goodness.

D:        He did get released, and he called her on my dad’s birthday, May 31.  So, I was only, they had gotten, my parents had gotten word that I was missing in action.  But I was only from April 22 to

 

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May 31.  And they knew I was alive.

I:          Right.  But they knew that you were captured.

D:        Yeah.

I:          Um hm.

D:        And they knew that I was captured and wasn’t MIA anymore.

I:          Right.
D:        And after he got out, he did come over, and he went to see her I think, visited with her. He had met her; she was in nursing school in Amarillo.  And he was a student at,

 

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I think he was at West Texas University in Amarillo.  And so, that’s how they met.  And they notified my dad, I think it was, May 31 was my dad’s birthday.  And that’s when they found out that I was still alive.  And we had some communication.  We got a few letters out

 

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that the Chinese told us that it was to our advantage to try to write up something about how the US government had started the War and all that stuff.  And so, we had to put a little bit in there in order to know that our letters were gonna get out.

 

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And my dad read that right now.  And he knew that I didn’t believe that.

I:          Yeah.

D:        And, but that way my letters got out to mother and dad and to my girlfriend.  And

I:          So, back on April 22 when you were captured, your, did your camp just get overrun?  What exactly happened?

D:        Well, we’d been in several fire fights and lost some men.  And on Sunday, they

 

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made me a squad leader.

I:          Um hm.
D:        And brought up a bunch of new men.  I had eight new men.  And

I:          How many men did you have total?

D:        Well, eight in my squad.
I:          Okay.
D:        Company strength I think at that time was just under 200.

I:          Um hm.
D:        The doctors at the VA Hospital told me that I had, suffered from survivor’s guilt

 

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Because as far as I know, all eight of those men died that night, first night on the front line.  And I don’t know.  But it’s bothered me ever since.  I found out after I got out that our company was

 

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down to less than 50 people, that the rest had been killed or captured that night.  And that was quite a night.  It got so bad that our officers called in our artillery on our positions to try to stop it because they knew there wasn’t very much of us left anyway.

I:          Um hm.

D:        So, they

 

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called in the artillery in that area to try to stop them.  And I hid out after all my ammunition was gone and all the grenades we had and everything.  I got in some rocks and hid out.  And the artillery was flying.  The sparks were flying off those rocks like you wouldn’t believe.  I thought well, I’ll just try to stay

 

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hid out and our troops will be back, and I’ll be alright.  And I come to find out they, the Chinese pushed us back 20 miles in that fight.  And over several days. I don’t know how long.

I:          Um hm.

D:        But it was a long time before they came back where we were.  So, I was told that there were 26 men left in the company.

 

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And out of this 26 were 13 captured which left the company down to 13 men.  But I have no way of knowing that that was the fact.

I:          Right.

D:        But I know, I read some articles on K Company, and they were, one of the articles started out that the officer went to a map and

 

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said for intents and purposes K Company was wiped out.  So, we don’t know, I don’t know.  I read similar stories about it.

I:          So, you were captured there at the Iron Triangle.  And then you said you marched at night.  Do you remember how many days it took you to reach the camp?

D:        We were captured on the 23^rd, the morning of the 23^rd.

I:          Um hm.

D:        And we walked into that camp on June the 19^th, my sister’s

 

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birthday.  I had a lot of things happen where I remembered dates and everything.

I:          I was about to say like you know all the exact dates because it seems to, everything happened on very important dates, like personal dates to you.

D:        Oh, it was about what, 60 days, roughly 60 days.

I:          How old were you around this time?
D:        Well, I was 24 when I was captured. I had already been through that last part of World War II.

I:          Right.

 

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D:        And I was 24.  And a lot of those guys were younger.  They were really young because after the end of World War II, all those veterans wanted out.  And the government wanted to get them out as quick as they could.  They did everything they could.  And consequently, they were taking the younger kids, not asking age because we had kids in there that were 16 and

 

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17 years old, that had been taken in through the Army occupation in Japan and got thrown into the fire fight over there.  There were several, one incident I know of was a young kid that was shot through both ankles and was captured and was

 

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at the Chosin Reservoir when it was so bitterly cold.  And the Chinese had to take both of his feet, and he was blessed that it was so cold because it kept him from getting any infection.

I:          Right.

D:        He healed up well after that.  But he had to have, I understand he had to have surgery after he got out.  I never saw him again after he got released.

