[ MAUKA-MAKAI ]
Everyday Courage Drafted out of auto-mechanic school at Maui Technical, Louis Baldovi was a 20-year-old rifleman with the Army's 45th Infantry Division when he first saw Korea in 1952. When he left, he tried to forget it.
A Foxhole View1ST LT. Herbert Ikeda, Charlie Company
PFC. Robert Hamakawa, Baker Company
1ST LT. Iwao Yokooji, Military Intelligence
By Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.comBaldovi reenlisted in 1953, and served as a drill sergeant at Schofield Barracks. Later, he became a schoolteacher and principal. The lessons of Korea rarely came up. It is often called the "Forgotten War."
In 1989, Hawaiians who had fought in Korea returned as guests of the South Korean government. Baldovi and other Korean War veterans formed the Korean War Veterans Association, Hawai'i Chapter, and were instrumental in creating the Korean and Vietnam War memorials that ripple softly through the Ewa side of the State Capitol grounds, an outcropping of black granite teeth. Baldovi and other veterans can often be found cleaning the memorial.
Another personal project is "A Foxhole View -- Personal Accounts of Hawaii's Korean War Veterans," a University of Hawaii Press oral history assembled by Baldovi. The book contains the first-person memories of Hawaii's veterans of that "police action." Some 456 Hawaii citizens, nearly four times the national average, died in Korea. If Hawaii had been a separate country, it would have had the fourth-highest number of casualties of the United Nations troops.
Of "A Foxhole View," history professor Dan Boylan notes that it "is a gritty, horrible and glorious story. I found myself awed by the everyday, humble, matter-of-fact courage of these men."
Here, we've excerpted some passages from the book. A review appears on page G12.
BACK TO TOP |
AUGUST 1950
Our company was ordered to take a hill that was steep on all sides, rocky, and dry, with very little vegetation. We had to cross a stretch of dry rice paddies for about half a mile before we reached the base of the hill. To make things worse, the day was humid and hot. The temperature must have been over 100 degrees.
1ST LT. HERBERT IKEDA,
Charlie Company, 5th RCT,
Vicinity of Masan, South KoreaOur artillery pounded the hill first before my platoon, the lead platoon in the attack, started out in a skirmish line. Enemy mortar rounds began falling among our ranks as we started across the rice paddies. I yelled at my men to keep on moving to the base of the hill. Some of the men got hit and others fell to the ground, not wanting to go on. We had not received rifle and machine gun fire so I moved through the skirmish line and pressed my men on while mortar rounds kept bursting around us.
We finally got to the base of the hill, where I organized what was left of my platoon. I then waved my platoon forward in a skirmish but the skirmish line broke down when enemy mortar rounds again fell among the men. There was still no fire coming from the top of the hill. I thought maybe the North Koreans had given up the hill after our artillery barrage.
While moving up I bumped into Sgt. Reginald Nash from Hawaii, who was laying commo (communications) wire for the company. I told him to drop the roll of wire and to join me, which he did. Mortar rounds were still coming and more men were down from it and from the heat. As we neared the crest of the hill, we ran into a wall of hand grenades and automatic rifle fire. More of my men were hit and the attack stalled. I finally ordered my platoon to pull back halfway down the hill, where the rest of the company was dug in.
My radio man, Ben Terukina, grabbed me by the arm and told me he just received word from battalion that we were getting air support in a few minutes and for everyone to take cover. Minutes later, P-51 Mustangs appeared and made several strafing runs on the North Korean positions. Some of the Mustangs' spent cartridges fell on the hill, one hitting me on my helmet. The support was so close that some of my men ran farther down the hill to escape being strafed by our planes.
After the air strike the entire company resumed the attack, this time meeting only scattered small arms fire. The air attack must have taken its toll on the North Koreans because they were bugging out when we reached the top of the hill. I saw a dozen or so North Koreans about 50 yards away leaving their holes and running down the reverse slope. Some of my men took pot shots at them and got a couple of them. I finally ordered my men to quit firing so we could dig in and prepare for a counterattack. When I took a head count of my platoon, I counted only 13 men left from the original 36 when we started the assault.
Before my platoon had a chance to rest and recover from the attack and heat, my company commander told me to take some men and clear the right ridge line that extended to the valley below. I told him that I had only 13 men left in my platoon and asked if he could assign another platoon to that mission. He was furious. He said it was a direct order.
