Ken Bartlett

Ken Bartlett: Korean War

Interviewed by Joanne McMillen (Midwest City Rotary Club Interview)

Interview Date: May 17, 2004

Q: Ken, when and where were you born?

A: I was born in Coffeyville, Kansas on February 6, 1930.

Q: When did people first begin thinking that the United States might get involved in Korea?

A: To my knowledge, I don’t think most people were really aware of it until the Koreans come down and invaded South Korea. It wasn’t something that, actually, people were aware of. I certainly wasn’t and my age group of people wasn’t aware of it at that time – in 1950.

Q: Ah-huh. And how were you at that time?

A: I was 20 years old at that time. I was born in ’30, and it was 20 years later in 1950 when the Korean War broke out – in July.

Q: Were you in college at the time?

A: I was in college. I was at Coffeyville Community College.

Q: OK.

A: Coffeyville, Kansas.

Q: Was the war expected or did the war and the U.S. involvement come as a complete surprise? You kind of answered that.

A: I think it came as a complete surprise.

Q: And we already know you were – well, you were 20 when the war broke out. Were you in the military at the time?

A: No, I was not. I was a college student.

Q: Were you a World War II veteran?

A: No, I wasn’t.

Q: OK, if you were not already in the military, were you drafted or did you enlist?

A: In enlisted in the U.S. Navy. September.

Q: What were your personal feelings about going off to war? And what were your feelings in regards to communism and the anxieties and tensions it created in the U.S.?

A: In regard to communism, I was a 20 year old that was having a good time playing baseball and chasing girls. And I wasn’t aware of the world problems or such things as that. I was just having a good time playing baseball that summer. And after the war broke out, I became aware that it was going to be a lot of involvement and the draft was still on. I did not want to be drafted into the army, so I enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

Q: OK, how did you feel, though, about going to war?

A: I didn’t, ah, I didn’t have any bad feelings. I didn’t have any anxieties. As I said earlier, I was 20 years old and invisible. I think most people at that age don’t think about the fact that they could be killed. Especially when you’re not close to the actual fighting. So it was not something that really crossed my mind. I was an only child and that was a difficult thing for my mother at that time.

Q: I can appreciate that. What were the feelings of your friends and acquaintances about the war?

A: Most of my friends enlisted the same as I did. Several of my buddies enlisted in the navy and they were just willing to go. And, ah, we were at an age where we thought it was the thing to do – to support our country – join the military.

Q: Did all the people you knew want to join the military and serve?

A: Ah, for the most part, yes. I have no recollection of anybody really resisting or being opposed to joining the military at that time.

Q: That’s interesting to know. How did you family – you mentioned your mother – you weren’t married at the time . . .

A: No, I wasn’t married.

Q: Did you have a girlfriend? How did they feel about you leaving for war?

A: They were not, ah, excited about it. Ah, I, ah, just felt like it was the thing to do. My dad was understanding. He – he did not want me to go either, but they did understand that it was important that I be a part of the military. I had a girlfriend – a Spanish girl, which I broke ground in 1950 with, because – mixing races, but, ah, I, ah, she wasn’t anxious for me to leave either. But, ah, anyway, there was no hard feelings. And they all supported me very strongly in my enlistment.

Q: OK. Where did you undertake basic training?

A: Great Lakes Naval Air Station in Great Lakes, Illinois, right north of Chicago. There were two places at that time. You either went to San Diego, ah, and went through boot camp there or you went to Great Lakes and went through boot camp there.

Q: Explain your experiences and impressions of basic training.

A: I loved it. I had always been a swimmer and I was very capable. I was on the swimming team in high school, so it was amazing to me, when we got into the pool to do water stuff that some of the people couldn’t even swim. I was shocked at that! That some of the enlistees didn’t even know how to swim, but several of them didn’t. I loved the marching that we did. Ah, my boot camp experience was in what was referred to as “company” and I can remember 325 and we had approximately 100 – I would say about 150 people in that particular company. And then they would pare down from that and have about 15 to 20 fellows out of that entire company that marched in competition with the other companies. And I was in that. I loved the cadence – the preciseness, the exactness of the marching and the turning and all of that. I really enjoyed that. I really liked it.

Q: Ah-huh.

A: And the boot camp experience was not threatening or – it was difficult. I went into the service, ah, having weighed 160 pounds – into the boot camp. I come out of boot camp – three months later and weighed 185 pounds because I was living on a regular diet and I was getting good sleep, whereas during the summer when I was still at home I was running all night and getting up at eight and going to work, and, ah, working on a milk truck and vowing every morning not to do that the next night. But every night, you know, you get revved back up and I’d be out again that night, so . . . after that good steady living in the boot camp I, ah, I put on 25 pounds.