 

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I:          Um hm.  What camp did you arrive to:

D:        What huh?
I:          What camp did you arrive to?
D:        One, camp one.

I:          Camp one.  Where was camp one located?
D:        Well, I don’t know to this day.  I’ve been told that it was very close to the Yalu River.  We thought we were about 25 miles from the river and about 25 miles to the Yellow Sea which is down on the south end where the Yalu River dumps into the Yellow

 

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Sea.

I:          Right.  So, whenever you arrived at camp one, was there kind of like a process, like

D:        There was an existing camp.  There were already men there.

I:          Right.
D:        They’d been, some of them had been moved in there that had been captured, I think, in July of ’50.  But I don’t know how long the camp had been there.

 

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I:          Um hm.  So, while you were marching, it took you, you know, almost two months to reach the camp after being captured.  What were they feeding you guys?  Tell me and how you survived the march for two months.

D:        Well, some of them were wounded.  Some of them got sick from dysentery.  I carried one kid for about a week on my back that had been shot up pretty bad.

 

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And we came down from the hills one time, and there was a road.  And they made me put him down and said that the Chinese would take him to the hospital, and I said no, I’ll carry him.  I’ll keep him.  And they wouldn’t let me, and they made me put him down.  And I didn’t expect to see him ever again.  But after I got out, the first Christmas I got a Christmas card from him thanking me for carrying him.  And he said you couldn’t carry me now because I weigh

 

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225 lbs.  I said well, you can carry me then.  I don’t weigh that much.  And that’s only one time that a Korean POW reunion that we had at the time.

I:          Where does he live?
D:        Hm?
I:          Where does he live?

D:        He lived in New Jersey.

I:          Um.

D:        But I just saw him one other time.

I:          Um hm.  What were they feeding you guys as you all were marching?

D:        Hm?
I:          Were they feeding y’all as y’all were marching, or did you kind of have to find your own food?

 

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D:        Well, they, what little we got, we got from them.  They all carried their own rations.

I:          Um hm.

D:        In a cotton sack about so big around and about so long.  They carried it over their shoulder with a string or something.  And sometimes they’d fix some and let us have some.  But I went from about 155 lbs. to, down to around about 100

 

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while I was in there, not all of it in that two months.  But and we didn’t have any access to any food.  We just got whatever they gave us.

I:          Um hm.  And so how were the living arrangements whenever you arrived to the camp?

D:        Well, they had taken over a Korean village, moved all the residents out.

 

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And most of the houses were three rooms.  Two rooms where you live in and the third room was the kitchen.  And we were in those rooms.  There was 10 of us in a room about seven or eight feet square.  And you slept head to toe, and you had, if anybody turned over, everybody had to turn over.  And it was pretty congested.  And the room got smaller when tempers flared.

 

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I:          Um hm.

D:        It wasn’t a very(INAUDIBLE) two guys fighting and five other guys watching and all in the same little room.

I:          How big would you say the room was?
D:        About seven feet square.  Ten feet, not more than 10 feet square.

I:          Um hm.  So, what were the, I guess, the day-to-day activities that you guys had to do or go through?
D:        Well, when we first got there, it was in the Spring.

I:          Um hm.

D:        And they made us

 

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go up in the mountains about four miles and carry down logs that they’d had the natives cut trees down and cut them up into small joint sections where one man could carry it out.  And we had to, each company had a two-man saw, crosscut saw.  We had an axe, and we had to cut that wood up small little joints where they’d go in the fireplace in the kitchen.

 

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And then we had to split it with the axe.  And we had to get enough of that together during the warm spring and summer to last through the winter.  And we usually used it all by the time spring came around.  And that’s about the only thing we had to do except for the brain washing.  I got in trouble because I was 24.

 

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I was older when I told those kids don’t believe that stuff.  They’d have those indoor connection classes, and I would say you know better than that.  You know what kind of country we’ve got at home, and you can see what these people have.

I:          Um hm.

D:        They don’t have anything.

I:          What were they trying to convince you guys of?
D:        Well, that Communism would be better than Capitalism.  And it’s not so.

I:          Um hm.

D:        And to this day, I know it’s not so.

 

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Our country’s in better shape.  We’re free to do what we want to do and raise our food or get our kids in college.  And these countries don’t have that.  A few of them get to go to college, and the rest of them are like trained monkeys as far as I’m concerned.  The educated ones brainwashing them, convincing them that Communism’s good, and I know better.

 

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Thank you very much.

