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After 59 years, Army Master Sgt. Silas W. Wilson is coming home tonight, and the fact he will be in a flag-draped casket does not diminish the feeling of anticipation and closure in the heart of a daughter who never knew him. "When I was a child, from the time I had any memory at all, I knew what had hap­pened," Marie Wilson Cleghorn said Tues­day night. "And for 59 years, I've prayed ev­ery day that my daddy would come home one way or another. "It's 22 years too late for my mother to be this happy, and it's eight...

“Perfection is acquired through our efforts, and if we try to become saints, someday we will be saints.” — Father Emil Kapaun Chase Kear does not seem at first glance to be the poster boy for a Vatican investigation involving sainthood. He chews a little dip, hits targets at turkey shoots, listens to country music when he rolls. In his Facebook profile photo he dresses the part of a halfnaked bandito in a sombrero. He’s a self-described redneck; also foolish and drunk and stupid at times in the past, he says, though less so since his accident. He takes comfort...

“He died because he loved and pitied us. He died that we might live.” — Father Emil Kapaun The legend of Father Kapaun and the quest to elevate him to sainthood began in September 1953 as soon as Communist guards released prisoners at the end of the Korean War. A little band of fierce-looking Americans, with balding and blunttalking Ralph Nardella at their head, carried Emil Kapaun’s gold ciborium and a rugged wooden crucifix, an inch shy of four feet tall. They had risked their lives in a final act of defiance to bring those items across the fence line;...

"In order to win the crown of heavenly glory, the saints were expected first to carry a heavy cross in life." -- Father Emil Kapaun Over the next six weeks, the POWs in the Pyoktong prison camp began a cloaked and daring effort to save Emil Kapaun’s life. On a rise above them stood the remains of a Buddhist monastery; the guards called it a hospital, but POWs called it "The Death House." The Chinese sometimes killed prisoners by isolating them there from food and help. The POWs knew that’s where Kapaun might end up. In April, weeks after his...

"No sincere prayer is ever wasted." -Father Emil Kapaun At sunrise on Easter Sunday, March 25, 1951, Father Emil Kapaun startled POWs by donning his purple priest’s stole and openly carrying a Catholic prayer missal, borrowed from Ralph Nardella. He had talked atheist guards into letting him hold an Easter service, a favor they soon regretted. No one there would ever forget this day. The most moving sight the POWs ever saw. At sunrise, 80 officers — bearded, dirty and covered with lice — followed Kapaun up a little rise, to the cold steps of a bombed-out church. They gathered...

“People whose ambitions are confined to the limits of earthly things would be confounded at the beatitude on meekness.” — Father Emil Kapaun By February 1951 the Allied prisoners at Pyoktong, North Korea, were dying so fast on ground frozen so solid that unburied bodies lay in stacks three to four feet high, 30 to 40 yards long. Men hoarded food or stole it from the weak, and left sick men to die in their own defecation. Many soldiers were in their teens and early 20s, not mature enough to deal with that level of suffering. Father Emil Kapaun never...

"Christ's works testified to what he was; our works will testify as to what we are." -Father Emil Kapaun -- Three weeks after their capture, after 75 miles of marching, the starving survivors of the 8th Cavalry and 19th Infantry straggled into a mud-hut village called Pyoktong, on the banks of the Yalu River, two miles from Manchuria. They’d barely set foot in the village when American bombers roared in overhead and firebombed it. Horrified villagers spat at the prisoners, threw rocks. Guards took them south again, 12 more miles. Men and discipline broke down in the snow and ice;...

"Men find it easy to follow one who has endeared himself to them." -Father Emil Kapaun Father Emil Kapaun was considered an unusual man even before the 8th Cavalry’s 3rd Battalion was overrun at Unsan. Many devout Christians believe, for example, that they must overtly preach Christianity, but Kapaun by all accounts never lectured, never forced it. What he did instead was scrounge food for soldiers, write letters to their families, pass his tobacco pipe around for a few puffs, and run through machine gun fire, rescuing wounded. If he brought up religion in foxholes, he asked permission first: “Would...