Q: (laughing) Sounds like the exception! Well, muscle does weigh more. . .

A: Yes.

Q: You were building muscle.

A: Yes, yes, that’s what I was doing.

Q: After basic training, where did the military send you?

A: I was sent, ah, to San Francisco on the way to Japan. And, ah, I spent several – a couple of months there. And part of the reason I was there was I was waiting to take officer’s candidate school test to see if I was – could go to officer’s candidate school. And, ah, I didn’t make it. So I went on then from there and went aboard the General William S. Wiggle, which is a troop ship. And it was taking members of Oklahoma’s Forty-Fifth Division to the Korean War. And there were several of us navy people. And I was what was called an Airedale, which was the “air” part of the navy. And there were several of us that went aboard that ship. And we went to Yakuska, Japan, then went up to Atsugi Naval Air Station, which had been a former kamikaze base. And it was almost totally destroyed in the Second World War. And I got there in ’51, and the Seabees had to rebuilt the base – that base.

Q: Wow. In what capacity did you serve during the Korean War – your duty, rank, and places – you alluded to some of this.

A: I, ah, I, when I got to Atsugi, they handed us what’s referred to as a Bluejacket’s Manual. And they said to us, “what do you want to work in?” The term they used was “strike” – what do you want to – where do you want to be a striker – which, in essence, means where do you want to train? And as I went through the Bluejacket’s Manual, I was not interested in mechanics and working on airplanes or such as that. The only two areas that I was interested in at all was either air controlman or meteorology, which was, ah, styled in the navy as aerographer’s mate. So I said I wanted to be an aerographer’s mate. And so I did. They put us in the tower. And I had a very good experience there because they had no training for us, but they had – had hired – the navy had hired six Japanese nationals who were weathermen, who plotted the weather maps. And we got out experience training with these Japanese men. They taught us how to plot and then read a weather map so that you could see the wind and the currents and the fronts and all of the various things. And, ah, I really enjoyed my time there. While I was there I made advancement to become what was referred to as a third-class petty officer.

But when I – after I had been there for about a year and a half I put in for what was referred to as “A” school, which is the school that you go to out of boot camp to learn a profession or a trade in the navy. And I didn’t get that when I went out of – come out of boot camp because they were so anxious to get people overseas and involved in the war, so I put in then for that camp. And, lo and behold, it came through. I got orders to come back to the United States and go to what’s referred to as “A” school – meteorology school – in Lakehurst, New Jersey. And I tried to convince the people, when they put me aboard this little ship that I come back on, that I was a third-class petty officer and I shouldn’t have to be doing certain things. But they informed me that I was still a first-class sailor and the orders for the third-class petty officer hadn’t come through yet as far as they were concerned. And so they put me in the mess hall, which in turn, turned out to the be the best job I could have had because we worked the meals but we also got to feed ourselves and fix our own meals and we had better meals than all of the crew of the ship did. And we only worked morning, noon, and evening, and then we were off all during the day and afternoon and the rest of the night. But, ah, it turned out to be very good for me to work in the mess hall, but I didn’t think it was going to when I went aboard ship. But it was good duty. And I was on what was called an LSD, that’s a landing ship-dock, and it’s a small ship and it pounds – every wave – it pounded – the front end opens up, and so it took us 21 days to come from Yakuska, Japan back to San Diego. And then I flew to Lakehurst, New Jersey.

When I was at Lakehurst, I went through this school of meteorology, and there were 90 people in the school. And the way you got your job out of this school – where you got to go to – they had a selection list of where all the jobs, or where they were looking for people, and you got your choice based upon where you – what your rank was in the 90 people. Well, I come in first, and that’s not necessarily a credit to me – I mean, I had been working in it for a year and a half, so I should have come in first. But anyway, I come in first and they had a job in what’s referred to as 90 Church Street in Lower Manhattan. It was called Commander of Eastern Sea Frontier, and so I took that job and went to New York City and lived for the last two years of my career. And it was really neat because we worked in the post office building in Lower Manhattan. And I would – they did not have a place for us in the way of quarters or food, so they paid us what was called subsistence in quarters. They’d give us so much money to buy our food and someplace to stay. So five of us navy fellows rented a house underneath the Triborough Bridge where it goes over into Upper Manhattan. So we had a house over there, and so I was like any civilian – I’d just go down and get on the – at that time it was called the BMT – the elevated – and ride the elevated over into Manhattan and down to Lower Manhattan, get out, go up to the fifth floor of the post office building, do my 8-hour shift, and then if I wanted to stay in Manhattan – because I could go to all the plays – I’ve seen all the plays on Broadway – I could go to Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium, ah, Brooklyn, ah, the Polo Grounds, Yankee Stadium, and Ebbets Field. If you wore your uniform then, you could get in all the games, or get in everywhere, because they still respected the servicemen.