I:          So, besides this brainwashing, were you all able to play basketball or, you know, play cards or things that y’all could do to stay entertained?

D:        They had had some softballs and some basketballs and that Spring in “53, they had some discus.  They had some kind of Junior Olympics and stuff that they could have races and everything and play basketball.

 

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That was about all we had to do.  There was nothing else.

I:          And I’ve heard from other prisoners, POWs, that they weren’t allowed to pray, that they just wouldn’t.  There would be consequences, I guess, if they were caught.  Was that true while you were in camp?
D:        We never got told not to.
I:          Um hm.

D:        Because mainly we didn’t do it when they were around.

I:          Um hm.

 

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D:        And we kept it to ourselves.  I still have my New Testament. I don’t know, on the march up, they made us empty our pockets, and they found that Testament.  And the man told me to throw it in the fire, and I said no. I said you throw it in the fire, and I tried to give it to him, and he wouldn’t touch it.  So, I just put it back in my pocket and kept it.  And I brought it home, and my daughter’s got it now.

I:          What were y’all being fed?  What was the kind of

 

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food they would give you guys?
D:        What?
I:          Food while in camp?

D:        It was just rice or sorghum.

I:          Um hm.  Millet.

D:        Some tofu, I guess.  Once in a while, we’d get that.

I:          Um hm.

D:        Very seldom got any meat.  Once in a while, they’d kill a pig.  But I was s scared of it.  I watched them kill them that morning and serve ‘em that night.

 

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And I was very scared of it.
I:          Um hm.

D:        I got by on what they had.

I:          And so, what about clothing?  Did you stay in your uniforms, or did they give you new clothes to wear?

D:        Well, I kept my combat boots.  Everything else kind of wore out.  They wound up in a summer uniform, POW uniform.  Then we

 

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got a winter uniform.  I’ve got a picture.  It’s in that box that you took away, of me that was taken by an Associated Press photographer that was captured.  And he had on his cameras and everything.  And they realized what they had.  They took him around on the campus and made propaganda pictures.

 

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And he took a picture of me one time, and I didn’t know it had been taken.  And somebody sent me a copy of it after we got home.  And it showed me in that summer uniform.

I:          What was the propaganda?  What were they, I guess, trying to

D:        Well, show everybody how well we were being taken care of.  And they didn’t show the pictures of the jails or the cages they put us in.

 

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That’s another picture that’s in that box you took away.

I:          I promise we’ll include the pictures.  I promise.

D:        You what?
I:          I said I promise we will include the pictures.  I promise.

D:        Might even want to take some pictures of that later on.  One of the men that was in my squad got out in his.  He had his son make a cage like he’d been put in.  And he took it to the Korean War

 

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POW meeting one year. I think it was in Macon, Georgia.  And he was gonna try to give it to the Andersonville POW Museum, and they didn’t want it.  And we were all upset about that.

I:          Yeah.  Why?

D:        Said they didn’t have room for it.

I:          So, cages were used as a punishment or?

D:        Oh yeah.

 

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If you did something wrong, they’d put you in there for a week.  And when you got out you, and you didn’t get out during that week.  When you got out, you’d clean up the cage, and then you’d take a bath and clean yourself up, and you can wash your clothes.  So, it was better not to get in trouble.

I:          What are things you’d get in trouble for?
D:        Well, I argued with them about (INAUDIBLE) stealing food or

 

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Any number of things, any infraction.  They’d throw you in there for any reason in the world.  IF they didn’t like the way you smiled at them that morning, they’d almost put you away.  I was in jail 75 days because of my partying with them while they were brainwashing.

I:          You were in that cage for 75 days?

D:        No. I was in another squad.  They separated us from the rest of the camp.

 

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I:          And were you a prisoner of the Chinese or North Koreans?

D:        Chinese.  We were never prisoners of the Koreans, the North Koreans. And I’m glad because they were pretty vicious, killed a lot of people.

I:          And how long were you a prisoner of war?

D:        Twenty-eight months.

I:          And so, obviously a

 

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long 28 months.  And so, what day were you finally released?

D:        August the 20^th, 1953.

I:          August 20^th of 1953.
D:        Fifty-three.

I:          Um hm.  So that was a month almost after the Armistice was signed.  It took that long for them to, for you guys to be released.  Almost a month later?

D:        Armistice was signed on July 27.

I:          Um hm.

D:        And we got out on the 20^th of August.

I:          Um hm.