After he hit his head on the ground in a pole vaulting accident last year, they sawed off a third of his skull to relieve the pressure on his swelling brain. They told his family that all hope was lost. But Chase's family lives near Wichita, where a farm kid named Emil Kapaun was ordained a priest 69 years ago. The Kears prayed thousands of prayers to the soul of Father Kapaun, asking him to bend the ear of God. They chanted his name like a mantra. And Chase woke up. And he arose and walked. His baffled doctors said...

This weekend marks the 59th anniversary of one of the most courageous battles in military history. It happened in the early stages of the Korean Conflict, often called the forgotten war. Thousands of marines fought against the North Koreans, the Chinese and another enemy - the weather, Now 85 years old, Joseph Owen was a young first lieutenant in November 1950, when he and nearly 20,000 other American fighters, trying to gain ground against the surging North Koreans and Chinese Army, were outmaneuvered, trapped behind enemy lines at North Korea's treacherous Chosin Reservoir. The American's were out-gunned 10 to 1....

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20, 2009 – Retired Army Col. Lewis L. Millett, who earned the Medal of Honor during the Korean War for leading what reportedly was the last major American bayonet charge, died Nov 14. Retired Army Col. Lewis L. Millet wears his Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star and other medals earned in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. He served as honorary colonel of the 27th Infantry Regiment Association, and was active in veterans events almost to his death Nov. 14, 2009. U.S. Army photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Millett, 88, died in Loma...

TOPEKA, Kan. — A Kansas priest already under consideration for sainthood has won the endorsement of the Army's top civilian leader to receive the Medal of Honor.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6, 2009 – Veterans of the Korean War, both American and Korean, gathered here yesterday with current U.S. Army and South Korean leaders to pay tribute at the National Korean War Memorial. Army Gen. Walter L. Sharp, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, left, and Jung-ki "Rocky" Park, Korean Corporate Members of the Association of the United States Army, render honors during a wreath-laying ceremony at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., Oct. 5, 2009. DoD photo by Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael J. Carden  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Members of the Korean War Veterans...

My claim is that Koreans are still unable to acknowledge that it was natural for some people to have benefitted under Japanese rule and that these people still loved Korea and the like (I'm thinking more along the lines of a Park Chung Hee than the founders of either Dong-a-Ilbo or Samsung), but the opportunities they had in life only existed if they accepted that Korea was for the time being a Japanese colony and that they realistically couldn't do a single thing about it. And, more so, and this is a claim purely along the lines of the early...

You see, I'm of the belief that President George W. Bush, the first president I voted for during the 2000 election cycle, though I really was pulling for Senator John McCain at that time, became president since he was a likeable figure thought to be not different than the average American (Though, former President Gore's likeability issue and disgraced activist Ralph Nader probably also had something to do with it), but yet, then Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. and a tutor of George W. Bush's answers precisely why the U.S. should care and in a very concise manner too. If...

Anyways, take these xenophobic tendencies that have been created for over the past 1300 years (or more than 5,000 years, depending on your source) and then brutally colonize the country for thirty six years. Then, add in a devastating civil war (the Korean War) that wasn't allowed to see its natural conclusion - a war ending with there being two rival Korean states is definitely unnatural (or just look at the fact that the armistic isn't even a peace treaty, but a cease fire signed by China, North Korea, and the U.S.). That's at the heart of my argument. And,...

How Will We Judge the Korean War in a Century? [...] What I am arguing is will this be the consensus twenty years from today (or forty years after this article was written). I mean, yes, most ordinary South Koreans enjoys such material prosperity that probably only a select few and I mean a very select few in North Korea could only begin to dream about. I am saying that had the Korean War run its course without intervention from the United States (or equivalently had Harry S. Truman not settled on a policy, the Truman Doctrine, where not winning...

U.S. naivete not only wrongly interfered with the natural development of East Asia, but in particular with respect to Korea, the greatest tragedy was that by the U.S. interfering in what was basically a civil war, the peninsula saw all the carnage and destructionthat would've played out anyways had the U.S. not interfered, but the wardid nothing to unify the nation ("Containment"). Moreover, the perverse state that North Korea finds herself to be in is a direct result of the natural order of things being prevented from occurring. Other Sinic nations experienced similar bouts of reconciliation, but with the fruits...

My associate and I got a letter for a Korean War Veteran who thought his service was long forgotten. You can go to the original article and post your thanks in the comment section.