Before he could say anything more, I pointed out to him a group of men in the valley some 500 yards away crossing the river and heading up the same ridge line that I was to clear. I told him that they were NKs. He said no, they were men from the 3rd Battalion and for me to take my patrol out immediately and to link up with them. I said if they were men from the 3rd Battalion coming up this way, then there was no need to send a patrol down the same ridge. He said to meet them halfway. I got my 13 men together and told them of the assignment. Were they pissed!
We made better time going down the ridge than the men coming up. When we were halfway down the ridge and about 200 yards from the men climbing up, I recognized them as North Koreans. I had no radio to warn the company back on the hill, so I sent my runner to inform the CO that what we saw were not "friendlies" but North Koreans and that I was going to withdraw to the company's position. Then I told my men to keep their heads down and to make it back to the company.
We were about 100 yards from the company when I happened to glance at a smaller ridge, which was only a shallow gully away from where we were. A small enemy force was moving up that ridge, apparently unseen by our company on the hill. The enemy force was about 100 yards from us and about 200 yards below our company's position on the hill. With my binoculars I saw some wore American uniforms.
What I did next must have shocked my men. I told them to get down and to wait for my orders to fire. I took off my steel helmet and wrapped my head with a green towel that I always carried. Then I stood up in plain sight and waved my hands to catch the enemy's attention. Some of the NKs stood up and waved their hands, apparently thinking that we were the NKs coming up tile ridge behind us. I yelled, "Fire!" and dropped to the ground. My men were on their knees firing, emptying clip after clip of ammo into the NKs. The firing alerted our men on the hill and took the NKs under fire. It was a wipeout.
However, we were now receiving machine gun fire and rifle fire from the NKs below us so I turned the patrol to face that threat. In the exchange of fire, my BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) man got hit in the shoulder. His assistant took over the BAR, only to yell at me that it wouldn't fire. I grabbed the gun from him, tapped the magazine at the bottom, and pulled the trigger.
The gun fired! I gave it back to the assistant BAR man and rolled over to another position about 3 yards away. At this instant the BAR man got hit. I rolled back to the BAR man and found that he had been hit in the shoulder and stomach and was killed instantly. Two other men were killed in this action. With half my patrol killed or wounded, I decided that it was time to make it back to the company's position. Under cover of mortar and machine gun fire, we were able to make the last 100 yards back to our company.
BACK TO TOP |
AUGUST 1952
Baker Company was situated on a low hill, maybe 50 or 60 feet above the flats, and spread out along the south bank of the Inijin River. Affected by the coastal tide, the river rose and fell by as much as 30 feet or more. One day the river could be 300 yards wide and the next day it could be a small channel of water only a couple of yards wide, revealing an expanse of mud flats. Really interesting. But we were concerned when the tide was low because it gave the Chinese the opportunity to cross the river on a dark night and infiltrate our lines.
PFC. ROBERT HAMAKAWA,
Baker Company, 1st Marines
Vicinity of Munsan-ni, South KoreaSometimes when things were quiet, it gave me a chance to think about the war and ask myself what the heck I was doing in Korea. I had a draft deferment because I was still in college in 1951 but waived it to be with my buddies who were drafted in October of that year. I would now be on summer break and enjoying all the privileges that went with civilian life. Those lucky dogs back home. But like the rest of the men who were 18 to 20 years old, I had to put everything on hold. Finishing college, getting married, and having a family would have to come later, if I survived the war.
I was 20 years old and the teenagers considered me to be old except for Sergeant Quinlan, who really was an old marine at the age of 23. He was a graduate of MIT and was drafted right after graduation. I asked him why he didn't become an officer with his qualifications and he said he just wanted to put in his time and get out. As we talked he really surprised me when he told me he knew of a Hamakawa who attended Springfield College in Springfield, Mass. They met when they served on their respective schools' debate teams. Was he a relative? Heck, he was Kio, my older brother. After the initial shock at how small the world was, we got along really well.
There were several outpost battles along MLR of the 1st Marine Division but not much movement where I was. It was basically to defend our piece of real estate and conduct patrols out in no-man's-land.
Living on the front lines we lacked the comforts of home, especially the hot shower. We had a shower but certainly nothing that resembled what I had given up months ago. A 5S gallon drum was perched several feet above the ground and was filled with water carried from a nearby well. A valve controlled the gravity-fed water. Bathing had to be in pairs. One guy showered while the other controlled the water from the top.