 

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D:        They had to move us from where we were was a long ways.  We rode a truck part of the way, and we rode a train part of the way.

I:          Um hm.

D:        And then due process from both sides I guess, how they were gonna exchange them and everything.

I:          Um hm.  So, how did you guys find out that the Armistice was being signed and that prisoners were being released?  Did they just come out and say you guys,

 

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D:        They called us out and had a formation, the whole camp, and told us that the Peace Talks had been signed.  And they were kind of afraid that we would riot and raise hell, and we didn’t.  And that kind of upset them because we were so calm.  We just decided we weren’t going to let them know our emotions.

I:          Um.  You were just ready to get out.

 

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You’d already been there 28 months.

D:        Yeah.

I:          So, would you say the conditions maybe got a little bit better or they kind of lightened up that last month?

D:        They started lightening up in the Spring when they had that Olympics and everything.  We could tell when the Peace Talks were going good.  Our treatment was a little better.  But if it got hung up on something, they’d go back to the old rules.

 

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But it never did get, they said we couldn’t take anything out.  But I got that chess set out because I had it in another bag that I had made.

I:          Um hm.
D:        And they didn’t bother to take it away from me.  And that bag laid in the closet for 50 years before I got it out. I’ve only had it out about

 

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10 years.

I:          Just decided to look at it one day and, what made you kind of pull it back out?

D:        Yeah.  I don’t know why.

I:          It’s been almost 50 years.

D:        The first 50 years, I was in denial about it.  I wouldn’t talk about anything, being a prisoner or anything.  Didn’t have to discuss it or anything.

I:          Is that because you didn’t want to, or did the government by any chance ask you not to speak about it or anything?

 

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D:        No, the government never told us.

I:          Um hm.

D:        It’s just so many things I felt like needed to be told.
I:          Hm.

D:        I was asked to make talks at various places, high schools and civic clubs to tell my experiences.  The Air Force Base, Cannon Air Force Base,

 

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has, all Air Force bases have an Airmen’s Leadership School.  And Cannon Air Force Base created a Wall of Heroes, and they inducted a bunch of us into it.  And not all just prisoners but all veterans that had a story to tell.  And I was inducted into it in March of 2005.

 

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And they, the Commandant, asked me if I would come back and talk to one of her classes.  And I said yeah.  So, I went back the very first class after I was inducted, and that was in April of

 

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2005. And last week, April the 16^th, I made my 70^th talk to a class, 70 different classes of students that had to go through that class at school before they could make Staff Sergeant.

I:          Um hm.
D:        So, I talked to every class since I was inducted into that Wall of Heroes,

 

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Over 1,500 students.

I:          Wow.
D:        And all I get out of it is a free dinner at their graduation.  My wife and I get to go.

I:          So, I guess rewinding, whenever you were released, where did you have to march to a different place obviously.  Did you have to take a truck to Freedom Village or anything of that nature?

D:        Did what?

 

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I:          Did you have to take a truck to Freedom Village to be released to pass on back over to that South Korea?

D:        Well, there were trucks and trains.

I:          Um hm.

D:        You mean how they got us back down there?
I:          Um hm.

D:        Yeah.  They put us on trucks right there on the camp.  And they took us to a railhead, and we rode boxcars down into, near the front wherever the exchange Panmunjom,

I:          Um hm.
D:        And they trucked us on into there.

 

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And then whatever process they had for getting us out of there.

I:          Um hm.  So, obviously I guess, your wife waited for you?
D:        I got home on September the 7^th which was Labor Day ’53.

I:          Another holiday.

D:        Another day.  We got married October the 18^th,

 

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just took her about a month and a half to get everything together.

I:          Um hm.

D:        We were, she wanted to go to Mexico on our honeymoon, and my friend that got the Medal of Honor told me he wanted me to go to Washington with him when he got it.  And he called me, and he told me that that the ceremony

 

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was gonna be October 27^th.  So, I called her and told her we weren’t doing Mexico.  We was going to Washington.  So, we went up there, and we were present when they, seven men got the medal that day.  And we were able to see it.  It was President Eisenhower put it on.

I:          Was it a difficult process coming back home as far as mentally and physically,

 

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getting back into the, you saying okay, I’m not a prisoner any more.  I’m back, you know, in my home.

D:        We all wanted to fly home.  And they said no, you’re gonna have to go on a boat.  They said if you flew home, you’d be quarantined for two weeks.  But they said we’ve got a little work to do with you.  And we did.  I spent over eight hours with people from the FBI and from OSS which is now CIA, and all kinds of law enforcement.