Q: Ah-huh.

A: So that’s what I did. If I didn’t want to do that, I’d just go back down to my locker, change my clothes and ride the subway back to the house. It was wonderful duty. It was neat duty. I did not fighting. I was not involved in any fighting. What we did in Japan was we did the weather forecasting for the airplanes that flew – navy airplanes – that flew weather reconnaissance up over, ah, Korea. And did – we gave them weather predictions of what they were going to encounter and then they encountered the weather over there and they’d, ah, wire it back to us.

Q: Oh.

A: It was neat.

Q: Ah –

A: I may have gone too far there . . .

Q: You’re one of the few people I’ve ever heard talk about gaining weight and having good food in the service (laughing).

A: I did.

Q: But I understand exactly where that’s coming from.

A: Yea, Lakehurst, in fact, where I went through this meteorology school was known as one of the best – they called it “feeders” – one of the best feeders in the whole U.S. Navy. They had wonderful food there. It was great.

Q: In terms of your own experience in Korea, under what kind of conditions did you live and work.

A: I pretty well answered most of that. I lived in the barracks in, ah, Japan, in the – at the base where I was stationed. And we lived, ah – they were large barracks and you had bunks over and under, and two to a – you know. . .

Q: How many in one of the barracks?

A: Oh, I’d say there would be 100 on each floor and they were two stories high, and, ah, had one big central area where you went to take your shower – where everybody went to take their shower. Then you had the mess hall at a different location. But the kind of work that I did in meteorology, we would work, ah, two days, and then we’d off until the next afternoon, and work two evenings, and then be off until the next midnight and work two mids-to-eight. And then you were off two days. So we were doing what was called shift work. I mean, you never worked straight five days a week, eight hours a day, or something like that, which was good because we had liberty, man, we could always go on liberty any time that we weren’t on our regular shift work. So it was neat, and, ah, and I enjoyed Japan. I, ah, I didn’t drink, carry-on, and I didn’t chase the women, but I did see a lot of the cultural things in the country. I went to – down to Kamakura and to see the big Buddha, and so many things. I wish now, you know, in retrospect, I had gone more and gone to some of the ski resorts and some of that, but I didn’t travel that much in Japan. Ah, but I enjoyed my time there. It’s a good country and it’s a quiet culture. And I enjoyed the people. Ah, I think there’s a question “what’s the most dramatic thing that happened” - is that the next one?

Q: Ah, not yet. It talks about when you return home, but I wanted to ask you, was it easy for you to move about in Japan not knowing the language or did you learn Japanese?

A: Well, I learned some, but just enough to get by. You know, (speaking Japanese) – “good morning” – a few phrases like that. But, getting around was excellent because transportation systems were wonderful back then, I mean fast, and, ah, and we had all of the facilities right on base. We had Japanese barbers and haircuts were 25 and shaves was 15, and a mud pack, which was wonderful, was 10 or 15 cents. And, I mean, you know, they’d put that mud on your face – I don’t know whether you’ve ever done that – I mean, you know, boy, it tightens up or something, but then they take it off and, man, it was just a great feeling and you could all that – laundry – they had a laundry. You could take your laundry there and the Japanese did your clothes and everything. But it was very good. My service experiences were excellent.

Q: What kind of contact did you have with people back home?

A: Ah, normal correspondence. I heard from my parents. Heard from my girlfriend. At that time there was a little, what was called a 45 record player. It had a little – a 45 had this big round spool in it.

Q: Right.

A: And they sent that – they sent that over to me – this little 45. And you had to – because the electricity was something – I don’t know – I don’t remember now, one way or the other – but you had to put some little plastic around the prongs to make it work at the right speed. So anyway, but then they sent me the current records. So I was always ahead of everybody else as far as the records – the music that was coming because my parents and my girlfriend would send me the current records. So I always had – everybody would hang around listening to my – at my, ah, bed and where I could plug that record player in and they’d listen to all the current records. It was neat – neat experience.