One day while I was showering and completely soaped down, I could hear our artillery firing and the rounds whistling overhead. A round exploded prematurely in the air about 100 yards from the shower unit. Before we could duck or throw ourselves to the ground, steel fragments went whizzing overhead. The round was timed to burst above ground over enemy territory, but this one burst too soon over friendly territory. Fellow marines were not concerned if I got injured but were more worried that the water drum had been punctured by shrapnel. Fortunately, it wasn't.
There was this 17-year-old Irish kid named Malloy. We all wished we could get him back to his mama in New York because he was a wise kid and should never have been put on the front lines. One day, just for excitement, like we didn't have enough of it, he stripped completely naked and hopped on top of a tank and waved his "skivvies" to the enemy. I don't know if he had been observed by the enemy but when he did that, we got some incoming rounds. Sometimes we wished that he would catch a piece of shrapnel and get sent home.
The end of July was the beginning of the monsoon season in South Korea and it continued into August. We tried to pick a bunker that had good drainage but there was one occasion when our platoon was short of bunkers and our squad had to build one. One of the men had studied to be an engineer in college but dropped out to get into the war. He helped us build a very sturdy bunker with good drainage. The materials for the bunker came from the engineers and KSCs. We built two triple-deck bunks With a lot of space between them. He scraped up some materials to make a stove, complete with an exhaust pipe. We were the envy of the platoon and after a while our hootchie became the meeting place for the squad leaders and platoon sergeant.
Sleeping in bunkers really took some getting used to because of the constant moisture. It was warm in the winter if the stove was working and very cool in the summer, although outside of the bunker it might be 90 degrees.
Then the monsoon came. Talk about rain! I thought it would never let up. It rained for an entire week, but our bunker was dry. The only problem was the mud we brought in whenever we came in from the rain. There were reports that a couple of bunkers collapsed during the rainy period.
There were no hot meals for a couple of weeks because the muddy roads made it impossible for the jeeps to bring the food up. Most of the guys skipped eating one or two meals rather than eat the ever so present C-rations. I think the higher-ups anticipated all of this because we were never in short supply of C-rations. Guys were getting sick with bad colds and dysentery. Dysentery came from unsanitary mess kits and utensils because there was no hot water to sanitize them. The platoon medic was busy treating men who reported to sick call.
One afternoon, the enemy decided to harass us with mortars when I was returning from the platoon CP. I made a dash to a foxhole, which was occupied by Bill Hammond. I yelled for him to make some room for me and jumped in beside him. The hole had about a foot of water in it. If I had known that I was sharing the hole with about 100 or more little green frogs, I would have taken my chances out in the open. Bill said the little frogs were there when he jumped in.
We continued to get a few incoming rounds so we decided to stay in the hole and bail the green frogs out. We threw out as many of the little creatures as we could.
A jeep drove up, dodging bursting shells. About 20 yards from our hole, this GI stopped his jeep and dashed up the hill toward us. There was no room for a third party so when that body made a flying leap into our hole, Bill and I kind of moved to one side to make room for him. Instead, he landed on top of us. That pissed us off. Using both our shoulders, Bill and I heaved the guy out of the hole. Whoever it was, got up, got into the jeep, and took off Later, we were asked if we had seen Lieutenant Colonel Blatti, CO, 1st Amtrak Battalion. Bill and I shook our heads and after a safe distance from everyone, we said in unison, "That's who it was."
BACK TO TOP |
JULY 1953
The final days of the shooting war were filled with talk of an imminent cease-fire agreement. That drew elation and our immediate thoughts were (1) no more artillery shells with the possibility of our names on them will find their way into our foxholes, (2) no more nightly fears of the communist forces overrunning our positions.
1ST LT. IWAO YOKOOJI,
Military Intelligence, 2nd Infantry,
near the DMZ, KoreaThe order to cease fire before 22:00 hours on July 27 was a welcome one and a cause for thunderous celebration. Fireworks may have been used back home but in the war zone live ammunition was plentiful and available for use and use it we did -- to the max. Normally, we were constrained by the practice of supply economy but, what the heck, the shooting was about to end.
The night of July 27, 1953, was literally turned into day when both sides fired their weapons to get rid of their ammunition, either attempting to kill one or more of the enemy or rejoicing over the end of the three-year slaughter of soldiers and civilians. The shooting frenzy kept up to one minute before the 22:00 hours deadline, with both sides mindful of not wanting to violate the cease-fire agreement. While we were elated over the end of the shooting war, an uneasy calm fell over the area after the firing.
Click for online
calendars and events.