 

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And they wanted to know, they wanted us to try to remember every man that had died, when he died, how he died.  And they wanted to know about any squealers that squealed on other people.

I:          Um.

D:        Or did anything against the government, against our government.  And we were busy from all that.  And then they wanted to get

 

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us back in physical shape, too.

I:          Um hm.

D:        I gained 25 lbs. on the boat, two weeks.
I:          Two weeks on the boat, and you gained 25 lbs.

D:        Yeah.  I went from 110 to 135 in two weeks.

I:          What were they feeding you?

D:        Hm?
I:          What were they feeding you?
D:        On the ship?

I:          Um hm.

D:        Well, it started off just mashed potatoes and Jello and

 

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cereal and stuff like that.  And they didn’t know what kind of shape we were in or what we could handle.  And it just got progressively better and heavier.

I:          Started out, um hm.

D:        So, then we got up to steak and stuff like that.  And they did it right.  We had, there was two medics there at the head of the line, and before you could pick up a tray, you had to take all these vitamins and everything.  You didn’t eat until you took your pills.

 

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I:          Did you have to get through any kind of etiquette classes to kind of get you back into post-stress?  I mean, I’ve heard some other prisoners of war that they had to kind of take classes on how to treat women and kind of just civilians again.

D:        No, we didn’t have anything like that.

I:          Um hm.  So, you returned home.  And a month later, you were married.

D:        That’s right.

I:          Um hm.

 

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D:        I’ve been married 61 ½ years.
I:          Congratulations.  That’s amazing.

D:        Thank you.

I:          Y’all were just dating whenever you were captured.  And long had y’all been dating?

D:        I don’t know.  We’d been dating for a couple of years.

I:          Um hm.

D:        And I’d already given her a ring.  We planned to get married when that happened.

I:          She sounds like a fantastic person, especially to wait around and not really knowing when you were gonna come home and

D:        That’s right.  She went to one last

 

0:36:00

story (INAUDIBLE) man knew what had happened.  And they planned a wedding for every season and pick out clothes. She never bought them till I got out.  But then she got everything done in 30 days.

I:          Wow.  That’s amazing.  I wish she were here with you today.

D:        Well, she’s in the hotel at home base.

I:          Oh, I see.  I wish she had some with you.  I would love to have met her.

 

0:36:30

So, you were married October 18^th.  You returned home September 7^th.  So, what did you do after you came home, after you got married?
D:        Well, I went back to work theaters for a while.

I:          Um hm.

D:        And then when I kicked in, I went to work for a man in an auto parts store.  And I worked for him 11 years.  And then I opened my own auto parts store.  And I had it 11 years.  And then I sold it in 1987

 

0:37:00

and sat down.

I:          Kind of just

D:        Retired.

I:          Sat back and retired and

D:        I blame my wife as a nurse, and she was a Nursing Coordinator at the high school for 24 years.  And I’d get her off to work and clean up the kitchen, had to go to the golf course.  And I’d get home about 3:00 and

 

0:37:30

I’d to fix dinner.  She got home and washed up the dishes.  She retired in 1992.  So, I said now it’s your turn.  I just kept playing golf.  We had two beautiful daughters.  We adopted both of them.  And I’m very proud of them.  One’s a counselor in middle school in Amarillo,

 

0:38:00

and the oldest daughter is head of a transcription department for a Cardiologist, 11 or 12 cardiologists.
I:          Um hm.  Wow.

D:        So, she’s busy.

I:          Yeah.  And they both sound very successful and

D:        Yeah.

I:          Congratulations.

D:        Everybody’s good.

I:          That’s amazing.  So, you didn’t speak about your experience after you returned home.  Have you been back to Korea, or would you ever, would you want to?

 

0:38:30

D:        We went back in 2006 on that Korean War

I:          Revisit Program?
D:        Revisit Program, yeah.

I:          What did you think?

D:        Oh, I was highly pleased to see how well it was.

I:          Um hm.

D:        It was so nice.  And the country’s growing and prospering.  And the people are healthy.  And very satisfied with it.

 

0:39:00

I:          What do you think is the legacy carried on by Korean War veterans in the Korean War?

D:        Well, there’s the legacy right there in South Korea.

