The three-year Korean War never officially ended, but veterans of America’s “forgotten war” still are working to keep alive the memory of the sacrifices they made in the first real action of the Cold War, which kept South Korea free and slowed the spread of communism.
“I’d like people to realize that it was a war and, like all wars, we went through hell,” said veteran Frank Montijo of Lakewood. “We could start remembering it, and what we did.”
Joe Annello, 77, remembers clearly that he expected to die in a prisoner of war camp after being seriously wounded in battle April 24, 1951.
After a daring escape and rescue, he expected never to return to Korea or to talk to its people.
“I had some really bad feelings about Korea and the Koreans,” said Annello, who now lives in Castle Rock.
Instead, the Army set him on a journey that started with fierce resistance but ultimately graced his life.
He was sent back to South Korea for another tour of duty.
“In that period, I grew up and really saw what Korea was and what the Korean people were,” he said.
He served four tours of duty in South Korea and married a Korean woman, with whom he just celebrated his 51st anniversary.
Pilot, cavalry came to POWs’ rescue
Then, in 2006 at the invitation of the Department of Defense, he made the first of two trips with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command to help locate the remains of a soldier he buried at the POW camp.
And he’s become part of the Colorado community of Korean War veterans, a tightknit circle that often socializes with the local Korean-American community, whose hospitality and gratitude for the soldiers’ sacrifices has done much to help heal the emotional wounds of war.
On Friday, Annello will be in South Korea, participating in extensive ceremonies to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.
He’ll be there with his good friend Hiroshi “Hershey” Miyamura, who received the Medal of Honor for bravery under fire — and the soldier who saved his life all those years ago.
“That means a tremendous amount to be there with Hershey,” Annello said. “If not for him, I probably wouldn’t be here today.”
Both men were wounded in a battle about six months after the Chinese entered the Korean War, at a time when, in America, public opinion of the war had shifted.
“It was popular at first, the idea of sending troops to repel the North Korean attack,” said Robert Schulzinger, a professor at the University of Colorado who studies the history of U.S. foreign relations.
“But public opinion changed when the Chinese entered the war in November 1950 and forced the U.N. forces out of the South, and reconquered Seoul (the South Korean capital),” Schulzinger said. “It was a very bloody period, and the Chinese inflicted huge losses on the Americans and other U.N. forces.”
Most of the soldiers in the camp where Annello and Miyamura were held were injured but received no medical care. After three weeks, one got gangrene and died. Annello helped bury him in a nearby pit.
“Then we decided we had to do something,” he said. “We figured we’d last another two or three weeks.”
One of the POWs, a pilot named Melvin Shadduck, sneaked over to a bombed-out farm to barter his jacket for three days of gruel to keep the POWs alive, then swam down a river until he made contact with the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division, which sent in five tanks to rescue the soldiers.
Returning to the war in flashbacks
Over the years, Annello did his best to forget the war, as did most Americans.
“It was the first war of the 20th century where the result was inconclusive,” Schulzinger said. “There weren’t good, triumphant feelings about it.”
There was never a peace treaty, only an armistice agreement.
Annello’s attempt to forget the war worked until 2000, when the pilot who had engineered the POW rescue died.
“I hadn’t thought about all that in about 50 years,” Annello said. “Suddenly I was having a lot of flashbacks and a difficult time sleeping.”
Miyamura persuaded him to start talking about his war memories. To start, they gathered with friends in a hotel room. It was the first time his wife, Joan, had ever heard him talk about it.
“I decided the more I talked about it, the better off I’d be,” said Annello, who now visits local schools to help educate kids about the Korean War.
Sixty years after the start of the Korean War, those directly affected still remember.
“I didn’t see the shooting and the killing, but I saw a lot of wounded people, with no eyes, and no heads,” said Joan Annello, who was 12 when the war began. “It was horrible.
“We were so grateful to the GIs. If they didn’t help us, I would probably not be here today,” she said. “We’d probably have turned into communists.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083 or coconnor@denverpost.com
Denver commemoration
The Denver and Colorado chapters of Korean War veterans will gather Friday with members of the local Korean community for lunch at St. John’s Lutheran Church, 700 S. Franklin St., Denver.
Keynote speaker will be Phil O’Brien from the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office.
For more information, contact Louise Renoux, 303-733-9433.
