July, 2018
Washington -- It being the Fourth of July, patriotism is a good subject to consider. And North Korea.
An image is sticking in my mind, a photo from the Singapore summit three weeks ago. Kim Jong-un is shepherding Donald Trump into a room; his hand is on the middle of Trump's back, guiding him, a show of who's in charge. Trump is about to get taken, it seems. Trump will lower military readiness for a Kim promise to de-nuclearize North Korea. Within days, however, satellite photos will show North Korea enhancing its nuclear facilities.
Perhaps somehow it will all work out. Diplomacy has risks worth taking. Doubtless it was wise to step back from the brink of a senseless and catastrophic war.
Some of us on this Fourth of July must be excused if we turn our eyes away from the summit spectacle and look instead to photos of the USS Pueblo (AGER-2), a Navy ship still in commission and held in a North Korean port. Its crew was captured in 1968 by North Korea, tortured for a year, then released.
I was in the Navy at the time, between ships. My orders were to join the USS Arlington (AGMR-2) in Sydney, Australia. When I got to the Philippines, suddenly the orders were changed, as I was somehow to get to the ship in the Sea of Japan (SOJ), operating off the North Korean port of Wonsan. I flew to Okinawa, then to Tachikawa Air Base outside Tokyo, then to the Naval Air Facility at Atsugi, where I boarded a COD (carrier onboard delivery) flight to the USS Enterprise, which had just been rushed to waters off the North Korean coast.
It was snowing when we reached the big aircraft carrier; the deck was white and slippery. The pilot missed the arresting wire four times. Each time he missed, he went full throttle out over the sea to circle and try again. We landed on the fifth attempt. If that one had not succeeded, a cable net barrier would have been put across the flight deck to crash-land us. I spent the night on the Enterprise. The next morning, I was helicoptered over to the Arlington, which was on the scene to provide communications between Washington and the U.S. Navy ships off Wonsan.
Our ships were there to invade the port and rescue the crew of the Pueblo, if the signal was given to do so. It was not given, mostly out of concern that the crew would immediately have been killed by their captors, if we even knew where they were being held. Sixty-eight days later, Arlington steamed back into Yokosuka, Japan.
What are those who have served to deter North Korean totalitarianism supposed to think about new bonhomie with the brutal North Korean leaders? It certainly puts a damper on this Fourth of July for some of us.