I:          Um hm.
D:        It’s something to be proud of, (INAUDIBLE).  And there were a lot of times that we weren’t too happy about being over there and cussing and fretting about it.  But we look back now, and

 

0:39:30

we paid a terrible price for that.  I’ve got (INAUDIBLE) in that box that you took away.

I:          You make it sound like I stole them.  I promise to give them back.

D:        But it, I’m not, I just 67.

I:          Um hm.

D:        Seven thousand died, 92,000

 

0:40:00

wounded. So many MIAs and so many POWs.  I don’t have the figures.

I:          Right.
D:        They’re in that box.

I:          We’ll be sure to include those as well.  So, taking into consideration how many lives were either lost or even just, you know, uprooted, sacrifices that were made. How does it personally make you feel I guess knowing that it was

 

0:40:30

considered a Police Action and not a War when you saw firsthand that it definitely was.

D:        Well, we always said they called it a Police Action.  If it was, it wasn’t near enough cops, and it was too big a beat.  But we’re satisfied that it was the way it happened.

I:          And in your opinion, why do you think the Korean War is often referred to as the Forgotten War?  How did it get that title?

D:        Well,

 

0:41:00

if you look out there at that memorial, and there’s not very much on the Korean War in it.  I can go out there and look at that wall with all the prisoners’ names on it from World War II and Korea and Viet Nam, and there’s not many POWs on it from Korea.

I:          Um hm.
D:        And we, people were sick of war

 

0:41:30

because of World War II.  And it came around too fast.
I:          Um hm.
D:        And, but I don’t know why it was called the Forgotten War because I sure remember it.  But it was, I don’t know. I just don’t know.  And then the Viet Nam War come along, and everybody was really, the only difference between the Viet Nam War and the Korean War was North

 

0:42:00

Korea started that War.  We didn’t.

I:          Um hm.

D:        We didn’t volunteer to get in it.  We got volunteered into the Viet Nam War.  And that was a shame as far as I was concerned.  Those people had been fighting for centuries.  And it’s just like that one that’s going on now.

I:          Um hm.

D:        They’ve been fighting for years.  And we didn’t, we need to get out of there.  I don’t mean to politic,

 

0:42:30

but we need (INAUDIBLE)

I:          So, I guess I kind of have a question for you then.  So, in 2013, we witnessed the signing, or the 60^th anniversary of the Armistice.  There’s no other War in modern history that has lasted 60 years after an official cease fire.  What do you think we need to do to kind of end that hostility and kind of put a closure on it?  Do you think it may ever be possible?

D:        It’s not possible as long as that young punk’s running North

 

0:43:00

Korea.  Somebody needs to talk some sense into somebody up there to get it done.

I:          Would you support a reunification of North and South Korea if it were possible?

D:        If it were possible, yes.

I:          Um hm.

D:        But not through the efforts the way they wanted to do it.

I:          Right.

D:        To come down there, and it’s not gonna happen.  And I’m convinced that China is

 

0:43:30

popping the whip over there and telling them what to do.

I:          Um hm.

D:        And kind of like a dog on a chain. They just hold them back.  They know they can’t win by themselves.  And they don’t want to get in another war.

I:          Right.

D:        China doesn’t.  So, I don’t think it’ll ever happen.

I:          And do you think it’s important for younger generations to understand and know of the

 

0:44:00

sacrifices and contributions that were made prior to the Armistice?

D:        Sure, sure.

I:          Why do you think it’s important for them to be aware of what happened?

D:        Well, I just, I think they need to know it.   The younger generations need to know it.  And by telling my story to these

 

0:44:30

young people, even though they’re all in the Air Force, they’re gonna remember, and they’re gonna understand what happened.  And the Korean War veterans now have a retell program to tell it to the people.

I:          Yeah.

D:        And it’s good. I think that more people need to hear it.  And I’m, I do, that’s why I do what I do.

 

0:45:00

I:          Um hm.  Do you think that this is necessary, what we’re doing here today, interviewing veterans and preserving their legacy and their stories?
D:        It depends on how the word gets out.  If the younger generation can get to it, it’s fine.

I:          Um hm.  Is there anything that you were able to take from your experience in Korea, maybe a life lesson or something that stuck with you, that you learned I guess while you were in Korea?

 

0:45:30

D:        Well, there’s not a day goes by that I don’t think of something or somebody, kind of relating to that War and anybody that goes through that as a prisoner, it’s imbedded in your mind, and they’ll never forget it.

I:          Um hm.

D:        And I think it’s vital that people understand it.

 

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