Q: You were the social man.

A: Yea, I guess.

Q: So correspondence was basically limited to mail.

A: Mail, yes, yes.

Q: How long did it take for letters to travel back and forth.

A: Two to three weeks.

Q: We kind of take that for granted, don’t we?

A: Yes,

Q: With the age of the Internet.

A: Right, oh year, instant. No it was definitely snail-mail at that time.

Q: If you feel comfortable talking about combat – you weren’t in combat, were you?

A: I had no combat experiences.

Q: What was your most memorable experience?

A: I think probably the most memorable experience was, ah, at the time, when I was in Japan, is when Harry Truman fired Douglas MacArthur. And Douglas MacArthur was reverend as almost a god in Japan, because of how he had treated the Japanese people after he come in. So it was quite an experience when he left the country and General Matthew Ridgeway took over his position. And, ah, that was probably the most traumatic thing that happened during my service experience. Douglas MacArthur being fired by President Truman.

Q: Ah-huh. Was there any repercussions in the service . . . .

A: Not really. No, I don’t – no, nothing that was noticeable there, no.

Q: How has that particular experience impacted your life?

A: None, none.

Q: And how long did you serve?

A: Four years. Ah, actually three years and eleven months. I was discharged in New York in, ah, August of 200. . . ah, 1954, and I had a sea bag and at that time I hitchhiked from New York City back to Coffeyville, Kansas, and that was a neat experience because it took me about three different rides leaving New York to get down to Philadelphia and out west of Philadelphia onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and then a guy come along that, ah, in about an old ’38 Ford and he was – had split from his wife – they were leaving – he was separating from her and he was going to Las Vegas, Nevada. So he and I drove that ’38 – he let me drive and I rode with him all the way from back by Philadelphia all the way out to Joplin, which was Highway 66. And I encouraged him and asked him to come over to Coffeyville from Joplin, and he did. And so he spent the night there, bringing me home, and then he spent the night with us and met my family, and then he left out the next day for Las Vegas. But, as his graciousness of giving me a ride, I felt like it would be good to let him spend the night there in my home, and he did, and it was good.

Q: You were lucky.

A: Yes, but at that time, people still respected the uniform and there was no threats. We didn’t have all this craziness that’s going on out in the world today. And, ah, people would pick a serviceman up and they enjoyed it. They appreciated the serviceman.

Q: It was patriotic.

A: Patriotic, yes. And they were glad to do it.

Q: How long were you in the service, then?

A: Four years.

Q: Four years. And you were in Japan. . .?

A: Two years – almost – and then two years back in New York City.

Q: You were talking about when you were discharged. Did they give you travel money and you elected to hitchhike or . . .?

A: I think they did. I believe – as I recall – I’m not positive. But they gave you out quite a bit of mustering pay. And, of course. . .

Q: Quite a bit of what?

A: Mustering out – it’s called mustering out pay. You muster out of the service – that’s the term.

Q: OK, transition pay?

A: Yea, for the time that you spent in there. I say quite a bit – I think it was eleven or twelve hundred dollars, you know, it was a lot of money – a lot of money – so I really don’t recall. I think what I did was turn that into hundred dollar bills and have it on me. I know – I kind of think my mother got real upset when I got home and she found out that I had done that. She thought I should have wired it or sent it by mail or something.

And one of the funny experiences of coming home was I told her – I didn’t get home from the time I enlisted until – for two and half years. The first time I got home was December of 2002? No, I mean 1950. I went in 2000 – I guess it was 2000 and (coughing - break for a drink of water)

It was two and a half years from the time I went in the service until I got home, so one of the first things I did after I got home, I shared – I told my mother – I told her she was really going to love the tattoo that I got. Well, her old mouth just dropped and she just – oh, she couldn’t believe her little boy would have gotten a tattoo. So anyway, I took my navy jumper, I think it was called then, off and then you had a t-shirt you wore under it. So I began to peel my t-shirt off and I told her “it’s right back here,” you know. I didn’t have a tattoo! I wasn’t about to get a tattoo! But I had fun with here because she thought I had gotten a tattoo and she just couldn’t believe that I would have done that. But anyway, that was a fun experience.

Q: Now, the two and half years. . .?

A: From the time I entered the service until I got home for leave. And I was home for Christmas. . .

Q: The first time?

A: The first time.

Q: OK.

A: And then I went back to New York. Yea, but it was two and a half years till I got home.

Q: OK. That. . .

