I well-remember when the Korean War began, 25 June 1950.
I was riding a Muni Streetcar on Haight Street, headed for my newspaper sales corner..
I saw newspapers being put on the racks with headlines declaring that WAR in KOREA had begun.
When I got to my corner, there was a stack of papers waiting for me.
I sold out, and the distributor brought more, which sold out.
After a few days, very few, the Korean War was being shoved further back in to the paper.
When I enlisted, som e 18 months later, on 31 January 1952, the War was still going on, and I hoped to be sent there.
By the time I got out of Tech School at Shepherd in October, the War was at a stalemate.
I never got to Korea.
I got sent to The SCAB and was there when the Armistice was announced.
The Korean War didn't excite the people of this country.
The only times it did was when Mac Arthur made the Inchon Landing and later when Truman fired Mac Arthur.
The last big headline was when Eisenhower went to Korea during the run-up to the 1952 Presidential Election.
The Korean War has been called; "The Forgotten War".
During the Ike years, our country was growing and prosperous, we were not concerned about some "Police Action", as it was called, in a land few knew existed.
There were no protests, marches, congressional hearings, like during Viet Nam.
There are not many good histories of the war in print, and fewer movies.
The Korean War Monument in the Federal City is the most recent one built.
For the Pentagon and the Rose Parade to Honor the Veterans of the Korean War is a good thing, just many years late.
Yet, we lost 36,940, along with 3,737 MIA, and 92,134 wounded.
We are still technically at war with North Korea, as a Peace Treaty has never been completed, and there is still the DMZ, which is not the safest place in the world.
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MOW can tell us a lot more about the situation, as he lives with it.
May God Bless each of those Korean War Veterans still with us, and may we always honor them, as we do the Veterans of our other wars.
:salute :us_flag :salute
Jim Too
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