It was 56-years ago today that the U.S. and North Korea signed the armistice that ended active combat in America’s forgotten war. More than 36,000 Americans gave their lives defending South Korea from invasion first by the communist North and then by the Red Chinese Army. [...] And therein lies the lesson: Official U.S. policy toward aggression by the Soviet Union and Communist China wasn’t clear after the end of World War II in 1945 until an anonymous article appeared in the journal Foreign Affairs in 1947. The article advanced a doctrine of containment by the U.S. of communist expansion,...

U.S. President Barack Obama has declared Monday, July 27th, as National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day. The White House released the proclamation Saturday, a day before the armistice ending the Korean War was signed in 1953. Obama said that by virtue of the authority vested in him by the Constitution, he proclaims July 27th as National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day. He urged all Americans to observe the day with ceremonies honoring and giving thanks to distinguished Korean War veterans. He also asked federal departments, interested groups, organizations and individuals to fly the flag at half-staff in memory of fallen...

Here I was in a rather small capital of Northern Ireland, which is still and probably always will be a part of the United Kingdom --an opinion of which I don't have. But anyways, it's a city hall! And, on the grounds of this city hall (it's a small city with a population of some 267,500 according to the NISRA), there's a memorial that dedicates the lives of those that fought and died in Korea nearly sixty years ago. All because of the words of one man -- Harry Truman (who single handedly decided to intervene in the Korean War;...

DPRK is really rubbing it in the US's face with seeming impunity. Hmmmmm....I WONDER why THAT would be....There was a mass demonstration yesterday in North Korea by the Korean Workers Party in front of the 1967-seized USS Pueblo, docked in Pyongyang on a main river.I share HERE the link to the streaming video of this event. Hit the orange box with the arrow right below the Pueblo photo and the 1 minute video will stream. Stand it if you can.

Cpl. Robert Schoening was 18 when he was killed near Hill 222 south of the Kuryong River and east of the "Camel's Head" in what is now North Korea. A member of Company C, 65th Combat Engineer Battalion, 25th Infantry Division, Schoening and his comrades were among the northernmost U.S. troops as 180,000 Chinese launched a surprise attack in late November of 1950.

Guitar legend Huey Long, the last surviving member of the original Ink Spots, died June 10 in Houston at the age of 105. Long was born in Sealy, Texas. He worked various jobs in the Houston area until he got his big break playing banjo in the Frank Davis Louisiana Jazz Band. In 1936, Bill Kenny, the leader of the Ink Spots, talked Long into leaving the jazz trio joining the Ink Spots. ...He moved back to Houston in the 90s, having written and arranged more than 80 songs. Long is survived by his daughter, Houston resident Anita Long, and...

SEOUL: North Korea warned on Wednesday of a military response after South Korea joined an anti-proliferation exercise, and said it is no longer bound by the 1953 armistice which ended their war. A military statement quoted by official media also said the North could no longer guarantee the safety of shipping off its west coast. It repeated Pyongyang's position that Seoul's decision to join the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) is tantamount to a declaration of war. South Korea announced on Tuesday it will become a full member of the PSI initiative to curb trade in weapons of mass destruction,...

‘IT MAKES ME SAD. IT MAKES ME PROUD.’ Francis R. Carroll, who guided the effort to fund and build Worcester's $1.8 million Korean War Memorial, points to Richard A. Browne's name (just above his finger) on the memorial. Sgt. Browne was one of more than 191 Central Massachusetts servicemen and women killed in the Korean War. (RICH DUGAS) He (Sgt. Richard A. Browne) wasn’t just somebody killed in action. He was a hero. -- retired Col. Daniel K. Cedusky, OF CHAMPAIGN, ILL. They called him Lucky, a nickname earned only after events have proven it true. And then fate takes...

Seoul, Korea6 April 1951My dearest Helen, Patty and Chuckie,    Yesterday brought me a letter from you but I didn't answer it last night as I was quite tired and laid down for a few minutes but fell asleep only to wake up at 11:00 PM still tired so I got into bed. Tonight I am duty officer but hope to get a good night sleep.    I doubt it was a pleasant change for you having Marshall and Marie stay for a while and play a few cards and I surely hope you all had a pleasant evening, considering.    Honey, your...

