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Korean War
memorial rites at
Punchbowl
Tomorrow's dedication
By Treena Shapiro
ceremony will spotlight the
'forgotten war'
Star-BulletinIrwin K. Cockett was a 19-year-old private first class when he and other members of the Army's 5th Regimental Combat Team boarded a ship out of Hawaii in 1950.
The soldiers thought they were bound for the Philippines for additional training, reinforcements and equipment. Two days out they learned they were headed straight for North Korea.
Their arrival was a "baptism by fire," said Cockett, a retired brigadier general. As they entered Masan, battered troops greeted them with "don't go up there."
Their first night was lit with streaks of artillery fire, and within days they had lost their entire artillery battalion and had to fight their way out, taking only the walking wounded with them.
The battle was called "Bloody Gulch" in a conflict that has gone down in history as the "forgotten war."
But Korean War veterans will be remembered tomorrow at 11 a.m. during the dedication of a monument along the Memorial Walk at the National Cemetery of the Pacific, Punchbowl. Members of the 5th Regimental Combat Team raised $3,100 to purchase a bronze plaque set in a granite stone shipped from Korea.
The dedication ceremony, memorializing 94 Hawaii soldiers lost in the war, will have a local flavor. A tapa cloth relating the story of the war in Hawaiian symbols will be anchored to the plaque with a maile lei until the memorial is unveiled. Hawaiian warriors will stand guard throughout the ceremony, Cockett said.
With the 50th anniversary of the United States' entry into the Korean War a little more than a week away, Cockett said he doesn't feel forgotten and that the experience of Hawaii veterans is different than it is elsewhere. Hawaii residents are "much more aware of the role that servicemen play," he said.
"It (the Korean War) was never played up that much, but we went, we came, and it kind of fizzled after that," Cockett said. But "this being the 50th anniversary, it certainly has gotten back into the limelight."
The anniversary coincides with this week's historic summit between North and South Korean leaders. "Hopefully the war -- the peace has never been signed -- can come to an end now," he said.
Of the summit, Mitsuo "Ted" Hamasu, also a member of the 5th Regimental Combat Team, said, "I hope they can get together because they're one family. It's a good thing if they can get together."
Peace on the Korean Peninsula could mean that U.S. soldiers' remains and even possibly survivors could be retrieved from North Korea, Hamasu said. "I hope they let us find the people that are missing in action."
Having fought in World War II as well as the Korean War, Hamasu now fights only for peace: "They should outlaw war. Instead of studying the art of war, they should study the art of peace, and peace should be the main thing that every country should be working on instead of finding ways to kill people."
