Posts Tagged ‘Seoul’
We’ll Go Down Fighting Like Marines
“Hang on, Bert. I’m coming to get you!” – Medal of Honor recipient PFC Gene Obregon to his buddy, PFC Bert Johnson, during a firefight in Seoul Athletic, witty, and hard working, Eugene “Gene” Obregon, was the kind of kid everyone liked. Born on November 12, 1930, in Los Angeles, California, he graduated from LA’s Theodore Roosevelt…
Read MoreThey Stood Proud and Strong
“We grunts never knew, one day from the next, where we were or what we were accomplishing. The mountains, valleys, stinking rice paddies, and frozen mountains all seemed the same to us. We were living and dying in our own violent little world.” – Marine serving during the Korean War with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines The…
Read MoreAn Eternal Brotherhood
On a cold, starless night deep in the snow-covered mountains of North Korea, John Lee, a Korean interpreter with 1st Marine Division, watched as about twenty people cautiously entered a small building. Worried that the suspicious-looking North Korean civilians might be communist sympathizers plotting to infiltrate American units at Chosin, he made his way silently…
Read MoreA Wall That Beckons
We all have one, and long after we’re gone, it becomes a memorial to what we did or didn’t do during our time on earth. Whether chiseled in stone, recorded in a legal document, or written on the page of a book, our name, the unique combination of surname and given name, represents our personality,…
Read MoreA Hat Full of Candy and Chocolate
The horrors of war surrounded her: bombed-out buildings, smoldering barricades, the rumbling sound of planes, artillery fire, troop trains, and tanks; wounded soldiers, corpses, and panic-stricken families searching for lost loved ones; and as far as the eye could see, thousands of desperate and frightened refugees. But for five-year-old Rhee Mai-ja, a beautiful, bright-eyed Korean…
Read MoreGreat Sacrifice Can Produce Great Results
This weekend as Americans enjoy cookouts, beach reading, shopping sprees, blockbuster movie openings, and good times with family and friends, many of us will also take time to remember America’s military men and women who died in defense of our freedom. It is, after all, Memorial Day Weekend. But there’s another group of Americans, far from home…
Read MoreIs The Korean War Finally Ending?
For those who served on the Korean peninsula from 1950-1953 and survived, men now in their eighties and nineties, the fighting ended when they came home. For those who died in the streets, fields, landing zones, and mountains of Korea, the fighting ended when their young lives were snuffed out by a North Korean or Chinese…
Read MoreContagious Gratitude: Susan Kee, Honoring Korean War Veterans
We frequently tell young people – our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, the neighborhood kids – to follow their dreams. Pursue your passions, serve others, make the world a better place, we tell them. Somewhere along the way, inevitably, these youngsters become adults and their idealistic passions and goals frequently fall by the wayside. But…
Read MoreFrom a PT Boat to the Streets of Seoul, William H. Shaw’s Life of Character and Conscience
Should I Stay Or Should I Go? For Bill Shaw, a 28-year-old husband, father of two, and first-year doctoral student at Harvard, the answer was clear. He told his wife, two young sons, parents, and professors he’d be back soon. His studies could wait, he explained. Three months later, on September 22, 1950, US Navy…
Read MoreShe Eats, Sleeps, and Fights Like the Rest of Us
In a few weeks the 67th publication anniversary of a little-known Korean War book will quietly come and go. The non-fiction work won’t make headlines, and its author won’t be remembered in editorials or magazines. But things were different in 1951. The book, War in Korea, and its author, the award-winning Marguerite Higgins, were hugely…
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