Bronx soldier Cornelius Charlton gave his life for his country in the Korean War and got a Medal of Honor for it.  This week, he will finally get the rest of what was coming to him when the Army sergeant's remains are buried in Arlington National Cemetery - ending a half century of mystery, bitter tears and a quest to ennoble the young hero. Snapping a salute as Army soldiers fold the U.S. flag into a triangle and a chaplain prays over the grave will be a cluster of graying veterans from the Bronx who made it their mission to...

U.S. journalist John W. Powell, whose 1950s articles alleging American use of germ warfare in Korea sparked sedition charges, has died at 89, his son says. Powell, who had lived for many years in San Francisco, died in the city Monday of complications from pneumonia, son John S. Powell told Wednesday's New York Times. U.S. prosecutors put Powell on trial in 1959 on a rare charge of sedition, after he authored articles for his Shanghai publication The China Monthly Review asserting that U.S. military had employed germ warfare against North Korea, using methods they had allegedly learned from the defeated...

The Marines and Incheon City yesterday celebrated the 58th anniversary of the Incheon landing, one of the most significant military operations during the Korean War. The Marine Headquarters and Incheon City co-hosted the celebrations held at Incheon's Freedom Park and Weolmido with an audience of over 1,000 war veterans, citizens and soldiers. The event started by laying flowers at the statue of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and in the waterfront of Weolmido, which was the main route for the landing operation more than half a century ago. The Incheon landing operation was carried out by United Nations forces on Sept. 15,...

Olympics Bring Pain and Frustration to Families of Korean War POW/MIAs Beijing Kept American Prisoners, Alive or Dead, But Refuses to Account for Them Families Demand Action from China and Bush Administration Korea-Cold War Families of the Missing & National Alliance of POW/MIA Families: (Aug. 17, 2008) For families across America, the Chinese Olympics are a reminder of the unresolved fates of loved ones imprisoned by China and ignored by President Bush. Following decades of U.S. demands for answers, China on Feb. 29, 2008, agreed to turn over POW documents from its military archives. Yet Beijing has yet to deliver....

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Korean War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. He is Sgt. Gene F. Clark, U.S. Army, of Muncie, Ind. He will be buried June 28 in Muncie. Representatives from the Army met with Clark's next-of-kin to explain the recovery and identification process, and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the secretary of the Army. In September 1950, Clark was assigned to Company L, 3rd Battalion,...

SEOUL : Fifty-eight years ago, a war broke out on the Korean peninsula, and today, the two sides - South and North Korea - remain technically at war and divided. Although it has been more than five decades, there are still South Koreans - who were soldiers at the time - being kept against their will in North Korea. One of the prisoners of war (POW), Kim Jin Soo, recently escaped the North. The 74-year-old POW fought in the Korean War at the age of 17 and was captured by the North Koreans in 1953. All these years, he had...

HIGHLY decorated war veteran and former head of the defence force General Sir Francis Hassett has died. The Defence Department said last night General Hassett died on Wednesday at the age of 90. "He was a fine man, warrior chief and remarkable servant of the nation," the department said in a statement. The soldier served in three wars and towards the end of a 42-year military career became head of the army and then chief of defence force staff in the 1970s. General Hassett fought in World War II and in Malaya, and is best known for his role in...

SEOUL — Kim Chun-su had to join the army, but he didn’t have to go to Vietnam. Almost four decades ago, Kim, then a soldier doing his mandatory three-year service in the South Korean military, opted to fight in what was even in his country an unpopular war. He wanted to get away from the army’s notoriously abusive officers, who he said would wake soldiers up for no reason and beat them. He also wanted to show his gratitude to the United States for helping South Korea during the Korean War. Kim and most of the 97 South Korean veterans...

Soldier Missing In Action From Korean War Is Identified The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Korean War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. He is Sgt. 1st Class W.T. Akins, U.S. Army, of Decatur, Ga. He will be buried on June 26 in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. Requesting prayer for the family, friends, and loved ones of Sgt. 1st Class W.T. Akins, U.S. Army, of Decatur, Ga.. Representatives from the Army met...