A: And in the interim the girl that I was going with, ah, about a month before I came home in December, she got engaged, and, ah, she got engaged to a fellow that was, ah, aboard a ship that had landed in Yakuska and he come up to see me. He was a good friend – I knew him. But he was Spanish, and he came up to see me. But then, about a month before I got home, why my mother sent me an announcement – the first time, now, when I got home – and she had gotten engaged. So in a later conversation she told me that she felt she had to because she knew that she just – never mind – she just knew that she had to be engaged and didn’t want to pursue our relationship. That’s fine.

Q: Had to be hard to take.

A: It was.

Q: I’m sure that there are a lot of guys with the same story.

A: Yea. Yea.

Q: What kind of reception did you receive when you got back?

A: Ah, after – when I got out of the service, when I come home, ah, it was an interesting experience. I was around Coffeyville, Kansas for about a month. And what I actually did was I got a map out and I looked at the distance between KU and Coffeyville and Coffeyville and Norman, Oklahoma. And Norman, Oklahoma was actually closer to Coffeyville than Lawrence, Kansas was. And so I decided to go to OU. And at that time, even then, why OU had a lot better football team than KU did, so that’s – those two reasons – because it was closer and because they had a better football team was the reason that I came to OU. And I was fortunate because the three years that I was at OU, OU never lost a game. That’s when Bud Wilkinson was running up his 47-game win streak. So I never saw OU play a losing game during the time I was in school.

Q: Overall, when people find out that you were in the service after you came back, did you feel they treated you differently?

A: No. No. In fact, all the little college girls were quite impressed because they had been used to so many of the guys that were right out of high school and they enjoyed visiting with somebody that had some maturity. No, and the general people – people were very gracious to the – to me – and as far as I know, I think most Korean War veterans. None of that antagonism as far as I’m concerned come along till after the Vietnam War.

Q: In terms of your war experiences, how did those experiences affect, if at all, your relations and interactions with family, friends, spouse or girlfriend? You’ve referenced some of that.

A: Yea, I don’t . . .

Q: How did you parents see you once you returned?

A: Ah, they – they were no different, really. I never felt a difference. And I didn’t feel a difference toward them. I – I – I was probably like most fellows at that age – I thought my father had matured a lot in those four years that I was gone. Ah, because as I was in my late teens and early twenties – and he was hot-tempered. And I never was, ah, as hot-tempered as he was, but I could explode. But, ah, he and I got along well, ah, and, after I come back from the service. And, ah, it was all good. I thought they were very comfortable with me and I certainly was very comfortable with them. I had – for that month in between the time that I got out of the service and before I come to OU, I didn’t do a whole lot. A lot of my friends weren’t back from the service. I went early and a lot of them hadn’t gone. And I didn’t do a whole lot that month. I just kind of hung around the house and visited with my mother and my dad, and didn’t go out much. And, ah, it was just a good experience. It was a good reacquainting experience for that month while I was – when I first come back.

Q: Do you still keep in touch with some of the people you served with?

A: I did for a long time. And also kept in contact with some of the Japanese nationals. But over the years, no, I have lost contact with everybody. One of the interesting things that I noticed when we were down at Branson one of the shows about three rows there were all these fellows were having their reunion from, I think it was U.S.S. Pritchard – it was a destroyer, and, gosh, there were three rows of guys with their wives and everything and they had gotten together and they were having a reunion down at Branson. But, you know, I was always in small groups – in meteorology there weren’t that many guys aboard ship or at the locations and I did keep contact with some of them, but after a long time – time passed and I haven’t for a long time been in contact with anybody.

Q: What kinds of general observations and conclusions do you have about the Korean War and your experience?

A: Ah, it was a necessary thing we had to do. We had to do what we did. I have reservations about the fact that we were not allowed to go in any further into North Korea. I think perhaps, in the long run, it would have been better – we might have achieved peace in the Far East sooner – but that’s just my speculation. I have nothing tangible to know whether that would have been better for that to happen. But it was a wonderful experience. I think it was a very maturing experience as most people say – I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to do it again, but it was a good experience. I believe in conscription. I think every young man and/or woman – I believe what Israel does is excellent because the best thing that could happen to our young people would get them away from their homes and get them around this country and around this world and see how the rest of this world lives. I think they would come to appreciate what they have in this country. And so many of them have no conception of how good they’ve got it in this country.

Q: That’s a valid point for sure, definitely. Is there anything else you’d like to – this is the end of the questions.

A: No, I have nothing else.

Q: OK, thank you, Ken, I appreciate it.

A: You bet.