The United States is considering moving the 8th Army headquarters to Hawaii by 2012, when wartime operational control is handed over to South Korea, military sources here said yesterday. Fighting units under the Yongsan-based headquarters, such as the 2nd Infantry Division and the 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, are to remain on the Korean Peninsula, they said. The relocation of the 8th Army headquarters to Hawaii, where the U.S. Pacific Command has its headquarters, is intended to revamp the military command structure here, according to the sources. Some critics are concerned that moving the headquarters outside the Korean Peninsula may...

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Korean War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. He is Pfc. Milton Dinerboiler Jr., U.S. Army, of Elkhart, Ind. His burial date is being set by his family. Representatives from the Army met with Dinerboiler’s next-of-kin to explain the recovery and identification process, and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the secretary of the Army. In late November 1950, Dinerboiler was assigned to the Heavy Mortar...

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced today that the remains of two U.S. servicemen, missing from the Korean War, have been identified and are being returned to their families for burial with full military honors. They are Sgt. 1st Class George W. Koon of Leesville, S.C.; and Sgt. 1st Class Jack O. Tye of Loyall, Ky.; both U.S. Army. Koon will be buried tomorrow in Leesville, and Tye will be buried Monday in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. Representatives from the Army met with the soldiers' next-of-kin to explain the recovery and identification process, and to coordinate...

After 50 years, an American state secret has been revealed, about the arrest of 12,000 people because of Hoover’s “red” paranoia. The former director of the FBI, Edgar Hoover made plans for the arrest of 12,000 American citizens which he considered to be threats to national security – documents reveals that no longer bear the status of state secret. Hoover sent this request to the president at the time Harry Truman at the beginning of the Korean war during the 50s. He justified the move as necessary for protection from “treason, spies and sabotage”. For now there is no evidence...

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Korean War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. He is U.S. Army Sgt. Harry J. Laurence of Cleveland, Ohio. He will be buried April 9 in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. Representatives from the Army met with Laurence's next-of-kin to explain the recovery and identification process, and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the secretary of the Army. Laurence was a member of L Company,...

One should not forget. . . that the earth is round and that "every road leads to Rome." WALDEMAR ERFURTH, Surprise Every now and then in the history of mankind, events of surpassing importance take place in little-known areas of the earth. And men and women in countries distant from those events whose lives turn into unexpected and unwanted channels because of them can but wonder how it all happened to come about. So it was with Korea in 1950. In this ancient land of high mountains and sparkling streams the United Nations fought its first war. For decades it...

WASHINGTON, March 4, 2008 – The Defense Department posthumously inducted Army Master Sgt. Woodrow Keeble today into its Hall of Heroes, a day after President Bush bestowed the Medal of Honor on the Korean War hero. Left to right: Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Russell Hawkins, Kurt Bluedog, Army Secretary Pete Geren, and Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Richard Cody stand by during a Pentagon unveiling of a Medal of Honor awarded to the late Master Sgt. Woodrow Keeble, the first full-blooded Sioux Indian, for his heroism during the Korean War, March 4, 2008. Hawkins is...

China and the United States signed a formal agreement in Shanghai to open a military hot line between their defense departments. China also agreed to release records about missing American soldiers long sought by the United States military and relatives of thousands of American servicemen missing from the Korean War and other cold war-era conflicts. More than 8,000 servicemen are still unaccounted for from the Korean War.

WASHINGTON - During the final allied offensive of the Korean War, Master Sgt. Woodrow Wilson Keeble risked his life to save his fellow Soldiers. Almost six decades after his gallant actions and 26 years after his death, Keeble will be the first full-blooded Sioux Indian to receive the Medal of Honor. The White House announced this morning that Keeble will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously in a ceremony scheduled for 2:30 p.m. March 3. Keeble is one of the most decorated Soldiers in North Dakota history. A veteran of World War II and the Korean War, he was born...

A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty. Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons. Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be...

A 1950 Plan: Arrest 12,000, Suspend Due Process By TIM WEINER A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty. Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons. Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially...

Soldier Missing in Action From Korean War is Identified The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Korean War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. He is Cpl. Robert S. Ferrell, U.S. Army, of Dallas, Texas. His burial date is being set by his family. Representatives from the Army met with Ferrell’s next-of-kin to explain the recovery and identification process, and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the secretary of the Army. On Feb....